Book Review: THIS BOOK IS FULL OF SPIDERS – SERIOUSLY DUDE DON’T TOUCH IT

This Book is Full of Spiders – Seriously Dude Don’t Touch It is David Wong’s follow-up to his cult hit, John Dies At the End (which is now a cult film). It’s a comedy/horror/science fiction blend which follows two hapless schlubs, David and John as they try to fight off a so–called zombie plague in the US town of ‘Undisclosed’. Now, ‘Undisclosed’ isn’t the name of the town, it’s just that Wong (the narrator) refuses to let you know where it is because the place is so weird.

This Book of Full of Spiders is close to 500 pages in length and the book moves along at quiet a decent pace, however, it does feel that it needed another edit, maybe excising a few sequences here or there which drag the plot down in the book’s mid-section. At this point the book splits into a three-way narrative, which tells the story from the perspective of David, John and Amy (David’s one handed girlfriend) – and at one point the tale (tail?) is even told from the perspective of David’s dog!

Wong knows his audience and he fills the book with plenty of pop culture references from a variety of different places. His tongue is firmly in his cheek; however one can’t but feel that the book is something of a covert swipe at the Bush Administration’s foreign policy. Maybe that’s reading too much into a book which begins with its protagonists urinating off a water tower, before discovering a military vehicle manned by a selection of GI Joe action figures? Maybe not.

This Book is Full of Spiders – Seriously Dude Don’t Touch is a good read. It may lack depth, but for the most part it’s funny and exciting and it should (like John Dies At The End) find a cult following. It gets a lot right, but it gets even more Wong! David Wong.

This Book Is Full Of Spiders – Seriously Dude Don’t Touch It is out now from Titan Books.