John Dies at the End

David and John are young men who work in a video store by day and perform in an amateur band by night. At one such performance they meet a Rastafarian who goes by the name of Robert Marley, who introduces John (and indirectly David) to a new psychodelic drug which he calls soy sauce. Unfortunately soy sauce is the gateway to another dimension in which dark forces wait for the opportunity to join the people of Earth. And eat them. After dealing with a nasty outbreak of unspeakable evil in Las Vegas, David and John embark on a new career.
Silly but amusing and easy to read. If you've read Charles Stross Laundry Files novels and enjoy things like Shaun of the Dead then this is a book that you will enjoy. The style flows freely and whilst show more there is horror it is delivered with a smile and a joke. The whole premise is ridiculous and yet compelling as the author spoofs pretty much everything that has ever crawled out of the dark places of a horror-writer's mind. There are talking dogs, exploding people , a monster that looks like a gorilla riding a crab, and entities from another dimension. John doesn't die. Or does he? It's hard to
tell in this story. He may have died quite close to the beginning, but I'm really not sure. Apparently this book has been made into a movie. It will be terrible and this is best left as a book. show less

The professedly unreliable narrator of John Dies at the End uses a lot of profanity. In the added apparatus for the 2020 reissue that I read, it is revealed that the "bad words" had been a source of consternation among the reading public. I don't know--when limbs are getting ripped off, you accidentally get dosed with some unidentifiable tar-like street drug, and swarms of extradimensional bugs are making people explode, I think it's fair for the interjections to go beyond "oh dear" and the modifiers well past "rather."

There are a couple of direct invocations of Lovecraft, along with the sort of cosmic indifferentism (universally pervasive "apathy" as Wong would have it) that some critics attribute to Grandpa Cthulhu, but the pacing show more and resolutions of this story are more along Robert E. Howard lines: resilience in the face of bizarre menace, heroic dismemberment of foes, and the virtues of action over paralyzing reflection. But it's not a pulp-retro tale at all. The setting is the 21st-century de-industrialized US Midwest with aimless 20-something protagonists thrown into a kind of post-punk Ghostbusters scenario.

Is it scary? Sort of, in the too-recognizable way that the narrator relates his epistemological uncertainty and self-loathing. Is it funny? I may not flatter myself to admit it, but I did laugh out loud at many points, whether because of the absurd events, the narrator's deft turns of phrase, John's dick jokes, or whatever it was. It's buried pretty deep in the feces and wads of bloody meat, but there is even some genuine moral reflection that applies to all of us in our humanity-devouring circumstances of neoliberal overreach and ecocide.

So ... recommended? I'm just not sure to whom. I own a copy of the sequel, and I might read it before the plague takes me down. show less

Yeah, so this is a bit of a weird one. But that's totally a good thing. It's not really horror, not really science fiction... but it has definite elements of those genres, among others. The plot is twisty and turny and doesn't really make sense because hey, everyone is on drugs!

David Wong (another to add to my author-as-character shelf) is one of the most creative unreliable narrators I've read--and I have quite a fondness for them. He goes so far as to invent plot holes and inconsistencies, then go back later and point them out, showing how the nature of reality is constantly shifting in his world. It's a warning not to trust any of your senses, not to believe his story actually happened the way he says it did while recounting the show more whole tale to a skeptical yet intrigued journalist in a strip-mall Chinese joint in Undisclosed Midwestern America. And yes, there is an actual story here, despite originally being published as a series of random online posts. It's a meandering, absurd, over-the-top plot, but a plot nonetheless. John Dies reminds me a little of [b:The Illuminatus! Trilogy|57913|The Illuminatus! Trilogy The Eye in the Pyramid/The Golden Apple/Leviathan|Robert Joseph Shea|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1327929871s/57913.jpg|813] and [b:Crooked Little Vein|43717|Crooked Little Vein|Warren Ellis|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1186350688s/43717.jpg|2640005] in ways, with a similar creepiness factor to something like [b:House of Leaves|24800|House of Leaves|Mark Z. Danielewski|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1327889035s/24800.jpg|856555]. The tone is loud and brash and unapologetic, and yes, the humor is extremely juvenile. But come on, who doesn't think poop and dick jokes are funny?

