Don't Read This Book: 13 Tales from the Mad City

Mad City

by Chuck Wendig (Editor), Stephen Blackmoore, Harry Connolly

Down a lonely alleyway, under a starless sky, lies a city that never was, yet is: the Mad City, where nightmares walk the streets, and a good night’s sleep can get you killed. Here, then, is a book from that place.

Within these recovered pages are the tales of the Awake, insomniacs who’ve walked those perilous streets, bringing a bit of the power of dream with them to fight back the night — always at a terrible cost.

For many, it will not end well. For a few, they might just become heroes — or at least find their way back home.

For you, a choice. Turn away. Don’t read this book. And maybe you’ll continue to rest easy. Or open the cover and enter a world unlike any you’ve ever dared to imagine!

Don't Read This Book introduces 13 forbidden tales from the Mad City and the world of the Don't Rest Your Head RPG.

Genres: Horror, Short Stories, Fantasy, Anthologies, Urban Fantasy, Fiction, Role Playing Games

200 pages, ebook

First published June 1, 2012

About the author

Chuck Wendig is a novelist, a screenwriter, and a freelance penmonkey.
He has contributed over two million words to the roleplaying game industry, and was the developer of the popular Hunter: The Vigil game line (White Wolf Game Studios / CCP).

He, along with writing partner Lance Weiler, is a fellow of the Sundance Film Festival Screenwriter's Lab (2010). Their short film, Pandemic, will show at the Sundance Film Festival 2011, and their feature film HiM is in development with producer Ted Hope.

Chuck's novel Double Dead will be out in November, 2011.

He's written too much. He should probably stop. Give him a wide berth, as he might be drunk and untrustworthy. He currently lives in the wilds of Pennsyltucky with a wonderful wife and two very stupid dogs. He is represented by Stacia Decker of the Donald Maass Literary Agency.

You can find him at his website, terribleminds.com.

Reviews

[Laurie K · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mad City is a deeply disturbing place that can only be found by the deeply disturbed. Those who can't (or won't) sleep eventually become Awake enough to see the city and possibly stumble into it. Whether it's adjacent to our reality or simply seeps into the cracks of it, you don't want to be stranded there. Nightmares roam the streets, hoping to find people foolish enough to wander out and be consumed - or worse, converted. Everyone is a nightmare waiting to happen.

This is a themed anthology of stories all set in Mad City. The stories range from terrifying to funny to totally disturbing. There's not a bad story in the lot, though my favorites are the first story, Don't Forget Your Patients by Stephen Blackmoore, and the last story, Don't Chew Your Food by Harry Connolly. As twisted or deranged or pitiful as the protagonist in each story is, they all undeniably belong in the chaos of Mad City.

I really can't recommend this anthology highly enough. The stories flow together beautifully to create what feels like a real place. Mad City has a set of rules and a few higher-profile inhabitants that make appearances throughout multiple stories, and seeing these from the perspective of different authors/characters is fascinating. I'm a huge lover of themed anthologies, and this one is probably my favorite yet. I hope there's more Mad City forthcoming.

(As a side note, I had to put this book down when I tried to read it the first time. I had a fullblown panic attack on an airplane and while I was trying to calm down in the airport, I thought I'd read this book as a distraction. No. A world of no. I will tell you that it's scary enough to not help lull away someone's anxiety. Which makes it even more awesome. You know, after. )

[Barac Wiley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Don't Read This Book is a compendium of short stories based on the tabletop roleplaying game Don't Rest Your Head, a brilliant little number based on the idea that when you stay awake for a sufficiently prolonged period of time, you begin to operate on the wavelength of the Mad City, where the nightmares live. And then you're never safe again.

The collection is a bit uneven. There are some very good lesser-known authors involved, folks like Greg Stolze, Chuck Wendig, and Harry Connolly. And generally speaking, those authors turn out some genuinely interesting, nightmarish ideas. On the other hand, some of the stories, especially those very early in the book, read like a tutorial on the RPG's concepts and little more. Still, it's cheap, and when it's good it's very good.

[John Bogart · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book exceeded my expectations (which were high). I love themed anthologies like this and I thoroughly enjoy the setting of the Mad City. What I didn't expect is that several of the stories would do such a good job capturing that twisting, creepy feeling of insomnia and nightmares.

