Bedtime Stories for the Apocalypse by Joel Arnold
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
A very quick and easy read. Joel demonstrates a command of the language, and a very good understanding of his technique, but I finished this collection of shorts with a feeling that I'd missed the part about the end of the world. The stories are each well written and engaging in their own way, but none of them cover any territory or offer any insight that hasn't been gone over a bazillion times before. While each of the stories encompasses no small amount of tragedy for their protagonists, I didn't feel any sense immediate extinction or suprahuman judgment that I expected from the "Apocalypse" in the title.
On the other hand, it's a lot easier to plow through this book in an hour than the collected works of Kafka, so please don't get the impression that there's no redeeming qualities to this book. It's a solid collection, the price is right, and you can certainly do a lot worse with an hour and a half of your time that finish this.
Also filed under Random ♠ 
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