Tales from the Gas Station: Volume Four (Tales from the Gas Station #4) by Jack Townsend

Tales from the Gas Station: Volume Four (Tales from the Gas Station #4) Reviews

• 
  Michelle

  It is the end for this series? It felt that way...maybe. If it was, it was a satisfying end. Volume four is most definitely as funny as its predecessors.
  
  What's the plan? Murder? Surprise party? Surprise murder party?
  
  There were so many memorable moments in this book. So many laugh out loud, weird, mysterious, and downright ridiculous passages that will force me to reread (or probably listen to the audiobook when it comes out) again in the future. And the footnotes by Jerry was an added touch of brilliance. A must read for anyone who likes low-brow comedy in their cosmic horror.
• 
  Qosmon

  The end
  
  This is the end! The end is nigh! The end is nigh! And its satisfying and funny and informative and weirdly cozy. Don't ask about that last one, i can't really explain it. But a lot of us have been along for the ride since before the books actually started getting to print. These characters live in our souls. And i have to admit, i did a lot of screaming while reading this one. For things i called (not much), things i should have seen coming (probably more than i want to admit), and for things i was absolutely blindsided by (omg so many). Its sad the story is done, but it was a great ride. Not that we won't bug the author for more in the coming years because we might. But we get it, this is just the closing of one door. ❤️ Thanks Jack!
• 
  Sue

  Weird and wonderful book, the best ending I can imagine to a quirky, smart, fun series. I will miss Jack, Rosa, Jerry, O'Brien and the rest, and I'll always wonder what new adventures they found, with Gaston in tow. I seriously hopr this isn't the last we hear from Jack Townsend.
• 
  Barb

  Another brilliant installment in the Gas Station saga! This book was super fun to read. The Jerry footnotes were a great touch. He is my favorite.
• 
  James Morris

  Great conclusion
  
  A great conclusion of everything so far. I do hope that there will be more. A very enjoyable comedy horror series.
• 
  Beth

  Can’t believe it’s over… I’m very sad the story has come to an end, but because I am a very smart, reasonable, awesome, good-looking, smart, cool person, I’m happy for Jack, and am satisfied with the journey we’ve taken together.
• 
  LaCrisha Crawford

  Great story
  
  Glad we got to get more backstory on my favorite characters. Just missing the most badass sheriff in town. Jerry’s background somehow made me love him even more. Also, can we get a book of just Jerry’s footnotes? I loved them! I’m sad that this book seems like the end but I hope we get some spin-offs at least. Not ready to let the gang go entirely.
• 
  Jay

  A perfect ending to one of the best series I have ever read.
• 
  Myreads

  “You’re never really all the way dead if people still remember you.”
  
  Omg I definitely need to hold Mr. Carrots the emotional support bunny now! The last book of one of my most favorite series and it did not disappoint one bit. Am I sitting here crying real tears about a book series that includes fart jokes, murderous gnomes, talking puppets, amputations, a dilapidated gas station, insomnia, cosmic evils, and a murder cult? You betcha!
  
  This series is extremely underrated especially if you are a fan of dark humor and cosmic horror. This very strange book series has some of the most wonderful characters to ever appear in fiction. I love Jack, Sheriff O’Brien, Rosa, Sabine, Vanessa, and of course Jerry, with all my heart and soul. At the end of the day this is really a story of love, friendship, forgiveness, love, redemption, and starting over. I will love these characters forever and won’t lie, when I’ve had hard times, this series has been my go to read. Thank you Mr. Townsend for creating this world and these characters that will forever be a part of my psyche. I know all good things must end, and I appreciate the end you gave us.
  
  “Goodbye, Jack. It’s been mediocre knowing you.”
• 
  Andrea Olvera

  I absolutely love these books! The ending was great. Its hard to put down. I need MORE!
• 
  Derpa

  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.
• 
  Tammie Powers

  All good things come to an end
  
  I literally just finished reading the book, but I already know this series is going to leave me with one of the worst book hangovers.
  I'm already wondering if this will really be the last time I read about Jack, Jerry, Rosa, or O'Brien. I'm going to wonder what craziness they're up to in the future and pissed that I'm missing out on it.
  