I read the game Don't Rest Your Head when it first came out and loved it (though I've never had a chance to play it). One of the things about the game, though, is that many of the elements bordered on the comical. Officer Tock and other potentially comic characters like Mr. Tickles the clown, make appearances in these stories, but they're creepy, even outright scary at times. These are characters that are terrifying in nightmares but ridiculous in the sunlight. These stories managed consistently to do it right.

Highly recommend.

[Priscilla · Rating 5 out of 5]

This anthology was AWESOME. Each author's voyage into the nightmarish derangement of the Mad City was extraordinarily imaginative. I had high hopes for this anthology, because I hold so many of the contributors in high regard, and it wildly exceeded my expectations!

My favorite stories, in order of appearance:
"Don't Lose Your Patients," Stephen Blackmoore
"Don't Toot Your Horn," Laura Anne Gilman
"Don't Bleach Your Memories," Mur Lafferty (ooh, isn't she nominated for the Campbell this year? I think I know who just became front-runner for my vote.)
"Don't Chew Your Food," Harry Connolly

[Nathan Pilgrim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Popular wisdom tells you anthologies will always be a mixed bag, but with a source material as Don't Rest Yor Head, there wasn't a way the stories here would gone wrong.

Unlike other anthologies, several of this stories stay with you, and if by any chance you are a rpg geek, or an insomniac, make it double.

From crime drama, to twilight episodes or some surreal material a-la-Michael Ende, you can find it here, over all, one of the most fun books of teh year so far.

[Ernesto I. Ramirez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading Don’t Read this Book is like reading a twisted version of Alice in Wonderland (or a darker, nefarious and twisted version of Neverwhere), except that everyone is invited, plus you get to have power, at least for as long as you can keep Awake.

Every story is a trip into a dark and mad place that could only exist between realities, the place where nightmares come and where dead dreams are sold. Some of the protagonist just fell into the hole and are either trying to retain their [normal] lives or just grasping for whatever would let them survive for one more night in a place where night is eternal. Some others exist in the periphery, either having escaped from the madness of the insomnia or barely keeping between realities, but those who scare you more are the ones who are deep inside the Mad City with no hopes, no dreams and no way out.

They are thirteen short stories by quite different authors, each one taking a different approach to the Mad City, each one has is strengths but personally my favorite story might very well be Don’t Lose your Son by Ryan Macklin and Don’t Bleach your Memories by Mur Lafferty, but all of them have a very distinctive personality that sets them apart.

Personally I am happy they are the ones in the Mad City and not me, it is a interesting world, but a tone to gritty for my own tastes.

[Angela · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5*

This was a decent collection of short stories with an interweaving plot / idea.

It's quite evident how hard everyone worked on this collaborative effort and each story, although written by a different author, gave the reader a different nightmare scenario of Mad City.

As with most collections, not every story was fantastic or even that memorable. However, saying that, there were no bad stories in this collection per se - all were very well written but some were, for me at least, better than others at conveying the horror of being Awake.

Sterling effort all round.

An advance reader copy was kindly provided by the publisher through Netgalley.

[neko cam · Rating 3 out of 5]

Consisting mostly of good stories, with a couple that were lacklustre and a few that were really good. My favourite two stories were Don't Spill Your TEA and Don't Harsh Your Buzz. Where most of the others seemed desperate to show off the *elements* which define them as necessarily existing within the Mad City, my aforementioned favourites stand more wholly as stories in their own right which naturally exhibit the *themes* which fit them snugly into the Mad City.

[MB Taylor · Rating 1 out of 5]

Read the first eight stories but wasn't interested enough to read the remaining five. The stories were creepy and moderately disturbing, but I just didn't feel involved enough.

Apparently the stories are all set in some sort of shared world (Don't Rest Your Head), but I didn't feel any sense of that in the stories I read. The stories seemed totally unconnected.

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I actually really enjoyed this anthology and I know anthologies can be a real crapshoot. Normally they put their best story first and the rest go downhill from there but in Don't Read This Book the stories were uniformly good. This collection of stories focuses on the people who visit/try to survive a city made of dreams and populated by nightmares. This city dubbed the Mad City is accessible to insomniacs and those unfortunate enough to be pulled there by the nightmares that dwell within. I know this anthology is based on an RPG called Don't Rest Your Head, I've never played the game but the concept always intrigued me. Getting back to the content, some of the authors included in this anthology include Greg Stolze, Mur Lafferty and Stephen Blackmoore. If you like weird unsettling fiction with an overarching theme than this may be a book for you.

