The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All

After reading Occultation and loving it I really expected more from this collection. Barron's obsession with the hard-boiled larger-than-life tough guy grated me here as it felt well-worn and a bit tired to me by this point. I was craving another type of narrator, which we occasionally get here but sadly not often enough.

It's clear to me Barron was trying to step outside his comfort zone a bit with stories like “Vastation” and “More Dark” but these were more of a slog to me as they felt they relied too heavily on trying to do something new than being fun to read. Even some stories like “The Siphon” and “The Men from Porlock” which have exceedingly creepy final acts take a bit of a buy-in from me in the first 2/3 in that I didn't find the characters or setup all that compelling, but I acknowledge I may be alone in feeling that way.

I had about 6 months between reading the first half of the book and the second half so my memory on the earlier stories is escaping me. I do recall, however, quite enjoying “The Carrion Gods in their Heaven”.

Overall I think it has some good stuff in there, but far from Barron firing on all cylinders. I'd take just about anything in Occultation over anything here, but that's less to chagrin Barron's work on TBTTAUA and more to champion how great I think Occultation is as a collection.