The strongest feature of this book is how varied the stories (plus a couple of poems and a screenplay) are.  I think this would be a good read for anyone who is already a fan of this author, since you get to read about little personal tidbits of his life. He also references some of his previous work, which I am not familiar with, and so I'm sure this would be more exciting for his fans.

My favorite story was entitled "Michelangelo." This story is about a group of guy friends where one of them has finally completed building his time machine in his garage. The rest of his friend group come over to see it and be there for safety reasons while he runs it for the first time. As a short story, I just found it interesting because although building a time machine isn't a new premise, the outcome was surprising. Because of the introduction before the story begins, we know that something will go wrong, but how it goes wrong felt unexpected. And, even though the malfunction didn't fully make sense timeline-wise, I think the conclusion was interesting enough to where that can be excused. 

Many of the other stories also had interesting premises and kept me engaged while reading. However, the reason my overall score of this book is lower is because it just felt like those premises were wasted when the endings just fell flat or were somehow frustrating. Two of the stories essentially ended with an "it was all a dream" trope conclusion. To any avid reader, this just feels very lazy and anticlimactic, especially when the story feels like it's building up to some sort of epic conclusion. 

I think some of the introductions were meant to add some self-awareness to the stories, but to me, did the opposite. Before "Monsters in the Box," the author describes how his initial version had been criticized by a professor that it was too slow. The presumably edited version was extremely tedious and slow for the entire first half of the story. It was a bit of a self-indulgent rant about how awful it can be to work in a grocery store, and then when the turn towards horror (which was introduced by an outside force, and not anything that had been described beforehand), it just feels like it's too little, too late. There was also another story with an introduction about how "provocative" he was trying to be, ending with a "don't come at me" kind of sentiment. But what followed was just a bit forgettable and not at all shocking. Of course, this point is subjective, but I think that any horror readers would find this book very tame throughout. 

I think maybe my biggest disappointment was with "Seventh Floor." It was so interesting throughout. It felt like something was going on that the main character was unaware of, but we could feel the tension. Having it set in an elevator was a good choice, and adds to this atmosphere. It built up to the action in a nice way, where we get a bit of an answer to what was happening and why people were being killed. But then, it is just over, and ends with a regular, very positive, happy ending, without providing any satisfying conclusion (or even hint) as to why this happened. Even if it had just hinted at a wider conspiracy continuing on after the story ended, I would have been more satisfied. It just seemed like a cop out to then just make it so the characters come out of it unscathed and the world just continues on to be a happy place for all.

Still, overall, there were some interesting ideas presented. I'm sure people who like his previous work would enjoy this. I think this book could also be enjoyed by YA-age readers to give them a taste of different genres if they aren't a wide reader.