Book Review: John Dies at the End by David wong

John Dies at the End
Permuted Press

I heard this was re-printed by St. Martin’s press. So this novel began as an online serial, and it shows a little bit when you’re reading it. Lets get back to that. You can discount this review if you want because I admit I could not read it word for word after 150 pages. I began to skip and skip.

This is the story of two friends who get involved in a drug known on the streets as Soy Sauce. It causes an out of body experience. They fight meat monsters and travel around in time. There are tons of interesting ideas and lots of laugh out loud funny parts. Certainly David Wong has talent but this book needed a serious and strong editor.

The novel lacks serious structure, I know it started as a blog serial but the author noted that he did a pass before it got printed. Really? My biggest problem with the book was it seemed like Wong would take a page and half to describe what should have taken a single paragraph. It drove me nuts. (for the record this is problem I am trying to clean up and out of my early work)

I read it for the same reason several other people decided to do it in the last month. Don Coscereli director of Phantasm and Bubba Ho-Tep is currently filming an adaptation of the novel I was interested so I picked it up. I posted about it on Facebook and I had two other readers say they were having the same experience with the book.

Did I finish it? Sorta I started skipping huge chucks, a reading tactic that as an author I find disgusting but it was that was the only way to make it through. This book lacks rhythm so for all the funny and interesting moments it comes like a really awesome band with an awful drummer.