I have to say, though, I was a little disappointed that John in fact doesn't die at the end. Misdirect! I guess that leaves room for the sequel that is apparently coming.

In any case, they're releasing a movie based on it this year, and the trailer has me pretty damn excited. Check it. show less

Soooooooooooooooooo good. A blurb on the back of the book calls it a mix of Douglas Adams and Stephen King. YES PLEASE. It’s impossible to imitate Adams’ inimitable randomness -- but David Wong seems more inspired by Adams, rather than imitating him. His prose is chock full of overdone and off-kilter metaphors, and the plot rambles about from one adventure to another, but the tone is more campy-scary Evil Dead than Adam’s dry British humor.

The story bounces around between timelines... and not always simply for effect. David, the narrator, and John, his charismatic and extremely irresponsible friend, come across a strange recreational drug called Soy Sauce that gives users a window into another dimension. After several crazy show more late-night phone calls, Dave gets a call from John while John is sitting right across from him, and it all goes to hell from there. show less

I started to read ‘John Dies At the End’ as light relief from a giant tome about Nazi economics ([b:The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy|711592|The Wages of Destruction The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy|Adam Tooze|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1309285737s/711592.jpg|697854]). It proved more of a distraction than I anticipated, though, as I disliked much of it and felt compelled to articulate why. The basic idea is that Dave and his friend John, two local down-at-heel idiots, encounter a weird supernatural drug and have adventures featuring demons and horrific violence. First off, the blurb makes the plot sound much more coherent than it actually is. The pacing is very strange - most of show more the book is effectively a flashback, or rather Dave recounting past events. This retelling features explosions of frenetic activity for a day or so, followed by ‘and then nothing happened for a few months’. I was baffled by this, until I read at the end that the whole novel was composed piecemeal and posted online. Fair enough, but couldn’t it have been edited a bit for paperback release?

Stylistic quibbles aside, my main problem was with the unreliable narrator, Dave. He is a terrible human being. His inner monologue made my skin crawl at times. He views women as ambulatory breasts with victim status attached, barely veils his racism (why are all the black men he meets threatening, exactly?), and uses the word ‘retard’ all the damn time. His response to meeting a woman who is catatonic after trauma is to BURN HER WITH A CIGARETTE to snap her out of it. Why the hell would you do that? He also kicks a kitten at one point. An actual kitten. Dave is intensely self-pitying about the tragedy of being a single white American man armed with a gun. He mentions past mental health issues and that he got a high score on the psychopath test, in a fashion that smacks of self-justification. Dave, if you are genuinely concerned that you’re a danger to others, get rid of your gun and seek professional help! I realise that the author may well have intended Dave to come off as massively creepy (I was wholly sympathetic to the cop who shot him that one time), but my intense dislike of him got in the way of the story. There might as well have been someone walking in front of him at all times waving red flags, like a pre-1896 motor vehicle. By contrast, John (who we only see through Dave’s eyes) seems a lot more harmless and sometimes hilarious. He may be intermittently employed and probably an alcoholic, but he’s better at not being appalling. Do not even get me started on the female characters and their perennial status as victims-slash-sex objects, who frequently cry and are described mainly as thighs and breasts.

As for all the horror hijinks, John and Dave struck me as similar to Sam and Dean in the long-running TV show Supernatural. They turn up in their car when weird unexplained stuff is happening and deal with it. The difference is, Sam and Dean are competent at fighting mysterious evil, whereas John and Dave are complete idiots and create massive collateral damage. (Hell, they make Supernatural look feminist, which is not a phrase I ever thought I’d use.) I kept wondering, are these the best available demon hunters? Really? They are shambolic, utterly reactive, and have no idea of what’s going on at any given time. Consequently, neither does the reader. Perhaps this is intended to promote suspense, or make the monster-y scenes scarier. It did not work that way for me, though. I just thought, “Oh look, another disgusting monster is attacking Dave in his car. Who cares.” At this point it may not surprise you that I considered giving up on the book halfway through. I persisted as giving up on a book feels to me like a personal failure and also, for all its faults, ‘John Dies at the End’ is very quick to read. I also found odd bits of Dave and John’s bickering amusing.

