Customer Reviews

John Dies at the End

5 star:		(263)
4 star:		(31)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(17)
1 star:		(16)

 

 

If you blended the works of Lovecraft and Kevin Smith, then mixed that with about three parts pure awesome and left it to grow behind your fridge, you might get a vague sense of the genre David Wong bullseyes with this book. It's funny enough to appeal even to non-fans of the horror genre, yet scary enough to stay with you for a long time. It's the sort of book that can raise specters so horrible you tell yourself you couldn't ever have imagined them, yet it keeps your faith in humanity alive with the way Dave and John (especially John) seem to casually flip off a barrage of unspeakable evil. In a book that opens fighting meat-ghosts with '80s glam rock, you know you're in for something special.

It's all about the soy sauce, a mysterious substance that "chooses" its takers and imbues them permanently with an ability to pick up on the doings of other dimensions. In the short term it can provide an insight into spacetime so profound as to tell them just where to go to get a large sum of cash, or how a chicken lived its life before becoming an entree. It's also the key to an invasion from the beyond, but it doesn't end there. The evil wants in, at any cost, and it's not above even cheap schoolyard-style bullying to get its way. Luckily, Dave and John know just how to handle that.

The bizarre thing about this book is that it is literally laugh-out-loud funny, but at the same time it's hide-under-the-bed scary. It is neither horror with comic relief nor comedy with a horror theme. It's both pure comedy and pure horror, two books coexisting in one, which should be impossible but somehow David Wong can pull it off. It kept me hooked right up to the end, for more reasons than just to find out how John dies.

This book by up and coming horror/comedy writer David Wong is one of the scariest novels I've read in a very long time. It's not the sort of scary where you're actually scared while reading. Mostly you will be amused, entertained, and probably a bit surprised at parts. The real terror comes once you try to sleep the next night, and the night after, and the night after that and so forth. I haven't slept a full night in the years since I first read John Dies At The End and this is the reason the state took away my driver's license.

Most everyone can identify with the narration of this book. It asks questions about the seemingly mundane and then provides you answers that delve into a creepy supernatural world. The situations are hilarious, the twists are unexpected, and the horror is perfect. All three combine to create a truly enjoyable tale about two unlikely heroes and their exploits in a supernatural infested hometown. Pick it up, read it, and love it. You will not regret it...and the velvet Jesus will love you for it.

Try this experiment: Flip this book open to any random page and then start reading. No matter what page you've flipped to, there's going to be something hilariously funny on that page. Seriously.

Every damn page. The entire book is so overstuffed with comedy that you could choke a clown with it. Okay, so maybe you could choke a clown with most books. Forget about the clowns. My point is that this is an incredibly funny book.

There's a lot of other stuff going on besides the humor, including some very unsettling horror, interesting plot twists, etc., but it's the comedy that holds it all together. And that comedy is frickin' awesome.

David Wong may be the only author on the planet (or at least in the midwest) who can combine off-the-wall silliness with mind-numbing terror. If this book does not cause you to laugh, cry, and piss yourself in fright then you may want to check the bottom of your left big toe for a pi mark.

I mean, sure it doesn't have the one up on a book like A Clockwork Orange, but as far as simply fun reading goes, this pretty much beats out the competition. Hilarious and scary, the jokes keep flying and the horror keeps coming. The dynamic between John and Dave is what truly keeps the book rolling; they play off each other better than Abbot and Costello. David Wong is a fantastic writer, and I eagerly await more books from him in the future.

JDATE is a very entertaining book. It's one of those books where you sit down after dinner to have a quick little read and you look up at the clock and it's 12:30am and you know your screwed because you gotta wake up at 6:00 and go to work but you still read on regardless. This book is going to probably make you laugh out loud instead of scare you from going to sleep at night. It's a great read, if your looking for a entertaining book look no further, and if you just want something to do when your bored read this, you'll be glad you did.

... while watching Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle... it would violate several fundamental rules of biology. However, the resulting mutant offspring would undoubtedly write a damn fine novel, one which combined rich, three-dimensional characters, high-minded philosophy, gut-busting toilet humor, and truly goosebump-inducing horror.

That book would pale in comparison to John Dies at the End.

I have read this story twice, and both times it was better than any novel I had ever read before. Which means the second time, it was better than itself. Which also probably violates some important scientific laws.

Anyway... read it. You'll like it.

This book isn't great, but it isn't bad. For what it is--a sort of blogged penny dreadful--it's pretty good. As far as good literature goes... Not so much.

The horror aspect isn't really scary; I wouldn't personally call it horror because of that. More of a paranormal comedy, I guess. Even though a lot of the monsters sound ridiculous, at least they were creative and different from the typical werewolf/vampire stuff that seems to be plaguing stores. I liked David's tone; one thing I never got about first-person stories was that the narrator almost never talks like a real person--it's usually too well thought out to believe the person is talking to you. David definitely talks as if he's a real person. No fluff or overly thoughtful words... Just a lot of sarcasm and awkwardness.

The comedy... Was hit or miss. Several times I thought to myself that the book read like a 4chan thread because of how immature the jokes were. Some were funny, others were painful. If you like toilet humor, you'll probably enjoy this book. If you want something more sophisticated, you probably won't appreciate this much.

It was long. Too long. I don't have anything against novels being 400 pages, but JDatE seemed to drag on through parts. Some of the stuff could have been cut out or edited down when it was put into print. I do think that the story has potential to be good for the upcoming movie, though, so hopefully the director and screenwriters are able to take advantage of what is there without focusing too much on the superfluous parts.


If you want an easy read that has a sort of awkward, dirty sense of humor and a lot of WTF, you'll probably like this. If you want something deep and meaningful, you should probably look somewhere else.

This is perhaps the single greatest book I've read since I finished Hitchhiker's series. Buy it, you won't regret it. Unless of course, you enjoy reading terrible books. If by chance you do, avoid this one at all costs.