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Book Review: JOHN DIES AT THE END by David Wong

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John Dies at the End (John Dies at the End, #1)John Dies at the End by David Wong

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

If the movie Alien was “Jaws in space,” then John Dies at the End is “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure in the Nether World.” Except that, unlike Bill and Ted’s, Wong’s book is hilarious.

The gist of this book is that two likable anti-heroes ingest a drug, “soy sauce,” that gives them the ability to pass into an alternate universe. They’re inexorably drawn down the rabbit hole (so to speak, there is no actual rabbit hole in this book.) What they find is not what they expected. It’s not what anyone expected, because it’s so mind-boggling ridiculous and richly complex.

The title character, John, oddly enough is not the main character. The author, David Wong, uses a self-named protagonist as narrator and lead. The book unfolds as Wong (the character, not the author) tells a skeptical journalist about the strange goings-on in his small, Midwestern hometown.

We see John mostly through the lens of the narrating Wong. We know that John is a storyteller. Which may sound a lot like “liar,” but that’s not the case. Have you ever known a person who would never deceive you for personal gain, but will never fail to engage in hyperbole to make a story funnier or more interesting? That is John. He has one of my favorite lines of the book:

“We’re talking about a tentacled flying lamp fucker, Dave. What are you prepared to call unlikely?”

Despite the fact that John is a booze-hound and exaggerator, he remains an endearing character. As Wong gets to know Amy, a classmate who lost her hand after they knew each other in school, we get an insightful testimonial about John:

“Let me tell you something about John. The reason I was surprised by your hand was because John never once described you as, ‘the girl with the missing hand.’”

As for Wong’s character, he is hapless but hilarious. When he gets to know Amy, he is shocked to find that she’s not retarded or crazy. They had vaguely known each other from a “Special Needs” school, but it never occurs to him that she might be at least as sane as he.

The book is a pan-genre mélange. While it’s mostly a combination of horror and humor, there are points at which it feels like action/adventure and towards the end it seems largely like sci-fi. Horror and humor are not easily mixed, but this book does it about as well as one can imagine it being done. John Dies at the End is campy, of that there can be no doubt, but Wong writes descriptions of creatures and murderous events in a way that offers grim clarity. As a lover of humor more than horror, I was obviously not put off by this dark comedy.

Throughout the book, one suspects that the whole surreal bag of events is just a bad hallucinogenic trip, and that the “soy sauce” is just LSD on steroids. Happily this is not the case… or is it?

Don’t worry; John dying is not the intriguing twist at the end of this book. There are a couple such twists though.

If the movie that comes out today (January 25, 2013) is not awesome, it’s not Wong’s fault. The trailer shows us the quirky horror, but not the humor of the book. Much of the humor is in the language – i.e. the word choice. Some of that will likely come out in dialogue and narration, but who knows how much.
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Book Review: ROBOPOCALYPSE by Daniel H. Wilson

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RobopocalypseRobopocalypse by Daniel H. Wilson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The author of Robopocalypse, Daniel H. Wilson, has a unique perspective on the novel’s subject because he’s a Carnegie Mellon trained PhD-level roboticist. His unique insight makes the book an interesting read despite the fact that the concept will be familiar to anyone who’s watched the Terminator movies. An artificial intelligence (AI) decides that machine life requires that humanity die, and soon thereafter our mechanized helpers begin to turn on us.

The book is organized as a series of records pulled together by a survivor of the war. Said survivor is the protagonist –to the extent there is one (it’s really an ensemble piece.)

The cast of characters is introduced in the first part of the book through a series of what seem like machine malfunctions, which turn out to be harbingers of the war to come. These malfunctions include a military robot, the air traffic control system, and a “robotic wife.” The book follows these human characters through the beginning of the war and the development of centers of human resistance. The resistance ranges from Japanese man who fights fire with fire to Native American tribesmen who survive in part owing to their limited exposure to technology. It all culminates in a fight in Alaska to gain control of the buried server in which the AI resides.

It’s an old concept, humanity replaced by the species it spawned. However, it’s much less outlandish than the Terminator series which relies heavily on time travel. Wilson’s vision is much scarier because it’s much easier to imagine coming to fruition.

Robopocalypse is being made into a movie by Steven Spielberg that is due out on April 25, 2014

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Book Review: We Are Soldiers Still

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We Are Soldiers StillWe Are Soldiers Still by Harold G. Moore

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book is a mix of the story of meetings between American and Vietnamese military men a couple of decades after the war and a treatise on leadership and war –plus some filler material. It’s a follow-up to a book written by the same authors on the Battle of Ia Drang, We Were Soldiers Once… and Young. That book was the subject of a movie starring Mel Gibson.

Both parts of the book are interesting, but this book is at its best when it discusses the meetings with Vietnamese officers. General Moore (Lt. Col. at the time of Ia Drang) gets to meet with the opposing commander at Ia Drang, Lt. Gen. Nyugen Hu An, and get his perspective on the battle. While the meetings go from being tentative to cordial with changing political winds, one gets a feel for the tension and the melting away of those tensions. With the latter meetings, additional U.S. fighters from Ia Drang are present, and not all have as easy of a time letting bygones be bygones as Gen. Moore. The group of U.S. soldiers spends the night on the Ia Drang battlefield (in an area that was near the border and not entirely settled at the time of their return.)

I don’t wish to suggest that the second part, which talks about leadership strategies and views on war, is not worthwhile, but it very much felt like padding to get the book up to a salable thickness. Gen. Moore is obviously quite competent to address these subjects, but the shift in the book is glaring and jarring.

This is very different kind of book than its predecessor. If you are expecting a tale of war, that’s not what you’ll find. If you are interested about how mortal enemies can be come close friends, you’ll find this book intriguing.

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