Review: John Dies At The End

Soy sauce, the drug that changes us all...

John Dies At The End

Jason Pargin (penname David Wong)

378 pages - 2007 - fiction, horror

July 7th, 2024 — July 28th, 2024

Rating: ⭐⭐

I really wanted to like this book. It’s been on my list for years, since I saw it in some Barnes & Noble somewhere. I loved the idea of the book—two young men, college dropouts, who have become paranormal investigators since they were forced to take a drug colloquially called “soy sauce” that allowed them to see the future and other various oddities.

But I didn’t like the book. Partially, that was because I found it incredibly confusing. This is the type of book that I feel like you have to read in one to two sittings or read multiple times. There were a lot of names, a lot of places, and a lot of things happening. Usually, a book like this would interest me, but I think there was not a good enough balance between all those things. It all was a little too much.

There’s also the issue of the language used… I found it a bit jarring, knowing that a white, straight, adult man had written the book. There were slurs ranging from the “r” word, used quite liberally, the “n” word, written more than a few times, and the “f” slur, used possibly only twice. Typically the language in a book does not bother me this much, but they were used recklessly. The book is by a white, straight man who is writing the perspective of another white, straight man. He began writing it 23 years ago, and it was published as a hardcover book in 2009; I think, by then, there was enough awareness to know which words people should not use.

I know that I am most likely not the target audience for this book. I could see a teenage boy really enjoying it, for better or for worse. But I thought on top of the iffy language, rather unlikeable characters, and slew of penis jokes, the book was convoluted and often just gross.

A Brief Summary (Spoilers!)

The book follows the two young men who go to a party, where they meet an amateur magician who may have real powers. A dog follows David home, Molly, and John calls Dave in the middle of the night, saying there is a monster there. John says he took the soy sauce that night and gives the syringe to Dave, who accidentally injects himself with it when he puts it in his pocket.

A few people from the party were found dead, so John and David are questioned by the police. Dave starts receiving phone calls from John, who is dead in the other room, but not permanently. The calls are from the future, telling Dave to go to the magician’s house. The police go there as well, shoot David, and then Molly, the dog, starts speaking as John, saying that Dave has to go to Vegas.

The magician is being possessed by bugs, taking over his body and naming itself “Shitload”. Gunshots do nothing, and Shitload kidnaps Dave, who wakes up in a truck with John and some other partygoers on their way to Vegas. There’s a battle scene in Vegas with a bunch of scorpion monsters and Shadow People, but eventually the boys escape.

A year passes and the boys are investigating strange phenomena caused by the Shadow People. They can see unusual things because of the residual effects of the soy sauce. They go to Molly’s previous owner’s home and find Jim Sullivan’s sister, Amy; Jim had died at the battle in Vegas.

The boys build a bomb, which is accidentally eaten by the dog. They follow the Shadow People to an abandoned mall, where the boys are transported to another dimension. They meet followers of the god Korrok, a name they’ve heard through this whole story, who commands the Shadow People. They’re able to flee right as the bomb detonates (outside of Molly, thankfully).

The story is narrated by Dave, telling this to a reporter, Arnie, who wanted to hear Dave’s story. However, the reporter learns, with Dave’s help, that he is actually dead and has been this whole time; he was most likely killed when he reached out to Dave for the story. He disappears.

The epilogue details the boys finding another dimensional portal. They are told that they will save that dimension, and they are the heroes those people have been waiting for; they leave, though, and resume playing basketball. Another group of teenagers enters the portal and saves everyone.

A Bad Trip

This book really did feel like a bad trip. I enjoyed a few parts of it here and there, and I liked the character of Amy Sullivan; however, when she amassed too much agency, she was highly objectified by the main character, talking about her boobs or her skin or some other physical aspect. She was easily the smartest character of them all, and the one with the most depth; however, the narrator, Dave, really only saw her as a means to an end.

Even at the end of the book, when we learn that Dave has been replaced by a Shadow Person—his “double” killed the real Dave and left him in his backyard shed—he begs Amy to fly out to Utah and escape, because he knows that one day he will become a “monster” and attack her. She does, to both of their dismay; however, Dave starts saying that he is annoyed with how often she calls. It’s shallow and disappointing, especially knowing that she is the only female character in the book, besides a dog, and she is treated horribly.

Even in writing the description of the book, I was not sure I had read the entire thing. The plot seemed almost non-linear, which would make sense with the idea; however, if that was the goal, it did not really work. I felt confused for the whole ride.

I wanted to like this book because I was intrigued by the rest of this series. I have seen some of Jason Pargin’s videos on TikTok, and I enjoy his storytelling, at least with that medium. But I cannot recommend this book to anyone, unless you like feeling massively confused and quite underwhelmed. Plus, a little angry to boot. The title wasn’t even correct; at least with They Both Die At the End, the author followed through on his promise. In the future, I think I’ll stick to Jason’s TikToks.

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Total pages read so far, 2024: 12,339

Total books read so far, 2024: 34

Next book: Confessions of a Forty-Something F**k Up by Alexandra Potter