John Dies at the End
Ratings184
Average rating3.7
I went looking for something funny to read and this popped up. It started out wacky crazy insanity with lots of laughs. Then it turned to blood and guts everywhere comedic horror, although it felt like the author was trying for something higher. It hit a bit of a turning point at the 75% mark with a remembered tale of high school violence and I was close to DNF at that point. However, it improved in style and became a bit more cohesive as the protagonists realised they were about to save the universe. The closing sequence was very clever - the bit on the basketball court - where they (and us) realise that somebody else could have done a much better job.
Really odd book. But once I got stuck in, or read in longer chunks, it was quite a page turner! I'd pick up more from him but now I know it's going to be weird (mostly in a good way). Very cool covers!
Would have given 5 stars if the book wasn't infested with the word “rtrd” and its derivatives.
Feels like he was going for a sort of detective story in the style of Hitchhiker's Guide for the first half and a sci fi for the second. Not bad, made me laugh, was interesting, but David was kind of annoying to read, and sometimes the parodic style of this book felt a little try-hard.
Well... It is bizarre, weird, surreal, funny, and more than a bit horrific! Which are all things I enjoy in a book!
And as almost always it was better than the movie. But how could it not be? It has so much more space to go into details. That said I really like the movie as well, and they did a pretty decent job at the adaptation!
Do be aware that there are some derogatory words used throughout that will be familiar to anyone that went to school in the late 90s. The n-word is used as is Fgot and Rtard. This generally makes sense as there is a sense of Late teens to early 20s male humor and those words were thrown around a lot back then as much as F**k. I could ignore it as none were really done in true malice from what I could tell. And much of it is said by the “bad guys”
I really enjoyed the weirdness and it felt like a watching National Lampoon's version of the Welcome to Night Vale. Which I did in fact enjoy!
Delightfully Kafka-esque at times and wonderfully surreal. Plagued by frequent failures of execution. Great debut.
Loving David Wong's other book Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits for over a year now raised my expectations of this book, one I have heard many good things about. Unfortunately, this book flopped for me. I could definitely see the appeal for some people, but the comedy portion was not funny to me.
First off, the main characters are distinct from one another, although the side characters can sometimes run together. This could be because there are so many characters, some are only mentioned in part one or are introduced 2/3s into the book. For me, it was difficult to keep track of.
The plot is done in an interesting way. There are two parts to this book and the first part truly feels separate from the rest of the book. The first part of the book is the introduction to the world and the characters to Soy Sauce and the mysteries of the world, while the second part is how they live their lives afterwards and more about the dangers of the world. The book could have been split into two different books and have still made sense. What ties them together is that David is telling this all to a reporter.
The humor of the novel should also be addressed. While there were times the book provoked a single chuckle, most of the time I stared at the pages in confusion wondering if a section was meant to be funny. I have also never read a book that mentioned penises so much, ever. So, although there are times where it feels reading this book requires a certain amount of intelligence or open mind, there are other moments which seem made with 7th grade boys in mind.
Another thing to note before recommending is the amount of gore and just plain disturbing moments in the book.
This is one messed up book but luckily it doesn't take itself seriously and the protagonists react to each weird turn in a funny and genuinely gobsmacked way. It's like Odd Thomas on acid.
Looking forward to see how they show this in the film now.
Is this some experiment in allowing a first-time writer to publish a book without ever sending it through the traditional editing process? A blisteringly entertaining opening gives way to a glacial middle third, and then the book just fizzles to a close without any sense of any sort of through-line or cohesion. I guess the through-line and cohesion would appear if you read the follow-up, but honestly, after slogging my way through this, I don't think I'll return for seconds, thanks.
Dare I say this but I found it a light and fun read! Nothing to be taken seriously, quite a nice bit of fun its unpredictable, shocking and endlessly hilarious. Excited to read the next!!
It was engaging enough for me to read it quickly, but I ended up disappointed I couldn't like the book more. My biggest problem with it is that it's too self-conscious – full of dismissals and qualifications to show that the author really is in on the joke, honest! Sure, it's just a bunch of vignettes loosely tied together, and yes, plot threads are left dangling. That would've been fine if he'd just been confident enough to write a modern comedy/horror story with some Lovecraft monsters thrown in. Instead, it keeps jumping in right as the story is becoming engaging, and it reduces itself to standard disaffected Internet blog writing.
This book is weird. That's the only way I can really describe it; it's weird like House of Leaves, except minus the crazy formatting and also hilarious. It's the sort of thing that you'll either REALLY REALLY love, or completely detest, and it's almost entirely subjective (case in point: BFF and I have same taste in books, usually; I loved it, she hated it).
That said, I think it could use a sterner editor's touch. But if you like body horror, time travel, humor, and just plain weirdness, give it a try.
This was... really fun. Overtones of Joss Whedon and Carl Hiaasen, all in good ways. Smart characters, sassy dialog, improbable situations accepted with total coolness. Deliciously unpredictable. And did I mention fun?I started it last night, desperate for some bubblegum after failing with [b:Infinite Jest 6759 Infinite Jest David Foster Wallace http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165604485s/6759.jpg 3271542], and found quite a bit more than I was expecting. Delightfully more.
The book was okay. Entertaining in parts, but the author was trying really hard to write like Douglas Adams (Hitchhiker's Guide) and he really wasn't good enough to pull it off. Very original story though. There's supposed to be a sequel in the works, but I think I'll skip it.
Got about 150 pages in and was non-plussed by the unclear sequence of events, the sameness of the plot, and the ramblingness. Not grabbing me. You can buy it from me cheap if you want.
“Amateurish” is a tricky word. Technically it just means stuff that's not created by professionals, but I've never seen it used to just mean that - it's always used as a pejorative, implying that stuff created by amateurs is inherently inferior to stuff created by professionals. It's a little sad, when you think about it, that stuff people create just for the love of it is reflexively valued as less than stuff people get paid to make.
So I'm not going to call this an amateurish novel. It's not written in a “professional” way - the story kind of goes all over the place, the narrative voice and the sense of humour that runs through it are inconsistent at times, and it has an attitude that is snide and flippant towards its audience. And because of those things, it's a great, fun read.
Plus, you've got to love a novel that spoils itself in the title.