[Adam Gutschenritter · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection I picked up because I own and love Don't Turn Your Back the board game of the universe. I figured before I really sat down and read the RPG (Don't Rest Your Head) that I would check out some short stories from the universe. Most were good, a few were great. I loved Don'T Be you Father, Don't Spill Your Tea, Don't Forget Your Kids & Don't Bleach Your Memories. All of them were weird and creepy and I couldn't stop reading them.

[Kaylyn Gabbert · Rating 3 out of 5]

Most of the stories are so good I couldn't put the book down, but other stories weren't my cup of tea. My favorite stories were easily Don't Lose Your Patients, Don't be Your Father, and Don't Forget Your Kids.

[Crystal DeBoard · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of short stories. I enjoyed most of them. They are all pretty much based on the idea that if you go long amounts of time without sleep, you begin to see things. Most of these were delightfully creepy.

[Vince Darcangelo · Rating 4 out of 5]

http://ensuingchapters.com/2013/03/12...


A Playground for Insomniacs

Posted on March 12, 2013


For some, sleep is a peaceful proposition. For others, like me, lights out has always been more of a punishment. The latter is the intended audience of Evil Hat Productions’ Don’t Read This Book, a collection of 13 waking nightmares for the hard of sleeping.

These stories are set in the world of the Don’t Rest Your Head RPG, which I haven’t played, but seems perfectly designed for someone like me. My loose understanding of the game, based on reading this book (despite the admonition of its title) and researching a little about the RPG, is that it takes place in a dystopian dreamland (Mad City) populated with clockwork cops, shadow stalkers and any other gritty creature your mind can conjure up. You are among the Awake—insomniacs who have stayed up far too long and find themselves within the freak show of Mad City.

The Awake are in quite the pickle. Fall asleep and you die. But stay awake for too long and you’ll go mad and permanently inhabit the nightmare.

This is genius. Having been lifelong frenemies with the Sandman, I recognize this world, and it is more terrifying than most fictional places. Probably because I know what it feels like to go to work on your fourth day awake. I know the psychedelic side effects of clocking out from your graveyard shift and then clocking in at your day job a few minutes later. Things move in ways they shouldn’t, you lag a few seconds behind in every conversation and, worst of all, a mechanical noise fills your ears—not a buzz or a ring, but a machine-like pulsing that clouds thought and creates the sensation that someone is constantly following you.

Hallucinate from staying awake? Been there. That’s why the nightmares within Don’t Read This Book, edited by Chuck Wendig, are familiar territory for me.

And thoroughly enjoyable.

Standouts include Stephen Blackmore’s “Don’t Lose Your Patients,” Mur Lafferty’s “Don’t Bleach Your Memories” and Harry Connolly’s “Don’t Chew Your Food,” but this is a solid anthology front to back.

Gamers, steampunks, urban fantasists and horror fiends will find something to love in here. But those who may enjoy it most are us insomniacs.

Those of us who know that the torture of falling to sleep is worse than any nightmare that may be lurking on the other side.

[D · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked up Don’t Read This Book because it featured a few dark fantasists I like and several more I was curious about. Foremost among the latter was editor Chuck Wending, whose @ChuckWendig twitter account and http://terribleminds.com/ramble/blog/, which jointly offer irreverent entertainment and lean, mean writing advice, have zoomed him to the top of my read-something-by-toute-de-suite list.

I was hoping that Wendig was the sort of writer who’d include his own story in the anthology, or at least some chatty intros. He’s not. He’s merely — ha! — assembled a collection of stories that’s strikingly cohesive without feeling repetitive. I didn’t realize until I started this collection that the stories were inspired by a role playing game, Don’t Rest Your Head, in which chronically sleep-deprived characters find themselves in the nightmarish “Mad City” and gain mysterious powers at the cost of their sanity. (It sounds like a game I might actually like.) Fortunately the stories don’t really require any familiarity with the mechanics or specifics of the game.

