From Publishers Weekly
The open road is a malleable metaphor pregnant with dark and dangerous possibilities in this uneven trilogy of tales from Stoker-winner Braunbeck (
Home Before Dark). "The Ballad of Road Mama and Daddy Bliss" is an outré first-person account of a DWI offender who travels to a bizarre subworld where traffic fatalities are reconstructed from remnants of junked cars. In "Congestions," a harried driver trapped in a traffic jam unravels psychologically as he witnesses a parade of surreal images outside his car that may just be projections of his own crumbling mind. Though original in conception, each of these stories suffers from a glut of details disproportionate to their slim plots. By contrast, "Merge Right" is a taut piece of
Twilight Zone–style paranoia, featuring a man whose nighttime mission to take his dead wife's ashes to a final resting place grows creepier by the mile. At the very least, this collection reinforces Braunbeck's reputation as one of the more inventive contemporary writers cultivating the dark fantasy terrain.
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