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vdarcangelo's review against another edition
4.0
http://ensuingchapters.com/2013/03/12/a-playground-for-insomniacs/
A Playground for Insomniacs
Posted on March 12, 2013
For some, sleep is a peaceful proposition. For others, like me, lights out has always been more of a punishment. The latter is the intended audience of Evil Hat Productions’ Don’t Read This Book, a collection of 13 waking nightmares for the hard of sleeping.
These stories are set in the world of the Don’t Rest Your Head RPG, which I haven’t played, but seems perfectly designed for someone like me. My loose understanding of the game, based on reading this book (despite the admonition of its title) and researching a little about the RPG, is that it takes place in a dystopian dreamland (Mad City) populated with clockwork cops, shadow stalkers and any other gritty creature your mind can conjure up. You are among the Awake—insomniacs who have stayed up far too long and find themselves within the freak show of Mad City.
The Awake are in quite the pickle. Fall asleep and you die. But stay awake for too long and you’ll go mad and permanently inhabit the nightmare.
This is genius. Having been lifelong frenemies with the Sandman, I recognize this world, and it is more terrifying than most fictional places. Probably because I know what it feels like to go to work on your fourth day awake. I know the psychedelic side effects of clocking out from your graveyard shift and then clocking in at your day job a few minutes later. Things move in ways they shouldn’t, you lag a few seconds behind in every conversation and, worst of all, a mechanical noise fills your ears—not a buzz or a ring, but a machine-like pulsing that clouds thought and creates the sensation that someone is constantly following you.
Hallucinate from staying awake? Been there. That’s why the nightmares within Don’t Read This Book, edited by Chuck Wendig, are familiar territory for me.
And thoroughly enjoyable.
Standouts include Stephen Blackmore’s “Don’t Lose Your Patients,” Mur Lafferty’s “Don’t Bleach Your Memories” and Harry Connolly’s “Don’t Chew Your Food,” but this is a solid anthology front to back.
Gamers, steampunks, urban fantasists and horror fiends will find something to love in here. But those who may enjoy it most are us insomniacs.
Those of us who know that the torture of falling to sleep is worse than any nightmare that may be lurking on the other side.
A Playground for Insomniacs
Posted on March 12, 2013
For some, sleep is a peaceful proposition. For others, like me, lights out has always been more of a punishment. The latter is the intended audience of Evil Hat Productions’ Don’t Read This Book, a collection of 13 waking nightmares for the hard of sleeping.
These stories are set in the world of the Don’t Rest Your Head RPG, which I haven’t played, but seems perfectly designed for someone like me. My loose understanding of the game, based on reading this book (despite the admonition of its title) and researching a little about the RPG, is that it takes place in a dystopian dreamland (Mad City) populated with clockwork cops, shadow stalkers and any other gritty creature your mind can conjure up. You are among the Awake—insomniacs who have stayed up far too long and find themselves within the freak show of Mad City.
The Awake are in quite the pickle. Fall asleep and you die. But stay awake for too long and you’ll go mad and permanently inhabit the nightmare.
This is genius. Having been lifelong frenemies with the Sandman, I recognize this world, and it is more terrifying than most fictional places. Probably because I know what it feels like to go to work on your fourth day awake. I know the psychedelic side effects of clocking out from your graveyard shift and then clocking in at your day job a few minutes later. Things move in ways they shouldn’t, you lag a few seconds behind in every conversation and, worst of all, a mechanical noise fills your ears—not a buzz or a ring, but a machine-like pulsing that clouds thought and creates the sensation that someone is constantly following you.
Hallucinate from staying awake? Been there. That’s why the nightmares within Don’t Read This Book, edited by Chuck Wendig, are familiar territory for me.
And thoroughly enjoyable.
Standouts include Stephen Blackmore’s “Don’t Lose Your Patients,” Mur Lafferty’s “Don’t Bleach Your Memories” and Harry Connolly’s “Don’t Chew Your Food,” but this is a solid anthology front to back.
Gamers, steampunks, urban fantasists and horror fiends will find something to love in here. But those who may enjoy it most are us insomniacs.
Those of us who know that the torture of falling to sleep is worse than any nightmare that may be lurking on the other side.
neko_cam's review
3.0
Consisting mostly of good stories, with a couple that were lacklustre and a few that were really good. My favourite two stories were Don't Spill Your TEA and Don't Harsh Your Buzz. Where most of the others seemed desperate to show off the *elements* which define them as necessarily existing within the Mad City, my aforementioned favourites stand more wholly as stories in their own right which naturally exhibit the *themes* which fit them snugly into the Mad City.
heregrim's review
4.0
This collection I picked up because I own and love Don't Turn Your Back the board game of the universe. I figured before I really sat down and read the RPG (Don't Rest Your Head) that I would check out some short stories from the universe. Most were good, a few were great. I loved Don'T Be you Father, Don't Spill Your Tea, Don't Forget Your Kids & Don't Bleach Your Memories. All of them were weird and creepy and I couldn't stop reading them.
ipacho's review against another edition
4.0
A collection of short stories based on the Don't Rest Your Head RPG, these are the perfect inspiration to get the Mad City and all the possibilities for storytelling there. There are a wide variety of styles, and some of the stories are superb, while most of them are good. A highly recommended reading for the fantasy/horror fan!
malkav11's review against another edition
4.0
Don't Read This Book is a compendium of short stories based on the tabletop roleplaying game Don't Rest Your Head, a brilliant little number based on the idea that when you stay awake for a sufficiently prolonged period of time, you begin to operate on the wavelength of the Mad City, where the nightmares live. And then you're never safe again.
The collection is a bit uneven. There are some very good lesser-known authors involved, folks like Greg Stolze, Chuck Wendig, and Harry Connolly. And generally speaking, those authors turn out some genuinely interesting, nightmarish ideas. On the other hand, some of the stories, especially those very early in the book, read like a tutorial on the RPG's concepts and little more. Still, it's cheap, and when it's good it's very good.
The collection is a bit uneven. There are some very good lesser-known authors involved, folks like Greg Stolze, Chuck Wendig, and Harry Connolly. And generally speaking, those authors turn out some genuinely interesting, nightmarish ideas. On the other hand, some of the stories, especially those very early in the book, read like a tutorial on the RPG's concepts and little more. Still, it's cheap, and when it's good it's very good.
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