Arctic Light

Continuing to catch up on my bookposting backlog with a book from a couple months back ...

This book is (it turns out) the fourth in the horror-comedy series that starts with John Dies at the End. I didn't actually realize this when I picked it up, because I was caught by the title and then by the first few pages of intro text which are a series of Craigslist-style ads for prosaic magical items from other universes, such as a cursed glass patio table that shows the reflection from whatever was happening there 24 hours ago ("One leg is a little shorter than the other, so it does wobble") and a DVD boxed set of a mission to recover astronaut corpses from the moon ("Also from an alternate dimension, I guess; disc 4 is scratched and may not play in your machine").

So that gives you an idea of what the whole book is like. I really didn't feel the lack of having read the previous books, because the whole thing is disjointed, deeply weird, a mishmash of different POVs and timelines and found-footage-style inserts, and it's creepy in some places, dirtybadwrong in others, and very funny. Not all of the jokes landed for me, but many of them did, and while it's dumb dudebro-ish humor at times, it's also mostly free of the cringiest sort (but see caveat about the first book at the end of this review) - that is, it's not *ist in any way I noticed, it's not mean-spirited, it's actually a surprisingly sweet book given the occasionally gross and splattery horror plot, about a group of volunteer monster-hunters who clean up alternate dimensional incursions into our world (and other weirdness). Their general terribleness at their job is only exceeded by their courage in being devoted to doing the things no one else will do.

Actually, that was one thing which worked unexpectedly well for me. I do not normally like incompetent main characters, and these guys - well, technically, two guys and a girl - are really bad at monster hunting. It works for me in part because the author has a really good sense of comic timing (e.g. one character explains that he will definitely not set the woods on fire while destroying monster eggs because he knows what he's doing; cut to everybody hanging around while the fire department extinguishes the flaming woods several hours later) but also because it really underscores that they're ordinary slackers who are struggling hard to fight with things that are Army-caliber threats and all they've got is three nerds with makeshift weapons. I ended up being drawn into the book in part just because they're so brave and so devoted to each other - they are bad at this, but they're trying so hard and they're absolutely dedicated to protecting each other as well as the town to the best of their somewhat limited abilities.

It's a funny, gory, occasionally stupid, and surprisingly upbeat horror-comedy. I really enjoyed it.

After that, I tried reading the first book (John Dies At The End) because I had enjoyed this one so much, and it is more what I was expecting for the type of book that it is - that is, extremely early-2000s edgy bro-ish humor. (The first book evidently started out as an online series of Reddit-like posts from the early 2000s, and that's exactly what it reads like.) I feel as if the latest book shows 20 years of growth, maturity, and general perspective on life ending in a fairly positive place; the first book is definitely nowhere near there yet, and I stopped a few chapters in. I'll go back to it eventually, and the rest of the series, because I like the characters enough to follow them even through the shakier bits, but I think I needed a break from the author's chaotic, balls-to-the-wall style first.