Most of the stories are told in terse noir voices, often in present tense, many starting with a bang of what-the-hell’s-going-on, like Josh Roby’s “Don’t Spill Your Tea”:

I fling out a desperate hand, none too coordinated, and feel it make contact with something hard. Things clatter, fall to the ground. The lights jiggle around me, and I squeeze my eyes shut to make it stop.

The plots of these stories tend to hinge on well-telegraphed reversals, but I didn’t mind that nearly as much as I might have expected. For one thing, it’s consistent with nightmare logic — the bogeyman always knows where you’re hiding. But also, despite its urban grit, Mad City has a lot in common with un-Disnified Faerie: denizens disinterested in humanity if not outright inimical to it, and governed by obscure rules that are never stacked in the visitors’ favor. For these stories to follow familiar arcs felt appropriate.

My two favorites are probably Greg Stolze’s “Don’t Harsh Your Buzz,” set in a normal coffee shop and its similar alternate, and Robin D. Laws’ “Don’t Lose Your Shit,” which looks at both indie rock journalism and energy drink culture. (The latter won me over despite e-book formatting that rendered it all but unreadable.) But it’s a very consistent collection overall.

[Pop Bop · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Mad City in Your Head

This is a well conceived and executed anthology that touches a nerve. For each reviewer on this site the book reminded them a little bit of some other favorite, but also stood out as an original. Some compared it to "Neverwhere", some to Lovecraft, and so on. I thought of the open, shared world of Bordertown, although Mad City is darker and more dangerous than that place. It is also reminiscent of what Simon Green's Nightside might be like if Green approached it without his signature deadpan humor and antic plotting.

Regardless, these different reactions and comparisons just highlight the fact that this book has an effect on the reader and touches something that evokes a strong, positive response. I've read a lot of supposedly weird, dark books of madness and peril lately, and lots of them are flabby or exhausted. Not so this one. The stories are sharp and edgy, some more than others but that's to be expected. If you read a lot in this genre you'll want to know this book. If you're just on a sampling tour, well this should probably be the sampler you try.

The book is an outgrowth of the Evil Hat tabletop RPG "Don't Rest Your Head". I'm only generally familiar with that game, but unlike with some spinoffs there is no need to be familiar at all with the game to completely enjoy this book. Actually, coming into the book cold, with just the background and explanation you get from the Introduction, is probably the best way to meet this book.

It can be very interesting when one gifted writer keeps returning to the same dark place. (I'm thinking, say, Lovecraft here.) But it can be even more rewarding when, as here, thirteen entirely different writers with different attitudes, styles and preoccupations all offer a view of the same setting. You get many different Mad Cities and a fuller and more rounded view of what it is and what it can be. That's a nice bonus here.

So, if you want to visit a dark place and meet such waking nightmares as the dream Harvester, or anything Awake enough to survive in the Mad City, this could be a very rewarding choice.

Please note that I received a free ecopy of this book in exchange for a candid review. Apart from that I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.

[Charlie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book of short stories inspired by the RPG Don't Rest Your Head. In it, there are people who don't sleep so long that they become "Awake". The also become unwilling sometimes citizens of the Mad City, a place where nightmares are real and memories are currency.

I'll tell you about my 2 favorite stories, but you should know that there are more than a couple fantastic one, most are good, and there was only one that I didn't like altogether. Even not having read the RPG I enjoyed the collection.

"Don't Lose Your Shit" by Robin D Laws was hands-down my favorite story. It's about a guy in a convenience story trying to figure out which energy drink will give him a boost and which will make him crash. Other Awake are there trying to do the same thing, knowing that even two cans of the same drink could have different outcomes and if they were unlucky, they could end up asleep. The protagonist narrator has invented an invisible punctuation that is both a period and a comma. It lends an organized frenzied feeling to the story. And, as I had commented to my husband (we were reading this collection out loud) on the one story I didn't like, deviations from sentence/punctuation structure should serve a purpose. In this story, it does.

"Don't Spill Your Tea" by Josh Roby features a former Awake who now acts as a fixer for Awake who need things in the real world. I don't really know how to describe this one other than that I like stories about fixers in general. It indulges the desire to know about what kind of weird lives the Awake are living in the real world.

