John Dies at the End

by David Wong
456 pgs

Every once in a while, I read a book that doesn't lend itself to an easy or concise description. To adequately describe it would probably take half as long as it would take to read the book itself. John Dies at the End by David Wong (pseudonym) is one of those books.

Somewhere in a small undisclosed town, somewhere in the heart of the country, a new drug has hit the streets. It's known as Soy Sauce, and it promises users an experience unlike any they've had before. John and Dave are friends who live in this undisclosed town and both are perpetual underachievers. John plays in a similarly underachieving band, and one night, at a party after a gig, John is introduced to Soy Sauce by a strange man pretending to be Jamaican. John calls Dave in the middle of the night while experiencing a "bad trip" from the drug. Dave picks up John at his apartment and the two end up at the local Denny's. While there, Dave gets another call from his friend John, whose sitting in the booth across from him eating and not calling him. John asks Dave whether he (John) has died yet, and from that point on, things only get more and more absurd.

John Dies at the End is a book with a cult following. It was originally published as an independent web series by David Wong (again, pseudonym) who was working as a a copy editor at a law firm. It became so popular that he eventually decided to turn the online chapters he had been releasing into novel and through word of mouth, the book became so popular it was turned into a movie starring Paul Giamatti.

While the book isn't fantastic, I enjoyed it enough that I'm interested in reading its sequels: This Book is Full of Spiders, and What the Hell Did I Just Read. I'm interested to see if the things I liked about this one improve in those books, and if the things I wasn't crazy about improve.

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