Overall, though, I was very disappointed. The gross-out horror was not scary as I didn’t care about the narrator and was quite happy for a monster to eat him. There was no wider sense of threat because most of it was a flashback, plus Dave and John had no idea what was happening; quite possibly the whole thing took place in Dave’s troubled mind. The emphasis on grossness did not give the horror any visceral feeling, as there was no subtlety to it. For something to be scary, space has to be left for your own imagination to fill in the blanks. Simply describing a giant slug with lots of eyes is not frightening. On the other hand, the novel periodically succeeds as comedy, as long as Dave interacts with John rather than allowing his internal monologue to take over. His perspective on women is by far the most frightening thing in the book.

Finally, unanswered questions that are spoilers. John does not die at the end, in fact nothing special happens to John at the end, so what’s up with the title? I assumed there would be some twist, like... Dave is actually John! John is actually a demon! Or a ghost, or something. Nope. How come the reader never finds out where Soy Sauce, the drug that kicked it all off, came from, what it is, or why it didn’t kill Dave and John? They seem strangely unwilling to investigate this, despite there being evidence lying around. Why was their little town the focus of Korrok’s attention? If Dave and John changed their names in order to lie low, how are people on the internet sending them mail directly? Why are they so comfortable ignoring the presence of a corpse in Dave’s shed? What’s with all the cockroaches? How does Molly keep returning from the dead and what for? (If she's some kind of angel-being, what the hell does she think she's doing?) Also, why in the name of all that is holy would either Jennifer or Amy want to date Dave?? show less

Have you ever been in a movie or performance of some sort and found yourself looking at your watch and wondering when in the hell it would end? Sadly, that’s what I found doing while listening to David Wong’s popular John Dies at the End. This is very distressing to me as I have been looking forward to reading it for a long time. It was highly recommended to me so I had very high hopes for it. I read his Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits and considered it a brilliantly satirical look at the future of social media. This book, while it does include a few brief flashes of brilliance, was mostly a convoluted mish-mash of shape-shifting monsters, alternative realities and what Doctor Who refers to as wibbley-wobbly, timey-whimey stuff. show more

My thanks to the folks at the Goodreads Horror Aficionados group for giving me the opportunity to read and discuss this and many other fine books. show less

This book was an exercise in insanity! This is not the first time I've said this about a book, and considering there are two sequels to this, it won't be the last!

Sometimes I'm not sure if I'm too generous with my book ratings, or if I just have superb taste and amazing luck at picking great ones. I'd like to believe it's the latter...so I will.

My hubby and I, on a late night Netflix binge, saw this movie and were intrigued by the title--hello, spoilers! So we watched knowing it would be my kind of flick. It was bizarre and yet good. Bizarrely good. Horror/comedy with a bit of camp. Everything you need to make a future cult classic. And of course the moment I found out it was based on a book, it went on my wishlist. And let me tell you, show more it is surprisingly hard to get a used copy of this book! (I was on a budget and trying not to give Amazon any more of my money.)

And after I finally got a copy, I didn't read it right away. Big mistake! Huge! If I could kick my own butt for waiting so long, I would.

The whole thing is told from David Wong's point of view (yes the author is also a character). I normally hate first person stories, but this was great. It's about David and John and their ridiculous shenanigans. It's like they get into the kind of situations that you just can't make up. I had a friend like that once. She would get into the craziest stuff, and I was there half the time, so I know she wasn't making it up.

In the story there's this drug called 'soy sauce' and it's pretty much a gateway to hell--or so Dave and John think. Crazy things happen when you're on the sauce, a whole new part of your mind is opened up to you. And once it's opened, there's no closing it!

John takes it on purpose, and Dave is accidentially stabbed by the needle he confiscated from John. Now they are seeing things they would have never wanted in a million years, ever wanted to see. And they're able to do things--almost supernatural type things. They get caught up in some serious mess all because of this 'soy sauce', and no matter how hard Dave tries to pull them out, John keeps dragging them in deeper. It's almost like their [undisclosed] town is situated on a hellmouth! And John and Dave are the 'slayers' poised to save the world.

Everything in this book is just insane. It's the right amount of dark, creepy, crazy and funny. It's like Evil Dead with two good Ashes. I loved every minute of it. And now I'm about to dive into the sequel as soon as I post this.

...Why does it always have to be spiders?! show less