John Dies at the End

Paperback, 480 pages

English language

Published Nov. 10, 2010 by Thomas Dunne Books.

ISBN:
9780312659141
OCLC Number:
645673232

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2 stars (1 review)

John Dies at the End is a comic horror novel written by David Wong that was first published online as a webserial beginning in 2001, then as an edited manuscript in 2004, and a printed paperback in 2007, published by Permuted Press. An estimated 70,000 people read the free online versions before they were removed in September 2008. Thomas Dunne Books published the story with additional material as a hardcover on September 29, 2009. The book was followed by three sequels, This Book Is Full of Spiders in 2012, What The Hell Did I Just Read in 2017, and If This Book Exists, You're in the Wrong Universe, in 2022. A film adaptation by Don Coscarelli was released in 2012.

8 editions

Decent horror, awful humour

2 stars

The novel doesn't do a very good job fusing horror and comedy. Both exist in the book, but it feels more like there are designated horror segments and designated comedy/action segments that you whip between at the author's whim. The horror is quite evocative and enjoyable, but the bulk of the book is the action and the comedy, which is so bad it's insulting. It's not witty or clever, it's crass, violent, and gratuitously edgy, with penis and shit jokes and characters who say slurs and bad guys who punch everyone in the balls making up the bulk of the author's comedic repertoire.

If you enjoy that sort of stuff, you might find the book enjoyable. I certainly don't object to reading books with transgressive, strange, or potentially offensive material, but in this novel it feels like meaningless shock humour, edge for the sake of edge, serving no purpose other …