John Dies at the End [Versión Kindle]

If you blended the works of Lovecraft and Kevin Smith, then mixed that with about three parts pure awesome and left it to grow behind your fridge, you might get a vague sense of the genre David Wong bullseyes with this book. It's funny enough to appeal even to non-fans of the horror genre, yet scary enough to stay with you for a long time. It's the sort of book that can raise specters so horrible you tell yourself you couldn't ever have imagined them, yet it keeps your faith in humanity alive with the way Dave and John (especially John) seem to casually flip off a barrage of unspeakable evil. In a book that opens fighting meat-ghosts with '80s glam rock, you know you're in for something special.

It's all about the soy sauce, a mysterious substance that "chooses" its takers and imbues them permanently with an ability to pick up on the doings of other dimensions. In the short term it can provide an insight into spacetime so profound as to tell them just where to go to get a large sum of cash, or how a chicken lived its life before becoming an entree. It's also the key to an invasion from the beyond, but it doesn't end there. The evil wants in, at any cost, and it's not above even cheap schoolyard-style bullying to get its way. Luckily, Dave and John know just how to handle that.

The bizarre thing about this book is that it is literally laugh-out-loud funny, but at the same time it's hide-under-the-bed scary. It is neither horror with comic relief nor comedy with a horror theme. It's both pure comedy and pure horror, two books coexisting in one, which should be impossible but somehow David Wong can pull it off. It kept me hooked right up to the end, for more reasons than just to find out how John dies.

Most everyone can identify with the narration of this book. It asks questions about the seemingly mundane and then provides you answers that delve into a creepy supernatural world. The situations are hilarious, the twists are unexpected, and the horror is perfect. All three combine to create a truly enjoyable tale about two unlikely heroes and their exploits in a supernatural infested hometown. Pick it up, read it, and love it. You will not regret it...and the velvet Jesus will love you for it.

This book isn't great, but it isn't bad. For what it is--a sort of blogged penny dreadful--it's pretty good. As far as good literature goes... Not so much.

The horror aspect isn't really scary; I wouldn't personally call it horror because of that. More of a paranormal comedy, I guess. Even though a lot of the monsters sound ridiculous, at least they were creative and different from the typical werewolf/vampire stuff that seems to be plaguing stores. I liked David's tone; one thing I never got about first-person stories was that the narrator almost never talks like a real person--it's usually too well thought out to believe the person is talking to you. David definitely talks as if he's a real person. No fluff or overly thoughtful words... Just a lot of sarcasm and awkwardness.

The comedy... Was hit or miss. Several times I thought to myself that the book read like a 4chan thread because of how immature the jokes were. Some were funny, others were painful. If you like toilet humor, you'll probably enjoy this book. If you want something more sophisticated, you probably won't appreciate this much.

It was long. Too long. I don't have anything against novels being 400 pages, but JDatE seemed to drag on through parts. Some of the stuff could have been cut out or edited down when it was put into print. I do think that the story has potential to be good for the upcoming movie, though, so hopefully the director and screenwriters are able to take advantage of what is there without focusing too much on the superfluous parts.

If you want an easy read that has a sort of awkward, dirty sense of humor and a lot of WTF, you'll probably like this. If you want something deep and meaningful, you should probably look somewhere else.