John Dies at the End
I read the sequel to this book, This Book is Full of Spiders, a few years ago. I liked it fine. People tend to get fanatically devoted to these books, and I felt like the sequel didn't live up to the hype. I enjoyed it but not as much as I'd expected to. Still, when I saw the first one at a library sale, I felt like it was worth picking up.
That was a mistake. Sure, this book is a head trip of a horror novel. It combines absurdity with out-of-nowhere plot twists to keep the reader feeling off balance. And that's all find and good.
The problem is the rampant immaturity in this book. I think it's partially on purpose. The guys tasked with saving the world are woefully unprepared, and that's where some of the humor comes from. They're twenty-something slackers who act like they're still in high school. By which I mean that the protagonists of YA novels tend to be more thoughtful and level-headed than these two.
What really got to me were the frequent slurs. I don't know if I've been self-selecting out of these kinds of books, but it has been a very long time since I read a book that dropped slurs with the casualty and frequency of this book. It was jarring every time it happened, and often took me out of a scene. I stopped caring if these guys would survive, because I didn't entirely care if they did or not. Add in the fact that literally every woman in this book is described at least once as "a pair of boobs", and the whole thing becomes the grossest kind of male teenage power fantasy.
That was a mistake. Sure, this book is a head trip of a horror novel. It combines absurdity with out-of-nowhere plot twists to keep the reader feeling off balance. And that's all find and good.
The problem is the rampant immaturity in this book. I think it's partially on purpose. The guys tasked with saving the world are woefully unprepared, and that's where some of the humor comes from. They're twenty-something slackers who act like they're still in high school. By which I mean that the protagonists of YA novels tend to be more thoughtful and level-headed than these two.
What really got to me were the frequent slurs. I don't know if I've been self-selecting out of these kinds of books, but it has been a very long time since I read a book that dropped slurs with the casualty and frequency of this book. It was jarring every time it happened, and often took me out of a scene. I stopped caring if these guys would survive, because I didn't entirely care if they did or not. Add in the fact that literally every woman in this book is described at least once as "a pair of boobs", and the whole thing becomes the grossest kind of male teenage power fantasy.
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