  This volume focuses more on Jack and Rosa's adventure, and tying up some loose ends with questions we've all been wondering since Volume 1. It does a deep dive into different memories from different characters including showing us more of Sabine.
  
  I feel happy with the ending to the series. It was left open enough in case our author decides to revisit our characters one day, but closed enough to be fulfilled.
  
  ......Except for the gnomes?!
  
  Overall:
  Vol 1 - 5⭐
  Vol 2 - 5⭐
  Vol 3 - 4.5⭐
  Vol 4 - 5⭐
• 
  Chris Cohron

  A step in the right direction after Volume Three had a few choices I didn't think really helped the story. Jack Townsend has brought life into several characters and continues to blend sci-fi, horror, and comedy in a way I've only ever seen done by David Wong before now. Can't wait for the audiobook to be done so I can hear MrCreepyPasta bring Jack to life again.
• 
  Lynn K.

  I liked the ending, but I felt like the book was too long. There were some slower parts that dragged a bit and some of the charm wore off for me. I loved Jerry’s footnotes!
• 
  Scrapper

  ending
  
  I am uncertain why this book feels less finished than the first three.
  I enjoyed it but it seemed almost as though “I have to wrap this up.”
  I still enjoyed it.
• 
  Shawn

  I'm glad that this is the final book of the series because I don't think it could have been stretched out much further. I've thoroughly enjoyed Tales From the Gas Station and I think it has risen far, far above its beginnings as a creepypasta thread. But it has run its course and this last book felt like it was bulging at the seams trying to tie together all of the crazy cannon from the 3 previous novels.
  
  For me, cramming this much zaniness into one novel stretched my suspension of disbelief past its breaking point. This series has gone from a blasé night shift clerk handling all of the weirdness that happens at the gas station at the edge of town to the wacky, world-ending adventures of Jack & Co. And it's lost some of its charm in the process.
  
  The Brick Roscoes, the Akyaks, Kieffer, Spencer Middleton, the doppelgängers, the dark god, Jack's "biggest fan", the Russian Radio - ALL of it and more makes a return here. I'm tempted to say that no plot thread is left dangling but man, there have been so many that I'm not sure how accurate that statement would be. It's a good thing that Jack decided to include footnotes in this volume because some readers are going to find it difficult to remember every single character and event that has led to this point.
  
  In the end, this was a satisfying conclusion. It didn't disappoint but it didn't "wow" me, either. While none of the books in the series managed to garner a 5-star review from me, I obviously enjoyed them enough that I kept on reading them, almost one after another. And I'll probably re-read them at some point. Tales From the Gas Station has reminded me that, above all, reading should be fun.
• 
  Ziggy Nixon

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and, frankly, pretty weird.
  
  Welcome to Book 4 as we continue to follow the adventures of, quote, the one unifying factor in all the weirdness! Yes, I mean Jack! Have you not been paying attention this whole time? But are we awake? Or are we dreaming? Or perhaps we've been witnessing someone else's dream? Or is it just the random appearance of an international assassin demon hunter* with a serious desire to kill, well, everyone… but especially Jack of course? The world may never know… no, that's not true, we do figure it all out eventually. I don't want to say it was aliens, but it was totally aliens. (*sorry, I don't mean to be rude but introducing him as Korgin of the Fire Realm, slayer of Vostoff the Terrible, son of Tim the Punctual would really take up a lot of space in my review! …. dammit…)
  
  If this were a story in one of my books and not real life, I’d feel embarrassed for the author.
  
  And no worries, friends of the absurd, poorly dressed and generally unhygenic. Of course our pal Jerry is still a big part of things, noting he participates a lot in this story as part-time narrator (don't get excited, it's nowhere near as entertaining as Sir Terry Pratchett's footnotes approach… it's not bad, mind you, but still…). He may have been put in that role simply because he had to miss a lot of the real action due to extended arrestation (or whatever you say when someone is stuck in jail too long). But dang that boy knows his drugs. Shaman boogers, mushroom gummies and toad milk? We're lucky Jack's brain didn't melt because he (Jack) really wound up needing it (his brain, duh)! But dang, the return of dang: seeing inside someone's mind and/or soul like that… Deep, huh?
  
  Sometimes, being Jerry’s friend felt like keeping a suicidal houseplant alive.
  
