May 10, 2005

John Dies at the End

Posted over at Blogcritics.

I've only read one e-book in my entire life. Don't get me wrong, I love to read. There's nothing I'd rather do than get lost for hours in a good novel. But while I'm sure there are plenty of talented e-writers, I have no real desire to spend hours reading from a computer screen (although, as a blogger, that's what I do anyway).

But when I came across John Dies at the End - or JDATE for short - through an Internet classified ad, I couldn't stop reading until I had finished the entire story. Written by David Wong, webmaster of Pointless Waste of Time, JDATE was written over several years, coming a few chapters at a time each year around Halloween.

The actual story is hard to describe. It's a comedy-horror, which Wong calls a Horrortacular. It's like reading Army of Darkness, except it's funnier and actually scary at times. But the biggest surprise I came across when reading my first e-book was the writing style. It was impressive. Very impressive. Wong develops his characters as well as any published author I've read, and his visualizations and foreshadowing make the story come alive.

The best representation of Wong's writing is JDATE's prologue, which I remember reading in an e-mail years before I came across the entire novel. This passage not only sets the playful tone of this horror story, but it also eerily foreshadows the novel's powerful ending:

In the course of solving the following riddle, you will either reveal the terrifying secret at the very core of existence, or go utterly mad in the attempt.

Let's say you have an ax. The kind that you could use, in a pinch, to hack a man's head off. And let's say that very situation comes up and for some very solid reasons you behead a man. On the follow-through, though, the handle of the ax snaps in half in a spray of splinters. So the next day you take it to the ax store down the block and get a new handle, fabricating a story for the guy behind the counter and explaining away the reddish dark stains as barbeque sauce.

Now, that next spring you find in your garage a creature that looks like a cross-bred badger and anaconda. A badgerconda. And so you grab your trusty ax and chop off one of the beast's heads, but in the process the blade of the ax strikes the concrete floor and shatters.

This means another trip to McMillan & Sons Ax Mart. As soon as you get home with your newly-headed ax, though, you meet the reanimated body of the guy you beheaded last year. He's also got a new head attached and it's wearing that unique expression of "you're the man who killed me last Spring" resentment that one so rarely encounters in everyday life.

You brandish your ax. He takes a long look at the weapon with his squishy, rotting eyes and in a gargly voice he screams, "that's the same ax that slayed me!"

Is he right?

While JDOT doesn't attempt to tackle any contemporary social or political issues, it's a fun read. I'm still anxiously awaiting the Epilogue, which Wong has promised to release this summer. And rumor has it, Wong is working on getting the e-book published on dead-tree. And it deserves it.

I was so impressed with John Dies at the End that I have rethought my aversion to e-books. And although I still don't like reading from a computer screen for hours, sometimes it's worth it.

Posted by Elyas at 06:45 PM | Comments (9) | TrackBack

May 02, 2005

Book review

I recently joined Blogcritics, a community of bloggers that reviews movies, books, music, and politics. (Hopefully) it will help generate traffic for Ablogistan, but if nothing else, it gives me more to write about. Below is my first submission, a review of Looking for Alaska by John Green:

I don't know why, but John Green's Looking for Alaska is often classified as a children's or young adult's book. While Green's debut novel may be a little less in-your-face than a lot of modern fiction, it's philosophical narrative - although sometimes over-stated - makes it worthy of comparison with the great literature of today.

Pudge Halter, the main character in Alaska is obsessed with last words. And it is the last words of Francois Rabelais that set the tone for the novel and inspire Pudge to leave home and seek adventure in an Alabama boarding school: I go to seek the Great Perhaps.

Pudge does encounter the Great Perhaps, and it is not as exciting or easy as he had imagined it to be.

With comical dialogue and some of the most identifiable characters I have encountered, Alaska, if nothing else, is a pleasure to read. Although it's not a major secret, I want to avoid giving away the major plot twist in the book, which is hard, since the second-half of the novel is based on this particular occurence. But the reason it is better not to know what will turn the story beforehand is because the first half of the novel is so well written, you'll become entirely engrossed with the Pudge Halter's circle of friends, adopting them as your own.

The humor of the first half is equally balanced by the melancholoy of the second. It is extremely rare that I am emotionally moved by any piece of art - from film to music to book - like I was by Alaska. Green manipulates our emotions to drive home philosophical questions about life and death.

Another famous set of last words throughout the novel illustrates Green's inquisitive look at mortality and human existence. Before dying, Simon Bolivar asked, "How will I ever get out of this labyrinth?"

While you may not find the spiritual answer to human suffering in Green's novel, you will at least be reminded of some of the important questions. Green has written a masterful novel to begin his career, and if he continues to write like this, he has a wonderful career in literature ahead of him.

Posted by Elyas at 02:36 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack