This Book Is Full of Spiders: Seriously, Dude, Don't Touch It by David Wong
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I loved the first book in the series, John Dies at the End, for all it's absurd lovecraftian slacker humor and over-the-top dick jokes and splashy gore and time travel and rastafarian dudes asking you to drink black goo that opens your mind to all the sick and twisted things that crawl around on the surface of the world but you never quite see them.

It was a vision of perfection if you love funny horror. I kinda made a happy dance.

So why didn't I read the second book right away? IDK! I don't have any excuse!

So yeah, I'm reading this before I read Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits, because, you know, David Wong, and here's a big spoiler:

While there *are* spiders in this book, they're practically metaphorical. The novel is *really* a rip-roaring zombie-outbreak tale, again full of great humor and wry observations and a fully-slackerish mentality. It has a more streamlined plot than the previous novel, which is both a boon and slightly disappointing, because I loved how freaky the first one was, but the sense of a *really* *huge* *mess* makes this one rather shine.

Maybe you'd have to enjoy streamlined bizarro fiction to really enjoy this. Maybe you'd just have to enjoy supremely fucked-up literature in general, but still, this is pretty damn accessible. Just as David wrote, Zombies are a part of the cultural zeitgeist. Half the books on the market nowadays are tapping into this, our greatest fear, and it's not just the rotting hand jutting from the grave we fear, but the fact that *we* are the zombies.

You could call this book a wake up call. You *might* not need to drink any of that black goo, either! :)

Total popcorn fiction. Fun as hell and funny as hell. :)

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