  Among a plethora of various weirdos in this book, we also meet Wendy who is apparently Jack's sister by way of foster care. I'm not sure how that works so I just accepted it and kept reading until eventually the explanation pulled a gun on us, wet itself and ran off. Plus, it's very very apparent that foster care is a legal way of being a complete and utter douchebag, which we get to see first-hand (Sid and Dianna immediately got placed on my early "I hope they get devoured first by the unholy terror" list). This should be taken though with a grain of salt as they're not as bad as Jack's real dad, biologically speaking only of course (which I mentioned it before without mentioning that I was mentioning it). Oh and Kieffer's back. He's running for mayor, has real daddy-god (god-daddy?) issues and apparently that's his only name. Go figure.
  
  The world is destined to end this Friday, and we have no idea how to stop it.
  
  This final volume presented an interesting change in the … hm, need a good word… flow of the series. The chapters are a little more flippant, a good deal shorter in spots and the sheer weirdness seems - surprisingly enough, maybe even arguably so - to be somewhat more muted. Again, I will emphasizinate that that is open for debate. The balance of Jack's mourning along with all that is going on (waves hand vaguely) is at once much more touching on an emotional level but also more than a tad disorienting. No, that's not bad, it's just a definite change of pace (ah, there's the word!) than what has come before! And in terms of the usual - well, there's no better word for it so sorry censors - shit, because, yes, he still gets it beaten out of him, treated like it and worse. If he didn't elicit your sympathy before, well, you may be a demon in tacky footwear.
  
  ...the omnipotent anime-villain-caliber super devil (looking to) end the world… the nameless, ageless, god-tier pain deity…the supreme divine torture numen… the paradigm of all evil…
  
  We're calling it 'Karen'!
  
  But damn, there are some great GREAT bits in this one, even if it is slightly out of alignment style-wise with the previous three books. Heck, we don't even spend all that much time in the what's left of the gas station this time (spoiler)! But what I'll simply call "The Rosa Chapter" alone is worth the price of admission! Wowzers that was powerful with a capital POWER! She's pretty much bad-ass throughout so get your flags, handmade tee's and bumper stickers while they're hot! Having said all that: even before beginning this one, I have to admit I was totally invested in these characters and Townsend delivers a tale that punches straight into those feels!
  
  When people are rude, angry, or belligerent, I know it’s coming from a place of honesty. It’s much harder to know what kindness is supposed to mean.
  
  Conclusion? This book? Worth it! This series? TOTALLY worth it and then some! This is some of the best bizarro fantasy, utter mind-f*cked-uppitness you will EVER read! Emotional, violent, weird, you name it! And that friends, is really all I can say about that! Y'all be good and avoid Brother Riley's cat, ya hear?
  
  P.S. Hail K'Rohn the Devastator!!! Wait… OH NOW I GET IT!!! Bwhahahaha!
• 
  M.J. Edington

  Once too often to the well
  
  It grieves me to say, volume 4 of the series of books was not nearly so entertaining as the first three. I enjoyed the series, but this 4th installment felt disjointed and incoherent. As a result, I did not enjoy this offering.
• 
  Amanda

  Spring 2023 (March);
  
  This is going to be a combined set of reviews. I read the first book of Tales from The Gas Station in December, but I read/listened to every single other piece of this canon in the past seven or nine days about. Thus, if you haven't, I'm going to suggest you stop reading here, as this is bound to be a spoiler land cesspool of all that canon put into one place and passed across the at least three reviews this needs to go into.
  
  I'm still very middle of the road on the writing (but at least by Bedside Manor, the recording errors stop happening in the audio recordings), but I can say that I have grown a bit attached to the characters themselves. The books are more slapstick horror than depth, and then in a drastic twice book four tries to balance being both and it's a teeter-totter struggle to make that a thing.
  
  I have A LOT of questions that weren't answered, but the books make it pretty clear from early on that it's there to throw crazy crap at the reader without explaining more than about 45% of it at any time, and really maybe even 45% of everything it tosses out across the whole series.
  
  Jack is a very broken wooby boy, who could sort of be a hunter, but happens to be something else we don't know what is ether. Rosa is the 'Yas Queen' and the Chosen One, who doesn't actually get to Chosen-Do-Much-of-Anything, but she might be my favorite of the characters on screen the most. Jerry is ... interesting, and very much the stoner Joey of the Lot, with a background that is odd to juggle with his outside actions. Amy is another favorite, as she's just down to earth, realistic, wonderful, and I missed her entirely after the reset & we got not nearly enough of her after she got her memories back.
  
