I love me a good short story collection and I was so psyched when I saw that there was a new book of short stories in The Stand Universe. The End of the World as We Know It is an ode to the Stephen King book that has been made into not one but two mini-series.
Spearheaded by Christopher Golden and Brian Keene and with some great writers like S.A. Cosby, Paul Temblay and Chuck Wendig, I was so excited to dive into the nooks and crannies of Captain Trips.
Man, was I disappointed. I eventually started putting the 30+ stories into tiers and not good tiers either….
downright mean – Room 24, Every Dog, Make Your Own Way, Milagros, The Legion of Swine, The Boat Man
kernel of an idea – Across the Pond, Grace, The Story I Tell, The Mosque at the End of the World, Came the Last Night of Sadness, The Devil’s Children,
why – In a Pigs Eye, Lenora, The Hope Boat, Prey Instinct, Moving Day, La Mala Hora, The African Painted Dog, Mermaid Story, Keep the Devil Down, Hunted to Extinction, SuperLawyer, Trick Baby
good in comparison – The Tripps, Bright Light City, Lockdown, I Love the Dead, Awaiting Orders in Flaggston, Grand Junction
better by comparison – Wrong Fucking Place, Kovach’s Last Case, Abigail’s Gethsemane, He’s a Righteous Man
I was hoping to see back stories of smaller characters like the Judge or Dana. Or find out more about the government installation where the superflu started, or the recording session for Can You Dig Your Man. What I got was a bushel of apocalyptic stories with very similar structures and outcomes. Person survives, meets another, other people attack. Even the ones set outside the U.S. were boring when it could have used a local flavor to inject new life.
Wish that I could find some positives but there just wasn’t anything close to the original King.
As an antidote to this unrelenting grimness, go buy yourself a few bottles of Maine Beer Co. beers and you will quickly feel good because the beers are so great and it is a strong moral company that even Mother Abigail would approve of.