The thing about John Dies at the End is that, despite the highly visible spoiler, it still left some room for a review. Who is this John fellow anyway, for example, and what kinds of emotions will I experience when he dies? The problem with David Wong’s finally-arrived sequel, This Book Is Full of Spiders with its helpful sticker warning of Seriously, Dude, Don’t Touch It, is that pretty well sums the book up. It is very much full of spiders, that book. Invisible spiders, on the bright(?) side, unless you are like David and his friend John Cheese and have been dosed with an alien drug called Soy Sauce on the street, which gives you all kinds of time-and-space-spanning knowledge and also allows you to see all the invisible things in the world that your brain usually protects you from, like (in this case) giant far-too-large spiders that intend to crawl into your brain and take over control of your actions and decisions, possibly while leaving you unaware of this fact.

The good news is, that’s pretty much the only problem with David Wong’s new book. Just like JDatE, it is funny and terrifying and occasionally entirely sweet, only this time it was plotted as a novel instead of a long, rambling series of internet stories that got turned into a novel at the last second, which means it works a lot better structurally, with all manner of foreshadowing and sinking “oh hell, that really just / is about to happen/ed” feelings, and he even got to toss in another mention of the Monkeysphere.

Shorter version of this review: man, I’m happy I read this book, and man I’m sad that there probably won’t be another one anytime soon[1], considering the five year gap between these two. Also, I’m glad I finally reviewed it, because I’m caught up again and, not that reading tons of old comics isn’t gratifying in itself, but it will be nice to be reading actual books again also. Truth.

[1] I wonder if there will be a movie, though? That wouldn’t suck.