Book Review: John Dies at the End by David Wong

You need to read this book.  This is not a want, this is a need.  Not convinced yet, well inject yourself with a dose of an inter-dimensional super drug and read on.  John Dies at the End is novel written by David Wong, [Blu-ray] the psuedonyme of Jason Pargin and the lead editor of Cracked.com.  If you have visited the web site then you know a little bit of the craziness behind the cover.  Minor Spoilers Ahead

     The story revolves around two twenty something go know-where slackers, John and David, whom are living in an undisclosed town somewhere in the Midwest.  The story begins when the pair meet a Jamaican man at a show they are performing at, to which David nicknames him “the Floating Jamaican,” due to his apparent ability to levitate.  Things quickly escalate, or devolve, depending on the how one interprets it.  Both John and David, John by choice and David by accident, are exposed to Soy Sauce.  Soy Sauce is the slang term for a drug that causes some exceptionally strange effects including trandimensional communication, levitation, foreknowledge, the ability to see things that the human mind was not meant to, etc, etc.  The stuff's abilities are similar to hooking the entire internet up to your brain and trying to process it all at once.  So to say that Soy Sauces effects are unpredictable and chaotic is an understatement.  With the help of the Sauce our “hero’s” attempt to stop an interdimensional conspiracy bent on the domination of earth.  I do not want to spoil too much and to be honest it would be an undertaking just to put the gonzo plot to a concise summary.

     The tone of the novel varies widely from splaterpunk horror, to gross out humor, to deep reflective character building, to gonzo weirdness, to existential horror.  A normal story mashing all those parts together produces a mess, an ambitious mess, but still a mess.  John Dies at the End though produces almost seamlessly a coherent whole out of all the parts with only what I can assume is black magic.  I found myself intensely reading with a growing sense of dread on one page and then the next having to place the book down, literally, because I was laughing so hard.  This book does it all, and does it well.

     Lovecraft’s influence here is unmistakable but it turns the narrative on its head.  Instead of a well read, exceptionally brilliant, occult antiquarian facing off against unspeakable horrors we get the opposite.  We get John duct taping a Bible to a baseball bat to use as a weapon and the pair feeding a dog a Testamint, breath mints with scripture on them, to see if the dog is ok.  Mind you, the dog was levitating at the time and then promptly exploded in tiny dog giblets.  The pair are winging it hoping to get by with whatever “knowledge” they have accumulated, which is not a doctorate in Occult Studies with a thesis focusing on the Necronomicon.  This is a reflection you and me facing off against the horrors of an uncaring universe and completely making a mess of things.

   I cannot recommend this book more highly, oh and the pair go to another dimension that they call “Shit Narnia.”  What more can be said.

Who will like this:  Anyone who is fan of Lovcraftian stories, anyone who ever laughed at a video of someone being kicked in the crotch, general horror fans, and those that enjoy a truly surreal crazy literature.

Who will not like this: People who want more traditional New York Times bestsellers, pompous jerks who say they do not read books they read literature, and anyone with a sensitive gag reflex.            

Bethesda's New Survival Horror Game Preview

I really hope this game turns out. I havn't enjoyed a horror game since Dead Space.

Movie Review: My Amityville Horror

     The film, The Amityville Horror is a pillar of the genre.  It had what we dismiss in today’s overused terms as “based on a true story” legitimacy.  The book the movie was based upon, The Amityville Horror by Jay Anson , was the documentation and retelling of the Lutz families encounter with a paranormal force/forces at 112 Ocean Avenue, Amityville.  The family’s controversial claims made headlines, a franchise of movies, and a plethora of books.  A new documentary, My Amityville Horror, aims to put a different spin on the tale.  While some of the content is disturbing with a supernatural bent this is not a horror movie in the traditional sense.  There are no jump scares, psychos with masks, or dramatic music that pauses at just the right moment; all the tropes of the genre are absent.  The horror as with the title is a very personal one, that of Daniel Lutz and his relationship with his family and his past. 
Warning Spoilers Ahead: 

     While listening to Daniel talk about his experiences at 112 Ocean Avenue some things are obviously apparent.  He firmly believes everything that he says with utter certainty and has no patience with anyone who doubts his claims.  Years of being defined by Amityville and having to defend his record of events has developed a hyper-defensiveness of his narrative.  However, there is a desperation that cries out to be heard, to commiserate with, to have a full understanding of Daniels trauma.  A trauma that runs deeper than the short time spent at the Amityville house: one that is familial in nature.

