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John Dies at the End - Jason Pargin (series)
Feb. 10th, 2026 01:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sholioSo I read the fourth book in this series (by accident, not realizing it was the fourth) a couple of years ago, and stalled out on book 1. After reading the SCP Foundation book last week, I decided there would never be a better time for a cosmic horror-comedy book I already owned - and I was so right, I marathoned the entire series this past week and absolutely loved it. There's a new book coming out in 2026 and I cannot WAIT.
These books, and especially the first half of book 1 (by far the weakest part of the series), are dudebro-ish and sometimes very early-2000s deliberately transgressive humor (i.e. South Park - this gets MUCH less as it goes on, but never really goes away), and they are sometimes lovely and insightful, and sometimes just incredibly stupid, and I can see why someone would bounce off them, especially considering how I struggled to get through the early parts of book 1. But after four books, I love these characters so much that I will follow them anywhere. Even through the stupid parts!
These books, especially the first one, are primarily narrated by Dave, a slacker dudebro in the general style of early 2000s movies etc (this is very clearly in the style of the Kevin Smith movies, South Park, and other things of that era). Dave is a depressed loner working at a video store whose best and only friend is John, a Bad Idea Friend who takes every drug he gets his hands on, belongs to a shitty band, and drags Dave into a never-ending series of terrible, terrible life choices.
The plot-relevant one of these is taking a new drug sweeping their depressed Midwestern town of [Undisclosed], a drug which looks like mobile and intelligent used motor oil. It turns out that it kills most of the people who take it, but they are among the few survivors, and are suddenly able to step outside time and space, and see everything going on their small depressed Midwestern town -- all the ghosts, all the cosmic entities. They can uncontrollably travel in time, they can freeze time, and they're swept up in an attempt to fix a series of goddawful cosmic horror rifts in time and space that are wrecking their whole dimension.
The third member of the group is drawn in during the first book when she becomes a victim and later a friend: Amy, who was shattered physically and emotionally in a car accident, and then comes to the attention of cosmic horrors; starts off as one of the people they're trying to help, and gets sucked into weird spacetime shenanigans with things that she (unlike John and Dave) can't actually see. It's with Amy's introduction that the first book feels like it really kicks off and gets good.
The body count is high and gory, there are tons of gore and grossout humor and some incredibly soft, emotional and deeply affecting moments as well. This is a series where
If whether the dog dies is an important factor in your reading or viewing, please click
These books are so hard to rec, because you have to slog through the worst part of the series (the first half of book 1) to get to the almost transcendentally good late middle of book one; it can be lovely enough to make me cry or just spectacularly stupid within a chapter or two. A lot of stuff is brought up and then never explained. But sometimes the explanations made me put the book down and have feelings for a while. It made me laugh a lot. There are so many bodily fluids and terrible bodily function jokes. Some of its best moments involve the characters being forced to contend with the fact that life is complicated and stupid and cruel, and the best thing you can do, maybe the only thing you can do, is to simply be kind, and make the kind choice, if that's the only choice you have to make.
Sometimes defeating the apocalypse cultists means sitting down with them and understanding their heartbreaking loneliness and convincing them to walk away because you can be the person who turns them around and becomes the only person in their lives to ever believe in them and tell them that they can be something better than this.
... And sometimes it involves a triple-barreled shotgun and a plan involving a room full of fake silicon butts. That's what this series is like.
( A spoiler from book 4 )
These books, and especially the first half of book 1 (by far the weakest part of the series), are dudebro-ish and sometimes very early-2000s deliberately transgressive humor (i.e. South Park - this gets MUCH less as it goes on, but never really goes away), and they are sometimes lovely and insightful, and sometimes just incredibly stupid, and I can see why someone would bounce off them, especially considering how I struggled to get through the early parts of book 1. But after four books, I love these characters so much that I will follow them anywhere. Even through the stupid parts!
These books, especially the first one, are primarily narrated by Dave, a slacker dudebro in the general style of early 2000s movies etc (this is very clearly in the style of the Kevin Smith movies, South Park, and other things of that era). Dave is a depressed loner working at a video store whose best and only friend is John, a Bad Idea Friend who takes every drug he gets his hands on, belongs to a shitty band, and drags Dave into a never-ending series of terrible, terrible life choices.
The plot-relevant one of these is taking a new drug sweeping their depressed Midwestern town of [Undisclosed], a drug which looks like mobile and intelligent used motor oil. It turns out that it kills most of the people who take it, but they are among the few survivors, and are suddenly able to step outside time and space, and see everything going on their small depressed Midwestern town -- all the ghosts, all the cosmic entities. They can uncontrollably travel in time, they can freeze time, and they're swept up in an attempt to fix a series of goddawful cosmic horror rifts in time and space that are wrecking their whole dimension.
The third member of the group is drawn in during the first book when she becomes a victim and later a friend: Amy, who was shattered physically and emotionally in a car accident, and then comes to the attention of cosmic horrors; starts off as one of the people they're trying to help, and gets sucked into weird spacetime shenanigans with things that she (unlike John and Dave) can't actually see. It's with Amy's introduction that the first book feels like it really kicks off and gets good.
The body count is high and gory, there are tons of gore and grossout humor and some incredibly soft, emotional and deeply affecting moments as well. This is a series where
some spoilers for one of the books
the big dilemma can be how do we kill some giant extradimensional maggots that pretend to be adorable human children, who everyone else sees as adorable human children, while they munch gorily on their caregivers and no one else can see it ... or maybe it's the realization that the hideous maggots are also children, deserving of care and consideration as any other children, and maybe the people you need to stop are the government agents coming to kill them.If whether the dog dies is an important factor in your reading or viewing, please click
this spoiler
there is a dog, and the dog dies.These books are so hard to rec, because you have to slog through the worst part of the series (the first half of book 1) to get to the almost transcendentally good late middle of book one; it can be lovely enough to make me cry or just spectacularly stupid within a chapter or two. A lot of stuff is brought up and then never explained. But sometimes the explanations made me put the book down and have feelings for a while. It made me laugh a lot. There are so many bodily fluids and terrible bodily function jokes. Some of its best moments involve the characters being forced to contend with the fact that life is complicated and stupid and cruel, and the best thing you can do, maybe the only thing you can do, is to simply be kind, and make the kind choice, if that's the only choice you have to make.
Sometimes defeating the apocalypse cultists means sitting down with them and understanding their heartbreaking loneliness and convincing them to walk away because you can be the person who turns them around and becomes the only person in their lives to ever believe in them and tell them that they can be something better than this.
... And sometimes it involves a triple-barreled shotgun and a plan involving a room full of fake silicon butts. That's what this series is like.
( A spoiler from book 4 )
