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John Dies at the End by David Wong

Two slackers stumble into a world of reality-warping horrors, shadowy conspiracies, and jokes as dark as the void itself. Equal parts terrifying and absurd, John Dies at the End feels like late-night internet folklore brought screaming to life—and dares you to keep turning the pages.

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In John Dies at the End, did you enjoy ...

... the gleefully profane horror-comedy, where gore and a punchline share the same breath?

The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins

If you laughed your way through the meat-monster exorcism and the Soy Sauce’s gruesome side effects in John Dies at the End, you’ll love how The Library at Mount Char marries splatter with deadpan wit. Hawkins serves up cosmic-scale nastiness and mordant jokes as casually as Dave shrugs off a call from John about extradimensional tyrants like Korrok. It’s vicious, blasphemous, and frequently hilarious—very much that “terrible things are happening, but I’m going to crack a joke anyway” energy you enjoyed.

... paranormal investigations unfolding in a modern city with bureaucratic magic?

Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch

Miss the chaos of Dave and John taking calls about flesh-doors and Shadow People, then stumbling into full-on apocalypses? In Rivers of London, constable Peter Grant ends up in a London police unit that files paperwork for poltergeists and interviews river gods—basically the competent-cop version of your favorite slackers. It’s got that same case-of-the-week momentum you liked when Dave and John play ghostbusters, but with sharper investigatory beats and plenty of dry humor.

... reality-melting set pieces that escalate from bizarre to apocalyptic?

The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway

If the Soy Sauce’s reality warping—time-slips, body horror, and a possible universe next door under Korrok’s thumb—was your jam, The Gone-Away World delivers catastrophe on the same surreal wavelength. When the world breaks, ideas become literal, and the rules shift underfoot, echoing the way Dave’s world tilts from a haunted basement to interdimensional war. It’s wild, funny, and constantly one-upping itself in the exact way those escalating JDatE set pieces do.

... a self-deprecating first-person narrator you’re never entirely sure you can trust?

The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall

Dave’s running commentary—equal parts shrug, panic, and “am I making this up?”—is half the fun of John Dies at the End. The Raw Shark Texts gives you another narrator whose mind might be lying to him and to you, as language predators and conceptual threats (not unlike the Sauce’s ‘knowledge’ that rewires Dave) prowl the margins. You’ll get that same queasy thrill of piecing together what’s real when even the hero can’t promise the truth.

... rapid-fire, absurdist banter that punctures cosmic horror with punchlines?

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

If John calling at 3 a.m. to drag Dave into an eldritch mess made you grin, Adams’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy runs that same gag at lightspeed—cosmic nonsense met with perfectly timed quips. Where JDatE undercuts meat-demons and Korrok with sarcasm, Arthur Dent & Ford Prefect undercut the end of Earth with deadpan wit. The jokes come as relentlessly as Dave’s asides, keeping the universe’s madness not just survivable, but hilarious.

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