     Daniel hates his stepfather George, and has since he met him.  The normal psychology of a new father figure and the resentment that follows was magnified by the apparent paranormal events of the house.  Daniels descriptions of events are tinged with fear, anger, and resentment over George, whom he blames for what happened, even the paranormal occurrences.  That though is only the beginning of Daniels traumatic experiences.  George used the incident to transform his family into a living breathing extension of the events.  The family transformed into “that Amityville Horror family,” and Daniel into “the Amityville Horror kid.”  George drags his family around the world to support the movie and book, even leaving Daniel behind for long stretches.  At one point Daniel talks about the many exorcisms he was put through while left in the care of priests; a traumatizing experience that he also blames his step-father for.   Everything in one way or another spirals back upon the relationship between George and himself.

     The documentary is fascinating, even though most of the time it is a camera pointed at Daniel while he explains his experiences.  When Daniel is on camera, the scenes are imposing, rife with menace and fear, which lend to his credibility.  Whatever the story really is, hoax or reality, Daniels dysfunction is real and debilitating to him.  The only glaring flaw is that the film is too short, just under ninety minutes, and this only begins to scratch the surface.  After the movie credits rolled, I was hungry for more and wanted to sit down with Daniel and have him explain his story all over to me.  There is so much information here and like any good ghost story the line between what is real, fabrication, hoax, and misinterpretation becomes blurred.  Nevertheless, it is not the supernatural that corrupts and harms us in the long term, but our relationships between our fellow human beings.    

Verdict: 7/10 Arrows in a Bard

Who would like this- Fans of documentaries, ghost stories, small independent character driven movies, and anyone interested in the Amityville Horror story.

Who will not like this- Horror fans who want buckets of blood and an abundance of scares or those wanting a fast-paced film.  

Book Review: Already Dead by Charlie Huston

 Vampires have been done to death, or undeath to be specific, and readers have become tired of the genre and moved elsewhere.  At the beginning of the craze in 2005, a mere two months after Stephanie Myers published Twilight, Chalie Huston put out Already Dead.  The novel is a different spin on vampirism, gone are the traditional themes of vampirism as a monstrous curse or the modern take of vampires as the misunderstood brooding anti-heroes.  Huston puts a Noir spin into things making vampirism and vampires into the true underworld of society. 

     The story centers on a Vampire, called Vampyres in the book, Joe Pitt who lives in modern day Manhattan.  The islands vampyres are controlled by different clans, the most powerful being the Coalition; ultraconservative and wanting to keep vampyres in the shadows.  Another is The Society, the “left” of the vampyre world, who wants eventually to tell the world about them.  Joe has ties the clans and works as an independent fixer for them to do their dirty jobs.  This keeps his supply of blood nice and fresh so the Vyrus, an actual virus that causes vampirism in the books, does not cause Joe to lose control and chew someone’s throat out.  Which is what will happen if the Vyrus does not get fresh blood every now and again, and why Joe takes a job with the Coalition to hunt down a Shambler (aka zombie).  As with the Noir genre, things are never that simple and soon Joe is over his head in trouble.

     This is the vampire novel you hand someone to read who has a bad taste of overproduced vampire literature in his or her mouth.  The Noir genre is on full display here and any one of these characters could have walked off a Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett novel.  Joe Pitt is a no nonsense tough guy in the traditional sense.  He has his own code of ethics and walks his own path, even if that gets him in trouble with the clans and his girlfriend Evie.  There are no good guys in the series, everyone has secrets, dark pasts, and blood on their hands.  The book is the first in a series of five, each successive expanding on the history and world that Joe Pitt inhabits. 

Verdict: 8/10 Dead Bards

Who Would Like This: A fan of vampire stories, pulpy noir tales, urban fantasy, or thrillers.  I would hand this book to someone if they said they did not like silly stories about vampires.           

Who Would Not Like This: Readers who want romance, trashy or otherwise, in their vampire tales.  There is simply not much to be found between the pages.