My biggest criticisms of the collection of a whole are that it is clear that this was an "invitation" collection and so, when multiple authors latched on to the same themes they ended up just going with it. There are a lot of stories about parenthood and dead kids (together and apart).

Overall though, it was good enough that I would recommend it as a solid themed horror short story collection.

[Charlie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This one just put my nightmares into words! Richly haunting and spine-chilling!

There is a reason why little kids fear the dark and sleeping alone at night, and this book explores the idea of a world dancing between the brink of sleep and consciousness. In this book, such world is dubbed as the Mad City, an alternate dimension where nightmares are as real as they all get.

First of all, I'm a 'night person'. Even when I was a little kid, I always slept late (I also wake up late), and I always slept with the lights on. Growing up, I struggled with insomnia, so if I were to be asked if I could relate to the characters in the short stories in this book, the answer would be a huge YES.

Reading the short stories in this book reminded me of the childhood fears I outgrew, such as the monster beneath the bed, and creatures that move through the night. I love how each of the story contributes a little to paint the gruesome world of Mad City.

There are thirteen tales in this book but I can't possible review all of them, so I'll just mention a few that really stuck with me. The first which I really liked is the one entitled Don't Be Your Father. I really love the twist at the end when the father became the very thing that he wished to protect his daughter from.

I also liked Don't Forget Your Kids. The idea of being able to use memories as a means of exchange is brilliant. Plus, I also like how creepy the story was told. It's a little bit sad, but it's creepy as well so I liked it.

And my most favorite one out of the thirteen short stories is the very last one: Don't Chew Your Food. I loved the twist at the end! The monsters who were supposed to be the predators got what they deserved when they encountered something way out of their league. It was the perfect blend of fear and unexpected twist!

All in all, I really enjoyed this collection of short stories! It was definitely effective in giving me the creeps!

[Vanessa Wolf · Rating 4 out of 5]

A NetGalley First Reads
The author of this review received an advance copy for an honest review


Don't Read This Book: 13 Tales from the Mad City is a great collection. I'd never heard of the RPG before I picked up this book, and the forward (by Fred Hicks) is a short story that explains the universe with a lot of showing and just enough telling to enthrall. Sleep is the enemy, and not hard to stay awake reading this tome.
Most of the stories I thoroughly enjoyed, "Forward," "Don't Lose Your Patients," "Don't Be Your Father," "Don't Spill Your Tea," "Don't Toot Your Horn," "Don't Harsh Your Buzz" "Don't Forget Your Kids," and "Don't Bleach Your Memories," in particular. There were a few a didn't like as much, but sometimes experimental fiction works for me, and sometimes it doesn't, (like "Don't Lose Your Shit,") but unlike thicker anthologies the quality makes up for the quantity.
You obviously don't need to have played the RPG to get the chills, though I was a bit annoyed how often someone's kid or being someone's kid played into the plot, I know kids are supposed to up the peril factor, but not so much with me. They were still very enjoyable, and it made "Don't Toot Your Horn," all that sweeter and frankly creepier.
I really don't have a favorite, because of all the ones I listed as having liked, shook me up. And I haven't gotten the heebie jeebies like that in a long time.

I'd recommend "Don't Red This Book," to fans of Lovecraft, Joe Hill, Stephen King, Chelsea Cain, and really any horror fan. If you like lots of gore, its got guts, if you're more keen on psychological terror, its got a tale, if like mystery, wonder, magic, danger, and know in your hearts that tentacles are never a good sign, you'll enjoy the "Don't Read This Book,"

[James Stone · Rating 3 out of 5]

Either this is the most aptly titled book in years, or I have become jaded. My expectations in this Horror sub-genre have become quite high, with Mercedes Yardley, (check out "Apocalyptic Montessa and Nuclear Lulu: A Tale of Atomic Love," for example) and Laird Barron ("The Light is the Darkness") leading the pack. I would not be fair if I left out Thomas Ligotti and the Grand Master, Howard Phillips Lovecraft. Based on what I read in this book, none of these authors shows evidence of ever joining the elites in the genre.
The premise is a bit cutesy; every story title begins with the word, "don't". All the stories are set in a place called, "Mad City," a place first envisioned by Fred Hicks in his prior collection, "Don't Rest Your Head." In his forward to this book, he tells the reader that many of the contributing authors contacted him, saying that after reading his collection, they had been inspired to write their own "Mad City" stories. Thus came about this volume.
I can say honestly that some of the stories are momentarily entertaining, but only two are memorable for me. They are C.E. Murphy's (Urban Shaman series author) "Don't Wreck Your Soul," and Robin D. Law's, "Don't Lose Your Shit." The latter earned the book the third star in this review because his prose style in this case is quite original. One might even say it is weird.
In summary, This is not a bad book, and it could make a good jumping off point for those new to the genre. Readers already familiar with the genre would do best to heed the title, there's little new or original for them here.

