I read this a while back, and want to add it in here because it deserves discussion.

It's a fun, horrible and imaginative read.

I was grabbed by the blurb of the first edition I read from a library, which is different than the modern one. While I like the modern one - and in context of the book design itself, it's very clever - I think the original does a better job of selling the feel of the story.

It's a drug that promises an out-of-body experience with each hit. On the street they call it Soy Sauce, and users drift across time and dimensions. But some who come back are no longer human.

Suddenly a silent, otherworldly invasion is underway, and mankind needs a hero. What it gets instead is John and David, a pair of college dropouts who can barely hold down jobs.

Can these two stop the oncoming horror in time to save humanity?

No. No, they can't.

It's a foul-mouthed and creative horror story, something like Kevin Smith crossed with Lovecraft.

I think it'd make an interesting double-feature with The Gone-Away World because of the shared energy of their language, the levels of creativity, and the fact that both books are deeply funny while also being horrific.

JDatE has been described as the funniest scary book people have read, or the scariest funny book. I found it entirely entertaining and hard to put down.

Some caveats: I have a high tolerance for gore, grotesquery and low-brow humour, to an extent that it didn't occur to me that I should mention these until I saw some of the other reviews. It's a fair enough thing to mention, since they are definite features of the story. From my perspective, they're features rather than bugs because of the context and delivery.

I read John Dies At The End aloud with my partner, with regular breaks for uncontrollable laughter.

It's that kind of book.