Tales from the Gas Station: Volume Four by Jack Townsend

Tales from the Gas Station

As the new owner of the worst business in history, Jack has a lot on his plate. His self-appointed “biggest fan” wants to finally meet, and won’t take no for an answer. The annoying cultists are back and cultier than ever. Plus, there’s a creature living under the building's crawlspace that must be fed regularly (or else).

To top it all off, the entire town’s collective memories have been haphazardly rewritten, and Jack's placement in these recollections are decidedly unflattering.

Fortunately, he has help. There’s Jerry - who’s always willing to lend a hand (or a sword-bat, if the situation calls for it). Rosa - who secretly contains the incredible powers of a dark god. And the new guy - a deadly doppelgänger with terrible people skills.

But Jack’s best efforts to stay out of trouble are torn asunder when a serial killer emerges in his small town, leaving a trail of clues that points straight to him. Too bad his best hope of clearing his name, the new sheriff Amy O'Brien, had all her memories of their friendship completely erased.

And worst of all? Jack's high school reunion is right around the corner - just in time for the prophesied end of the world.

With days left until Armageddon, Jack is forced to go on the run, chased by the authorities, an obsessed god, demons of both the metaphorical and literal variety, and not the least of all... his own past.

I had no idea this was going to be the last in the series. For some reason, I assumed it was still going, so imagine my surprise when I realised we were going into the big bad boss fight.
But that also comes with the question, does this book give us a conclusion that is satisfying?
To that I would say.... yes and no? Anyone who read any of this series would know that's probably the most you can expect from the story. It's weird. Not all of the pieces make sense and a lot of it is based on the fact that you can't trust Jack's perception of reality. Then we have Jerry, who also can't be trusted, albeit for completely different reasons.

Even still, I wasn't 100% happy. I feel like the fact this was based on some kind of a web serial plays a role in it. A bunch of it was probably random ideas that didn't always end up working in the grand scheme of the narrative, but by then it was too late to retcon everything. I get that. I understand. Yet I still feel like the very end was just a little anticlimactic.
It shouldn't be a surprise. It works with how this story works. Besides, I usually feel the same way about most horror stories. The atmosphere and mystery is what I like. The solution is usually kind of... meh?

At the end we have some chapters with the backstories of characters. God, that was so annoying. They were all so serious and supposedly emotional, but they felt tonally whacky, mismatched and absolutely forced. Like the author suddenly felt like he needed to make you understand these people who kept doing absolutely stupid shit all this time were actually tragic victims of their circumstances.
This plays into another thing I didn't understand about the series.
The interesting this about this book series is that the baseline of weird for the characters is crazy. They can see mutant raccoons and not be bothered. Handplants? Cool cool. Cosmic horror and body snatchers still make them say “wait what”, but even that is way below how you and I would react. This is just that kind of a place. Murder and death abound.
Then they lose their shit because a character offers tequila because Rosa is a Latina. It really felt like the author just needed to virtue signal just a little. My issue was the same with Calvin Ambrose. We had to make a polo-shit-khakhi-shorts huwite man character who is suddenly racist and that is FREAKY, but the fact this whole town is mega fucked is... fine? It's so inconsistent when the characters are supposedly unflappable because everything about this is bonkers.

The very end has some clever misdirection and the author obviously knows half the books made no sense, which is good. I like to see that.
I just can't say I am really happy with this whole thing.
The series at a whole is a 14/20 stars, which sounds realistic. Yeah. I am good with that.