| This Book Is Full of Spiders: Seriously, Dude, Don't Touch It | |
| Author: | David Wong |
| Country: | United States |
| Language: | English |
| Published: | 2012, Thomas Dunne Books |
| Media Type: | Print, e-book, audiobook |
| Pages: | 416 pages |
| Isbn: | 0312546343 |
| Preceded By: | John Dies at the End |
| Followed By: | What the Hell Did I Just Read |
This Book Is Full of Spiders: Seriously, Dude, Don't Touch It (also known under its working title of John and Dave and the Fifth Wall) is a 2012 comic lovecraftian horror novel written by Jason Pargin under the pseudonym of David Wong.[1] The novel is a sequel to Wong's book John Dies at the End, which was initially published as a webserial and later as a printed novel. This Book Is Full of Spiders was first published in hardback on October 2, 2012 through Thomas Dunne Books and chronicles the further adventures of John and Dave,[2] who are living in an Undisclosed American Midwest town, which has a long history of horrific occurrences with supernatural roots. John and Dave have the unique ability to see things that ordinary people cannot after taking a mysterious drug known as the "Soy Sauce" during events of John Dies at the End.
While attending court-ordered therapy session with Dr. Bob Tennet, David shows him a video of a man walking through a door and disappearing instantly, suggesting that the man was teleported someplace else, neglecting to mention that he and John have found and used multiple such doors throughout the city of [Undisclosed]. That night, David is attacked by a spider-like creature in his bedroom, but manages to fight it off. Police officer Burgess arrives to investigate the disturbance, but even looking directly at it, he cannot see the spider, who climbs into his throat. Dave and John take him to the hospital, where the creature takes control of Burgess' body and escapes after killing several people. John proceeds to track him down, but Burgess comes back after David in his home, who manages to decapitate it, before discovering that the spider has laid eggs in his room, which are now hatching. Superstar police detective Falconer arrives to question David, who manages to convince him of the invisible threat. Falconer attempts to quarantine the room, but John and Dave decide to burn the spiders along with the house instead. This backfires when the spiders escape and begin attacking firefighters on the scene, instantly turning their bodies into the violent monsters "like Optimus Prime made of meat". The entire town is locked off by military, and John and Dave escape through a portal door, but become separated and John believes David to be dead.
John travels to a town two hours away where David's girlfriend Amy is attending college and convinces her that they will go back for David soon, and proceeds to spend a week drinking heavily to numb his pain, while panic spreads throughout the country. David is put into the hospital grounds, where a government agency known as REPER had established a quarantine area and uses his unique ability to see the spiders to identity the infected among the new arrivals, who are then immediately executed and burned, keeping the hospital infection-free. Dr. Albert Marcony arrives to investigate the outbreak and reveals to Dave his findings: many of the infected remain completely lucid for days and may potentially never "turn" into monsters at all. An old tunnel in the basement is discovered and a group attempts to make a break through it. Amy decides to get to David by turning herself in, but is stopped by a group of zombie enthusiast survivalists, and John is captured instead. He is taken to the REPER command center in an asylum next to the hospital and discovers Bob Tennet running the operation before meeting with Falconer. The two decide to break out and John improvises by blowing up oxygen tanks, compromising the containment area and causing the entire REPER force to pull out of town. Amy joins the zombie enthusiasts who travel to [Undisclosed] believing they could help the situation. They venture into the now abandoned asylum building and when the group from the hospital arrives through a tunnel, they panic and massacre them all, only for the sounds to attract the actual monsters, who slaughter them in turn. David's dog Molly leads Amy into the REPER command center, where Amy begins to gain access to their system.
John improvises a rescue mission for David by ramping his Cadillac over the quarantine's security perimeter, then using it to breach it from the inside. A town mob that believes everyone inside the hospital to be infected and beyond hope attempts to stop them, but John and Dave escape through a portal door and reach the asylum, where they reunite with Amy. They meet an infected man named Carlos, who reveals to them the true extent of the situation: there are way, way more infected than anyone estimates, and it had been that way for a very, very long time. However, most of the infected either have no idea or manage to keep their parasites in check, and the outbreak happened only because Tennet and others like him have found an infrasound frequency that causes the spiders to turn their hosts into monsters and go into frenzy. Because anyone, anywhere can be carrying a parasite and the infected are clearly recognized as no longer human, the entire scenario was engineered to cause a mass paranoia, which will lead to the breakdown of society, and the government now plans to carpet-bomb the entire town to hide the fact that only a small minority was ever infected.
John, David and Amy decide to stop the aerial bombardment by destroying the REPER signal jammer which prevents the inhabitants from getting the truth out. They bring out the "furgun" - a weapon they acquired on a previous occasion which can shape reality according to its wielder, but is extremely dangerous and difficult to control. They reach the jammer, where they are apprehended by REPER and Dr. Tennet, but Falconer, disguised as a REPER operative, busts them out and together they take Tennet into the blast zone, but he refuses to call off the attack. With only minutes left, John arranges the town inhabitants into the shape of a giant human penis, proving to the pilots that people inside [Undisclosed] are undeniably human. The bombs are still released onto the REPER command center, destroying all signs of their involvement. Desperate to finish his mission Tennet emits the special signal, which turns out the entire REPER force, who have been infected all along, into monsters who begin attacking the military. The "shadow men" - malevolent beings outside of time and reality - begin closing in on John and David, who in panic uses the furgun to summon a traditional depiction of Jesus, which burns the shadow men as well as the spiders that control the REPER force. A stray bullet is about to hit Amy, but Amy's dog Molly puts herself in its path, and with the signal jammer down John livestreams the video of small, harmless, definitely non-zombified girl crying over her dog to show that the people of [Undisclosed] are still human to the entire world. In the end, only 68 people are confirmed to have been truly infected, while 406 more have been killed during the mass hysteria. David makes a hobby of telling a brand new version of the events to each reporter who approaches him and plans to make up an even crazier one for his eventual book.
Critical reception for This Book Is Full of Spiders has been predominantly positive.[3] [4] Publishers Weekly and Tor.com both praised the novel, Tor.com highlighting the character of Amy as one of their favorite parts of the book.[5] [6] SF Signal gave This Book Is Full of Spiders an overwhelmingly positive review, stating that it was "Kevin Smith's Clerks meets H. P. Lovecraft" and that "this exceptional thriller [...] makes zombies relevant again."[7]
A third book in the series was released on October 3, 2017, under the title What the Hell Did I Just Read: A Novel of Cosmic Horror.