Personally, the stories felt too similar to be very enjoyable for me -- the settings varied from far-futures to the early 1900s, with a variety of fantasy and sci-fi elements, but the characters, plots, and story structures didn't vary much. The characters and plots (when there were plots) were thin, with a greater focus on the action, which was decent, though the writing was occasionally clunky, but, again, fairly same-y.
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As with so many collections of short stories, this was a mixed bag. There were some that I loved, and some that bored me. Overall, I would rank it as being an okay read.

This was a fun collection of short stories ranging a variety of pulp genres (superheroes, spies, magic, demons, scifi). Phillips borrows liberally from 20th century pulp stories and adds a unique twist, especially from a BIPOC perspective. Take these stories for what they are: a hodgepodge of crazy stories that are always moving forward. It's like turning on your favorite UHF channel at 2am and catching an anthology show or a B-movie. ( )

I have so many good things to say about this short story compilation! There are seventeen total stories, and each one was unique and unforgettable in its way. The author covers so many interesting topics, characters, settings, and creatures in these stories that everyone will find something to love in this volume.

I found plenty, as I enjoyed every single story! ( )

The stories in this collection tend towards a noir feel with elements of fantasy, science fiction, horror, or superheroes and a focus on action instead of character. Due to the latter detail, one has to go into things expecting the equivalent of a popcorn movie, not anything deep. One also has to suspend disbelief quite a bit to accept some of the events in the stories.

Even with that in mind, I had some problems with the stories. The most significant one was that the characters were flat to the point of interchangeability, with little more than special powers or skills doing anything to distinguish the hero of one story from that of another. The time periods also have little distinction beyond the cosmetic to tell them apart beyond whether they’re before or after the widespread adoption of cellphones. Finally, the writing was sometimes clumsy to the point of being distracting, such as dropping in description in the manner of “(character), who was Black, (did something)” when the description isn’t relevant to what they did.

Some of my other problems were specific to one or a few stories, rather than more general. The set-up for “No Room! No Room!” simply required far more suspension of disbelief than I could manage. Several of the events of “Matthew Henson and the Treasure of the Queen of Sheba” seemed to need some explanation of how the title character managed to do things. Also, at least one story set in 1940 (give or take a year) has someone use “snowflake” as an insult in a fashion that (I believe) didn’t start until after the release of Fight Club. Finally, “Tobin and Gagarin” is just a chase/fight between the title characters during the Loma Prieta earthquake, with no suggestion of what their conflict is or any conclusion to even this episode of the conflict.

On the positive side, the stories do usually deliver a reasonably good adrenaline rush of a plot. Also, they do much better on the representation front than many from the era they’re inspired by; most of the heroes are people of color, few of the female characters are entirely or even mostly just helpless scream generators, and more than a few characters are definitely not straight.

Two other issues that might be bigger issues to other people than they were to me come to mind. First the politics (U.S. far left) are about as subtle and nuanced as you’d expect for these types of story. Second, several of the stories feel like chapters from a longer work; apart from “Tobin and Gagarin”, I didn’t find that this left the stories feeling too incomplete.

As a final note, I will state that most of my issues are more a matter of this book simply not being right for me, rather than it being bad. ( )