  I still want to know more about what Jack is (/how the history he buried down will spool out into current time), whether Rosa & the Dark God are still speaking, and where Sabine ended up after walking Jack through the last door, since she's obviously not 'just a projection Jack made' given a whole lot of the fourth book. It's weird, knowing the series is over, expect for possible tiny one offs stories here and there on the internet, especially when nothing feels all that finished at all anywhere.
• 
  Pitoufa's Little Corner

  Actual rating : 🌟🌟🌟🌟.5
  
  Alright, this one might've been the SICKEST book in the series so far! 😱
  I liked this part of the story the most, because we got to know the characters even better! Especially Jack and his close circle of friends ❤ their secrets were brought to light and their pasts were divulged.
  
  Jerry's story in particular, baffled me! Not because of how messed up it was, after all, all of them had twisted backgrounds 🤷🏻‍♀️ no, what surprised me was that HE was the one who did what he did! I honestly would've never put the pieces together 😱 I already knew from the previous volumes that there were secrets concerning his life before joining the mathematicians, but the one Jack ended up uncovering was purely cataclysmic!!!
  
  Jack's story legit shook me to the core 💔 the guy never had a single happy or peaceful memory! His childhood and teenage years were nothing short of a battle with his raging emotions and constant abuse by people who were supposed to be his "family"😫 at the opposite, he gathered an unreasonable amount of scars, nightmarish memories and burdensome trauma that followed him up until adulthood! It really was no surprise his mind was so damaged beyond repair 😭
  
  From what I could process, Jack could've easily been suffering from various mental illnesses such as but not limited to : DID ( this theory came after witnessing his many interactions with Spencer Middleton and Sabine ), PTSD ( because, with the people he had for "guardians" and his biological father, it wouldn't be a surprise ), chronic insomnia, psychopathy and possible anxiety. It was a bit hard to read some chapters because it seemed as though the narrator, Jack, was suffering from some kind of dementia.
  
  His sleeping issues could've been to blame for all of that. He was forgetting important things. Became unable to differentiate between reality and illusions. But all of that only helped me understand his character even more. I really hope and BELIEVE this might not be the last book in the series, especially after that ending! 😭💔 I would have LOVED to give it a full rating, but that ending threw me off 😫
• 
  Brooke Rowe

  I finished this series in about two weeks and I am so empty now that’s it’s over. I have fallen so deeply in love with these books. I read a lot of horror, and I typically enjoy more “realistic” horror. This is definitely not that and I have loved every single bit of these books. This series has changed the way I read and write. It brought creativity and weirdness back into my life. I fell in love with the characters, the setting, the five million plot points shoved into one. I am so sad this series is over… I could read only these books for the rest of my life and be content. But, I am very satisfied with the ending. I have been a heavy reader since I was a little kid and I have never re-read a book (I’ve always loved mysteries, so what’s the point if I know what happens?), but I will be re-reading all of these books. I got them for free on kindle unlimited, but I’m going to purchase the paperbacks so I can always have them. I haven’t felt this excited about books, or a specific author, since I was a kid and discovered Goosebumps. I will be reading everything Jack Townsend writes.
• 
  bug

  i really am sad to be done with this series but am happy to have found it again after so long.
  i remember listening to the mrcreepypasta narration of the story years ago. loving it then but losing touch and not knowing there was more content.
  
  until a couple months ago when i re-listened on a whim and found myself rightfully obsessed with the story. i’ve listened to all of the audiobooks and supplemental reddit stories so many times at this point and finally getting to the final book was so exciting.
  
  the book was great, i love the narration and the characters have a place in my heart. The humor is goofy but something I definitely laughed out loud to. the book made me cry and smile and laugh.
• 
  William Zorn

  What a wild ride!
  
  After four insane books filled with ups, downs, and quite a few sideways, I have to say it kept me guessing, revising and, in general, completely throwing out any expectations. This reality bender will keep you shocked, laughing, and second guessing the author’s sanity at every turn. If you decide to crack this one open, hang on… you’re in for one hell of a ride!