[Julie-anne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Based on the RPG Don't Rest Your Head -

Don’t Rest Your Head is a sleek, dangerous little game, where your players are all insomniac protagonists with superpowers, fighting — and using — exhaustion and madness to stay alive, and awake for just one more night, in a reality gone way wrong called the Mad City. It features its own system, and is contained entirely within one book.

Having never heard of this RPG, I went into this with complete newbie eyes. The world has already been built by the game makers so the authors were just putting their own spin on it by writing stories set in or centring around the Mad City.

My opinion of the book can pretty much be summed up in 3 words - creepy, dark & creepy! All those words together equal AWESOME! The Mad City is filled with creep-tastic characters and all the authors have written brilliantly dark stories.

Definitely recommended.

[Leniw · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a good and interesting collection of stories evolving around a place where nightmares rule: the Mad City. The collection consists by 13 stories written by 13 authors. I have to say it didn't meet my expectations. I was hoping for something more haunting but still some stories were great and most of them well-written.

After finishing the book I just felt that something was missing. I wanted something more. It could be that none of the stories gives the reader a full image of the city. Something more specific like how things work there. Who exactly are the creatures that live there? Who is the king of the city? How did he become king? Is he a nightmare? What exactly is the power of the Awake in the city? I could go on like this but this is not the point. I understand that this luck of information may be on purpose but it still bothers me.

[Patrick O'Duffy · Rating 3 out of 5]

An intriguing collection of short stories that manage to largely transcend their RPG origin. (I mean, I like RPGs plenty, but RPG fiction is rarely all that amazing.)

The downside, though, is that too many of the same stories have the same dynamic and feel to them, focusing as they all do on insomnia, insanity, the Mad City and the other tropes of Don't Rest Your Head. That makes the collection feel a bit samey by the end, and I would have liked to see some writers take those tropes and do something different with them.

But on the whole it's a worthy anthology, and one that non-gamers could definitely appreciate. And it's fired up my interest in playing/running DRYH, which is a bonus.

[Henrix · Rating 3 out of 5]

A mixed bag, as short story collections tend to be. All more or less weird and nightmarishly incoherent.

They are all a bit too alike. Lone protagonist meets the messed up weirdness of the Mad City.

I suppose that goes with the territory; there's not a huge amount of common myths and stories about it, and everything is after all from the deranged persepective of the Awake.

All in all good RPG fiction. Perhaps not that interesting if you don't know Don't Rest your Head, but inspiring for that.

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

What, you think you're the first to Wake Up? The first to stumble into the dimly lit streets of the Mad City? Kid, you aren't even the first *tonight*.

Here are just a few titillating and terrifying tales of those who have come before. If you read between the lines, you might even find some clues on how to survive one more night. If you look real close, you might even learn how to escape.

But then again...

[Shay Long · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting compilation of short horror stories, following a common thread. The authors have drastically different writing styles, but each is able to bring the reader into the dark real of Mad City. The book's concept reminds me of a Christmas present my niece created several years ago, in which she wrote several paragraphs and asked each member of the family to complete the story, compiling the results and distributing them to all of us. Creative, dark, and interesting.

[Francisco Becerra · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of short stories based on the Don't Rest Your Head RPG, these are the perfect inspiration to get the Mad City and all the possibilities for storytelling there. There are a wide variety of styles, and some of the stories are superb, while most of them are good. A highly recommended reading for the fantasy/horror fan!

[Christine]

Review to come when finished. Disclaimer: won my copy in a contest.

[Oliver · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some very good short stories. Some not so good. But in the end a nice collection that helps to immerse into the world of the RPG.

[Regina Hart · Rating 2 out of 5]

While I loved the concept, none of the stories really stood out.