What The Hell Did I Just Read?

I have long been a fan of David Wong's writing. At a time of my life when I was spending far too much time browsing through the articles on cracked.com, I found that, while his content generally wasn't as interesting as some of their other columnists, he was probably the most talented as a writer, with an agile turn of phrase that elevated him above the crowd and suggested he could go on to achieve more.

So it's not too surprising that he has fostered a successful career as a novelist. His debut, John Dies at the End, was a well-deserved break-out hit, a thoroughly enjoyable horror romp through small-town America with a number of unexpected twists and some imaginative world building along the way. Its sequel, This Book is Full of Spiders, took it all a step further, with a grander scope and clever interplay between two narrative viewpoints. Then came Fancy Suits and Futuristic Violence, still my favourite of his novels, an outstanding near-future sci-fi work blending action, comedy and social commentary.

So I was disappointed to conclude that his latest book missed the mark somewhat. Picking up from a few months after where Spiders left off, it finds the protagonist David, his best friend John, and girlfriend Amy still residing in their small town (location undisclosed for security reasons) and now working as something like freelance paranormal investigators. So when a child goes missing, they are called in to work out how she could have disappeared from her bedroom with no sign that anyone else had been there. Perhaps the fact she predicted her own kidnapping could have something to do with it too...

From there, the action unfolds from three perspectives as told alternately by the three protagonists, and I felt as though all of the book's shortcomings ultimately stem from this approach. It didn't help that I found all three characters much less likeable this time around, as David mopes from scene to scene, John's puerile exaggerations run out of steam and Amy's hand-wringing nervousness starts to grate very early on. And the plot is just a mess, as various monsters flit in and out, an Iraq veteran goes on the warpath, a biker gang pursue their kidnapped children and an inter-dimensional order attempts to control things. And while not enough attention is really given to any of these threads, creating a hyperactive story line, the narrative felt somehow ponderous. Without wishing to give too much away, the fact that David and John can see things for how they really are means that the actions of the other characters - their minds under the monsters' control - become frustrating and irritating. The parts told by Amy in particular do little to advance things as we already know she's not seeing the whole picture. The supporting cast are, as a consequence, underdeveloped. And I found the ending to be very weak, as hardly anything is resolved at all.

That's not to say that this book is a complete loss. The dialogue still snaps, the interactions between David and John in particular are at times genuinely funny, and Wong's imagination when it comes to creating supernatural beings really is unlike anything else I've come across. So while I don't think he's run out of ideas just yet, it would take something pretty special to keep this particular series going.

2.5/5

Here's some more supernatural, Midwestern hyperactivity: