Review: Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits by David Wong

Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits  

by David Wong 

St. Martin's Press  

Thomas Dunne Books  

Sci Fi & Fantasy

David Wong's unique, humorous voice is a major draw for his fiction. He wrote the strange paranormal investigator series, John Dies at the End (the last book, What the Hell Did I Just Read, reviewed here).

His best characters are deeply flawed and have a modus operandi, a philosophy for living.

Zoey's father, a deadbeat beat dad who happens to be a famed rich inventor, has just died, which means that people are trying to kill her since she has the key that everyone wants to unlock some technological wonder. The novel opens enticingly enough:

The radio had stopped working years ago, and so Zoey made up for it by singing a hit pop song from her time called "Butt Show (and I Don't Charge Admission)" while she plugged in the strand of Christmas lights she had tacked around the top of the car's interior. She peeled the lid off her chili, watched steam waft into the frigid air, and decided that things really could be worse. Zoey always tried to appreciate the little things in life, like the fact that just a generation ago you couldn't devote both hands to eating a bowl of fast-food chili while the car drove itself (how did people use to eat car chili? With a straw?). She had also recently upgraded her phone to one that displayed a little holographic image of the caller, but so far she had found this feature was only useful for terrifying her holophobic cat, which hardly justified the cost of the upgrade. However, a moment later that feature did allow her to see that the call that saved her life came from a man who was fond of wearing fancy suits.

And we're off to the races in her Toyota with her hopeful would-be abductor trailing close behind.

Zoey isn't sure whom to trust--just as she finds someone to trust, even becoming attracted to him, he's dead. Somehow Zoey has to get past those who want to kill her, and those who want to use her for money for the technology she unwittingly has the key to.

Part of the pleasure of the novel is the near-futuristic milieu--a city so deeply rich in money and technology that we join a wide-eyed Zoey at the surprises that await her. Everyone's online and recording everyone, so that it's impossible to run away and anonymously melt into the crowd. She hates her father's absence and resents his using her this way, but she becomes accustomed to the lifestyle as she sticks around.

Part of the mixed pleasure and pain is that the author may love Zoey too much. She isn't terribly flawed in a significant way. Occasionally her personality takes off when expressing her desire for what clothes she'll wear, but as is, she's a little too idealistically drawn. In the John Dies at the End series, the female protagonist is defined by her contrast with her boyfriend. Zoey doesn't really have a companion here to be defined against.

Her antagonist is powerful and possesses a most wondrous reason for being--wondrous, not in that he's agreeable but fascinating. Unfortunately, he is so generously mocked, we don't quite believe he's a real threat to our protagonist.

It may be that since Zoey Ashe has a whole series planned around her, the author has a long-range arc laid out for her that isn't yet visible. She does become a master of her destiny near the end of the novel, but one can hope for an increased dynamic in the next novel of the series. Still, with Wong's skill for odd-ball characters, readers should look forward to the next novel, soon to be released--October 13, 2020.

What the Hell Did I Just Read by David Wong

David Wong, pen name for Cracked editor Jason Pargin but also the protagonist of the novel, has been launched on a third supernatural adventure. I somehow missed that this was part of a series and started with this novel because it was "cosmic horror." The previous novels did not seem relevant until I got closer to the end when "familiar" characters appeared that I was unfamiliar with, so I suspect the previous novels would have helped to a degree.

The novel begins simply enough. Three private investigators of the supernatural (David, John and Amy, who tend not to receive compensation for their work) look into the case of an abducted child. A stranger had threatened to take the man's daughter and seems to have done so. The abductor is a shape changer and leads the investigators on a wild chase, finding a child's faux cell phone that one can talk into and see photos on. The novel grows increasingly complex due to the nature of the horror getting our heroes to question the reality of what they are witnessing. While I may not be fully convinced that ending follows, the novel is highly readable.

I've perused definitions of cosmic horror, but few satisfy. For me it's where SF meets horror: wild speculation explains the crazy horror that's been loosed on the page. Usually, these are the most fascinating passages in Lovecraft's longer pieces, such as in The Mountains of Madness (I thought I had mentioned my favorite passage in the link, but mostly I critique Lovecraft's style).

Wong's novel isn't quite cosmic or quite horror by my estimate. The horror is dispelled in part by humor and situations that don't nail the dread and despair. The protagonist narrator does have his own philosophy, which is fascinating as it intersects existentialism and pop culture. A few samples (in the first, Wong discusses a painting of a clown who slowly mouths something):

as far as I'm concerned, if the object isn't killing anybody, it isn't "cursed." I've had it in the junk room for four months and it hasn't inconvenienced me once.

and

Let me tell you what's bullshit about every supernatural horror movie. Whenever the monster or angry ghost lady turns up, everyone is skeptical for at least the first third of the running time. It's usually between forty and fifty minutes in that the protagonists begrudgingly admit that the ominous Latin chants emanating from the walls aren't a plumbing issue. In real life, the very second Mom sees something red oozing from the ceiling, she thinks "blood" not "water from a rusty old pipe." I wish people were as skeptical as they are in the movies.

Much as the protagonist reflects on the events in an interesting manner, the horror never comes with escalated speculative explanation that piques one's imagination.

The style is immediately compelling. He (author and protagonist) is fluent in pop culture and its flaying. Much of the humor is male adolescent bathroom or locker-room humor, which Wong gets away with by putting it mostly in the mouth of another character and critiquing it. One running gag the appearance of asses. Other examples:

I finally found the phone sitting atop a bookcase, next to a VHS box set of a series of 90s action movies starring Bruce Willis (The Ticking Man, The Ticking Man 2, The Ticking Man: The Final Chapter, Ticking Man Resurrection) that as far as I could tell, did not exist in this universe. We never watched them, nobody has a VCR, and they looked kind of shitty.

and

The last such call I had gotten from him was two weeks ago. It was just a few seconds of ambient party noise, before I heard John's voice say, "What's that sound? Everybody quiet, I — Ha! Hey Munch, check it out! I farted so hard it dialed my phone!"

That last illustrates something that may be a flaw. We could not have overheard that whole speech if he farted once. He may have farted twice, though.

One interesting aspect is that Amy, Wong's girlfriend, sees Wong's doppelganger. Its actions surprise and beg for an advance of one character or another. When we find out the antagonist's modus operandi, it seems almost imperative that this issue be resolved. But it never plays out. Perhaps this is a long-term character development over the novel series.

Because of Wong narrative voice and compelling narrative, I do plan to read more of his work. I may backtrack and read the earlier novels in the series.