John Dies at the End by David Wong – review

You might think that the title of this book is the ultimate spoiler; however, even though John really does die in the book, that honestly doesn’t tell you much about anything that happens in the plot.    The main character is David Wong, whose best friend is a guy named John.  John has very little common sense and even fewer social graces, so no one is surprised when, at a concert, John falls in with a creepy psuedo-Jamaican man who calls himself Robert Marley.  Later that night, David gets a call from his friend because John has taken some kind of strange drug and appears to be hallucinating.

David goes to help and ends up inadvertantly taking the drug himself.  Things only go downhill from there, as David begins to see things that he at first believes are hallucinations.  Then, he begins to suspect that the horrible things he’s witnessing are real.  What follows is a twisted ride through alternate dimensions, abandonded construction projects, and Las Vegas. 

This book is an interesting phenomenon.  Originally, David Wong posted it on the internet as he wrote it.  It gained a following through word of mouth and eventually found its way to being published, all without being formally submitted to a publisher.    It is a piece of metafiction; after all, the main character is named David Wong, but the plot of the book is so strange and convoluted that it renders the actual character names incidental to the story.

There are some parts of the book, particularly the opening, which feel a bit disjointed, while other parts of the story flow together almost seamlessly.  Wong’s story carries fearsome momentum, never once letting up on the weird occurances that take over his main character’s life after the ingestion of the drug known as “soy sauce.”  Despite the oddities surrounding the characters, they seem like largely ordinary people, which really does add to the book’s atmosphere.  These people are the kinds of people whom you could easily imagine meeting in any ordinary small town.  All of us probably know someone an awful lot like John, and we could probably readily identify the friend we have who is just like David.  The character development in the book is what really keeps the suspension of disbelief intact for readers. 

That said, John Dies at the End is a book that I would find very difficult to recommend to a wide group of people.  This is a horror novel.  Fans of splatterpunk and gore will find themselves in heaven.  I know that my tolerance for the weird, gross, and visceral in a book is actually a bit higher than the average person, and I found this book difficult to read.  It’s very intense and disturbing.  I wanted to read it because the compulsion to find out what happens next is very strong, which actually speaks quite well to Wong’s writing style and imagination; however, there are frequent, graphic descriptions of gore, exploding corpses, bodily fluids, and horrifyingly disgusting monsters that tested my limits.  I would be able to read for fifteen to twenty minutes at a time, and then I would need to stop and talk to someone or watch a little TV to just find a happier, horror-free place.  I will say that the book was well worth my persistance.  It did keep me interested all the way through it.

I have the feeling that reading this book is as close to experiencing drug-induced psychosis as I ever want to get.  Actually, this book is possibly far, far closer to experiencing drug-induced psychosis than I would ever want to be in my entire lifetime. It keeps a strange sort of coherence, regardless of questions that remain unanswered or, at best, vaguely addressed.  This shouldn’t actually be a deterrent if you’re looking for a freaky and disturbing book to read.

If you can stomach John Dies at the End, it’s an extrodinary, terrifying book.  If you get at all queasy by the thought of intestines, you’d be better off finding something else to read.

Editor’s note:  This book will be released in paperback from St. Martin’s Griffin on September 14, 2010.  It is available now in hardcover from Thomas Dunne books.