Review What The Hell Did I Just Read: A Novel Of Cosmic Horror Depicted By David Wong Formatted As Kindle

been a fan of David Wong for a while now, I started reading his articles on cracked, then found out he had a book published online that I could read for free.
I read it in one sitting, staying up all night, The next day I went to my local book store and bought a hard copy of John Dies at the End and read it a second time.
I preordered The sequel, This Book is Full of Spiders, and devoured it when it eventually arrived at my doorstep.
When I found out That Mr, Wong was writing a Scifi novel I preordered and devoured that book as well, So, it should go without saying I was excited when six months ago I learned I could preorder the third JDatE novel.
It arrived two days ago and I just finished reading it,
It's good. It's filled with all of the things that made me love the other books, However, this one veers in a more open ended direction, This is why my rating is a bit low, I enjoy vague or interpretive endings, but there are so many instances in WtHDIJR that conflict with the ending that it just leaves me feeling a bit disappointed in the final pages.
This novel is definitely an example of the journey being more satisfying than the destination,
I'm hoping it isn't as vague as it initially appears and that when I eventually reread this book things will clear up at least a little.

I

don't want to spoil anything from the book so I won't go into detail about the conflicting instances I take issue with.

It isn't the first time the ending to one of these books didn't tie everything up in a neat little bow.
The first book in the series actually has a huge plot hole that was left dangling that I hoped would maybe be cleared up in this one.
It's possible that it was, but because of the vagueness of what actually occurred in the story it's hard to say.

Overall I loved this book and upon a second reading my rating may change, There is nothing wrong with a story adding clarity on a second or third read, The damage here is that there was too much left in the wind, too many questions left without answers, and the questions themselves being trivialized a bit by the ending.

It's just as funny, exciting, and horrifying as the other books, but the overall plot isn't as well executed as This Book is Full of Spiders.

I look forward to whatever David Wong's next project is, He is my favorite modern author and an inspiration in my own writing,
This book is for anyone who read the first two, Although it is readable as a standalone, you really should read the first two books before jumping into this one.
For anyone wondering if they'll enjoy the first book, you'll like it if you enjoy meat monsters, crude humor, and a lingering existential dread that at any moment you could cease to exist in any capacity, not even being a memory in the hearts and minds of your loved ones.


update
Having reread the book I can say I'm mostly just as confused from the first reading.
I noticed a few things I didn't before, Like, John's chapters are more than likely fabricated, That Amy knew more about what was going on than she let on, also casting her sections into doubt.
Each time a chapter would shift perspective the name of the pov character would be displayed before the prose.
Except for David. Each chapter that starts with his pov doesn't have his name at the beginning, Now, I could chalk this up to a style thing, but if a chapter started with John, Amy, or whoever else, it would clearly state there name before the beginning of the chapter.
Only two of the chapters that start from Dave's pov actually say the name "David" in the beginning.
Possibly an editorial fluke, but it could mean something,
Throughout the book the town of Undisclosed is in the middle of a rainstorm, until the BATMANTIS is killed.
Once he dies, the storm ends,

Last thing I'll say I thought was neat that I didn't notice before, Early in the book Dave mentions knowing the exact wording to the famous speech that Roy Batty gives at the end of Blade Runner.
Later in the book, the villain, Nymph, gives his own rendition of the same speech,

Obviously it's a good book because I enjoyed it both times that I read it, I was going to change my rating toif I finished a second reading and found myself making sense of the misleading narrative.
Unfortunately, it's just as confusing as before, Not enough evidence is given to justify the "twist" at the end making it feel a bit week compared to the first and second books.


Still a great addition to the Soy Sauce legacy, John and Dave are growing up, But don't worry, this doesn't mean that they've changed too much, If you want to be reassured that they're still the same people they ever were, then know that John has a side hustle selling JDATE merch on the internet, and Dave's too principled to get involved in it.


And yet this book is darker than the earlier novels, If the existential horror can't get any worse, then the mundane horror of everyday life can, Dave's resume is now worthless, as all his experience is from the video rental store, an industry which no longer exists.
He's unemployed and his girlfriend earns all their income, A difficult and depressing situation for a man who wants nothing more than to protect and cherish his girl, and is too proud to count his unpaid work saving the universe.
Dave's depressed and all the nihilistic comedy in the world can't stop that being, well, depressing, Meanwhile, John's borderline substance abuse problem has escalated all the way to a secretnotsecret meth habit, I suppose there is a time when we all realise that the coping strategies which were so useful in our early twenties are maladaptive as we approach our thirties.


If I'm making this sound bleak, don't worry, there's still a ton of dick flying dildo jokes.
Like Shakespeare, Wong will not allow the fact that everyone is going to die at the end prevent him including plenty of knob gags.
I am utterly in awe of Wong's ability to shift from juvenile potty humour, to genuinely spooky horror, to snarky observations on human nature, to some really profound philosophy.
I was going to say 'shift seamlessly' but actually there are occasions where the plot bumps you viciously from one to the other for maximum effect.


The fourth wall is still being dismantled and used as structural support for the rest of the plot and now we have three terribly unreliable narrators instead of one.
This leads to some really interesting puzzles and twists, but I leftmonths between reading the book and writing the review so you'll have to wait for next year's reread before I expand on that point.
But trust me, this is a really clever and devious book and you're missing a lot if you only read it at dick level.
The most consistent and straight forward book in the series so far, That ended up being both a curse and a blessing, The first book had the highest highs but also had large chunks of dull, repetitive and complete misses.
The second book while overall better than the first had large dull patches but a killer beginning and end.
Here with the third book the story starts off well enough but the narrative style feels different and the wackiness feels a little more forced here.
./. This entire series is a most curious combination of gaginducing horror and laughoutloud humor, Like, literally, I laughed out loud,

I really enjoyed this volume for the most part, I docked a star because I feel it lacked a resolution to the main conflict, but overall, it's been a fun ride.
Would reread.

stars. David Wong always knows how to deliver enjoyable, surprisingly deep, and universally unsettling scifi/horror books with his John Dies at the End series.


This installment had a very monster of the week feel to it as Dave and John and Amy find themselves pitted against a foe capable of distorting their memories and minds in unsettling ways.
Not a ton of references to the previous books and that is fine by me, I think this series makes more sense as a series of standalone adventures that slowly build and develop the main characters and their relationships.
When Wong wants to finish the series for good he will have a rich vein of backstory, world building, and character depth to draw upon to give the story of Amy, John, and Dave a satisfying conclusions where hopefully John will not die.


We get POV chapters from all three with John's being the most entertaining by far and a nice further character development from them all.
It is interesting to see the world through each of their own perspectives and how those perspectives differed.
We get plenty of action, weird existential horror, and Dave and John's patented screwups, Oh, and lots of crude jokes, can't forget about the crude jokes,

Overall an excellent scifi/horror book whose horror comes not in jump scares or bloody scenes, but existential ponderings and otherworldly horrors that subvert the very essence of what it means to be human.
While not as transcendent as John Dies at the End this was still a great, weird, entertaining read.
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