The End Is Now

John Joseph Adams and Hugh Howey's Apocalypse Triptych has been the most fun short fiction reading experience I have ever had. I repeat: have ever had.

Short fiction and I don't always get on so well. I want a long committment; it can only offer a short affair. Knowing we aren't compatible, I avoid it. Except sometimes we are compatible because good writing is good writing is good writing, the length of a piece be damned. I can get over it--brace myself for the pain of too-short, pack tissues for the premature goodbyes, batten myself against the jarring experience of entering and leaving ten worlds an hour--and this apocalyptic short story anthology trilogy is an excellent reason to do so.

What the Apocalypse Triptych does--and The End Is Now is the second installment--is create interconnected anthologies, which is the best idea anyone has ever had in the history of anthologies. Each anthology contains stand-alone stories that focus on one aspect of the apocalypse, and in the next anthology most of the same authors show up to continue the tale. The short fiction people get their short fiction, the apocalypse people get their apocalypse in three parts--before (The End Is Nigh), during (The End Is Now), and after (The End Has Come)--and the long-form fiction people get a longer story disguised as three shorts in three anthologies.

Read the rest of the review here: http://www.bookpunks.com/end-now-edited-john-joseph-adams-hugh-howey/