From the tale-weaver that brought us Mr. Shady and The Body Will Follow comes Better Alive Than Dead, thirteen short stories where the author, Rob E. Boley, displays the fact that even the monsters need compassion too.
These were, for the most part, very clever stories. I particularly liked A Clown and a Dragon Walk Into a Bar. In that one, and advertorial clown discovers that his nemesis, the dragon that stands across the street advertising for the opposing apartment building, is in fact, a real dragon. The Harm was also one of my favorites. That one was about a St. Patrick's Day party after the zombie apocalypse.
My least favorite was GAG, which was about a virus-like phenomenon that separated consciousness from the body, causing both to go haywire. The body ran amok, trying to eat and fornicate, and the consciousness latched onto any nearby technology to rant and divulge secrets willy-nilly. All of which is awesome, conceptually. I just thought it was really brief. Low Hanging Sun was another that I thought could have made a better novel than short story. That one was about a bunch of Gods being summoned to the planet and having a battle royale with humanity caught in the middle.
I thought that Rob E. Boley's sense of humor worked better in these stories than in the novels of his I've read. Maybe that's just me. I'd recommend this to someone in the mood for a series of very quick reads.
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