#CBR8 Review #19: John Dies at the End by David Wong

You know when you’re dreaming and something absurd and surreal happens but your dream self is just like, “yeah, that makes sense”? That’s what the progression of this book and the characters’ reactions felt like to me. They just kind of rolled with everything, despite it being a ridiculous ride of the supernatural and things that don’t entirely make sense. A crossover between our world and another filled with monsters and other strange beings and seemingly arbitrary rules of what is possible and what is not. But I guess when things get weird, you learn along the way, which is exactly what the protagonists of this book do.

John Dies at the End follows a young man named David, and his friend John, as they become embroiled in a strange fight against evil paranormal forces from other realms. It all starts when John ends up taking a bizarre “drug” at a party, and begins to see things that not all people can see: other planes, if you will. David soon ends up accidentally having this drug enter his bloodstream as well, and well, wackiness ensues as they try to stop various demons, creatures, etc from attacking people and entering our world on a larger scale.

But the thing about David and John is that they are human disasters. You probably knew some guys like this at some point in your life: the young guys who are really lovely and fun, but don’t really have any huge motivations and are just kind of coasting into adulthood without having any of their crap together? I know some guys like that, actually, and they are really sweet but oh boy they are unmanageable.

And that’s exactly what makes this story really funny. It’s not just the absurdity of everything that happens once this paranormal stuff starts to surface, it’s how willing David and John are to just go with it. They might ask questions for a minute or be confused as to what’s going on, but they are very willing to just accept things as reality. David has to use a bratwurst to communicate with his friend like some kind of weird phone? Okay, I guess that’s just what has to happen. A strange jellyfish-like creature is floating through a local girl’s house? Right, let’s see how we can kill it.

Honestly, I love absurdist humor, as it catches my attention way more than any violence, sex, or anything else that’s simply mean to be shocking. At times I wasn’t really sure where this book was going, however, and am not sure where the sequel will go, but I enjoyed it enough to want to see what happens in the next book for sure. 

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