John Dies at the End
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| John Dies at the End | |
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| Author | David Wong |
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| Cover artist | Christian Dovel |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Horror, Comedy novel |
| Publisher | Permuted Press |
| Publication date | August 15, 2007 |
| Media type | e-Book & Print (Paperback) |
| ISBN | ISBN 0978970764 |
| Preceded by | N/A |
| Followed by | John and Dave and the Temple of Xalnaathuthuthu |
John Dies at the End, (JDatE) is a cult-hit novel by David Wong. It was originally published online as a serial, but has since been published as a paperback after undergoing a revision to improve the story's continuity and remove plot holes. However, both the original and the revised versions are still available online for free.
Contents |
[edit] Plot summary
The main characters, John and David are friends from a town in the midwest, referred to in the book only as Undisclosed. Dave goes to help John's band play at a local party, just outside of town at the lake. At the party, Dave finds Molly, the dog; and meets a strange "Jamaican" dealing a drug called 'Soy Sauce'. After taking the drug, John begins to see things. Thinking John is having a bad trip, Dave decides to takes John to the hospital but, after Dave receives an impossible phone call, they end up at the home of "Big Jim" Sullivan and his sister Amy A.K.A "Cucumber", trying to return Molly. Amy tells Dave that she's afraid that Jim is dead, he didn't come home after the party. So Dave does the only logically thing that he can do, he goes to work, at the video store.
At work Dave accidentally injects himself with the 'Soy Sauce' and he starts having weird experiences as well. Dave and John, are brought down to the police station for questioning regarding others who have taken the drug, and are now missing or dead. While they are being questioned, John is taken to the hospital and Dave receives another strange phone call, telling him to go to the Jamaican's trailer. Dave finds the Jamaican's stash of 'Soy Sauce', but is interrupted by the police, getting shot in the process. Before getting shot the Soy Sauce causes him to go back in time. There he sees an assembly line making bullets. He says "hey" to the man inspecting them causing him to miss one defective bullet. This is the bullet that the policeman shot him with, and thus survives. Molly, now possessed by John, drives a car through the trailer allowing Dave to escape. Molly leads him to John, who has been kidnapped by an evil force on its way to Las Vegas. That evil leads them to the Luxor Hotel, where Dr. Albert Marconi is having a conference on the paranormal. The conference descends into chaos as the evil attacks, and Dr. Marconi helps send it back to where it came from.
A year later, Dave and John are called into to help investigate a strange death, caused by Molly. It turns out that the evil is on the loose again in Undisclosed, and it is taking over people's bodies. And it eventually leads them to the old abandoned mall. There the evil possesses Dave and he tries to kill John, but it is ultimately defeated.
The next summer, Dave notices that someone is watching him through his television set. The feeling continues until one winter night he has an episode of missing time just as Amy disappears. While they investigate Amy's disappearance, Dave begins to feel that he may have killed her, and after finding a dead body in his tool shed, he is sure of it. When Amy reappears, however, the mystery deepens. As the darkness descends on them, Dave finally has to come to terms with who, or what, he really is.
[edit] Main Characters
David: The narrator. He and John are the only two people in Undisclosed who met with the Jamaican and took the Soy Sauce and lived to tell the tale. He and John have been friends since high school and were in the same band, though David didn't actually play an instrument, sing or have anything to do with the music. Between the two of them it is often David who has to connect the dots in their adventures, and it is usually David who first understands the true meaning of the events as they come to take place. David was a troubled child who was picked on often until he was sent to a school called Pineview, which he derisively labels a "retard school." It was here he first saw Amy.
John: David's best, and possibly only, friend since high school. John is a slacker, who takes what he can get with as little work as possible. David begged his manager to hire John at the video store he works in, named "Wally's," and during his brief time there John succeeded in sleeping with at least two customers and insulting them all in the company's customer logs. However, John is a good friend who stands by David through thick and thin. It is John who first takes the Soy Sauce and entangles David in the events that come to change their lives. Between John and David, John is the "action man" while David tends to be the "thinking man."
Amy: also called Cucumber, She is the sister of a victim of the Soy Sauce. She lives alone in big old house outside of town. Her parents died in a car accident that she survived with some injuries. She attended Pineview School with Dave.
Molly: A dog that David meets at the party where the Jamaican becomes known. The dog belongs to 'Big Jim', Amy's older brother. During the events leading up to the altercation in Las Vegas, John takes over Molly's body and uses it to communicate with David several times. Later on, what appears to be Molly causes the death of a news personality, and it becomes clear that she was duplicated and impersonated by some outside force. David and John kill the clone by feeding her mints with Bible verses printed on them, which causes her to explode, but the original Molly later returns. Later on it is revealed that there may be more to Molly than is apparent. This is when Fred Durst of Limp Bizkit is driving David and John back to David's house, and says to David "You could say I've been dogging you the entire time." He later says "Well, I ain’t Fred Durst. You’ll see what you wanna see." Given the nature of things in the story, it is a reasonable assumption to make that Molly is not a mere dog. This also explains how Molly was able to drive David's car into the Jamaican's trailer in order to rescue David.
[edit] Film adaptations
On February 21, 2008, Ain't It Cool News announced from a press release that Don Coscarelli, director of Bubba Ho-Tep, The Beastmaster, and The Phantasm series of films is set to direct a movie adaptation of this book. Don Coscarelli describes David Wong's work as something of a mash-up of Douglas Adams and Stephen King.[1]
[edit] References
- ^ Don Coscarelli's new movie will be... - Ain't It Cool News: The best in movie, TV, DVD, and comic book news
