Vampires in the Lemon Grove

Stories here end abruptly or trail off without payoff often enough that at least one more reviewer says a piece “stops short of the goal line.” Dougbert Shackleton's Rules for Antarctic Tailgating gets named over and over as the weakest, most gimmicky story in the book, confusing and sophomoric next to the rest. The New York Times flags The New Veterans as “the overlong and uncharacteristically sentimental 'New Veterans',” and calls The Seagull Army Descends on Strong Beach, 1979 “the rather mundane tale.” Even the dense figurative language that fans praise reads to some as crowding out plot and character, and one reader wraps up the frustration bluntly: stories chase “a point, a meaning, and worst of all an ending” without always landing it.