John Dies at the End

This has the comedy beats of a children's series along the lines of Goosebumps or Animorphs and the language and predilections of a teenage boy, but the subject matter of what should be an adult. Stylistically it reminds me of Snow Crash. A type of angsty adult man-child 'poonin his way through traffic like a cool guy. Failing on purpose and attracting manic pixie dream girls. If you like Deadpool or non sequitur humor like Family Guy, you'll probably be into it but personally I find it really annoying. Glad the author got his bag on this though. Good for you, bro.

This book reads like it was written by a late Gen Xer at the turn of the millennium, and by that of course I mean that it has aged terribly. I could not recommend it. But also, I was a white boy in Southern Illinois in the late 90s myself, so I understand where it comes from and cut it more slack that I should. I stuck with it because some friends insist that the rest of the series gets better.

This begins as crass fun but it becomes very clear that it was never envisaged that this book might be read by someone other than a horny American white boy

Tries to go for funny and modern/internet-ish language, but ends up just being just a mishmash of mentions of the word "penis", disjointed episodes revolving around cthulhu-esque monsters, and a smattering of slurs (both racial and mental-health related) that maybe are meant to "be in character" but seemed gratuitous to me.

I was amused and entertained at first, but after reading a good third of the book I realized that the only ideas the author had were to keep dialing up the literal shit, dicks and the slurs.