Content deleted Content added
→Reception: tag better source needed + unreliable source (note Goodreads is user-generated and unreliable per WP:RSP Tags: Reverted Visual edit |
|||
Line 1: | Line 1: | ||
⚫ | |||
{{refimprove|date=May 2023}} |
|||
{{Redirect category shell| |
|||
{{Infobox book |
|||
{{R with possibilities}} |
|||
| name = If This Book Exists, You're in the Wrong Universe |
|||
| image = File:If This Book Exists, You're in the Wrong Universe.jpg |
|||
| caption = First edition cover |
|||
⚫ | |||
| title_orig = <!-- if not in English --> |
|||
| translator = |
|||
| illustrator = |
|||
| cover_artist = |
|||
| country = United States |
|||
| language = English |
|||
| series = ''[[John Dies at the End]]'' |
|||
| subject = |
|||
| genre = [[Cosmic horror]] |
|||
| published = October 18 2022 |
|||
| publisher = [[St. Martin's Press]] |
|||
| media_type = {{hlist|Print|e-book|audiobook}} |
|||
| pages = 432 |
|||
| isbn = 9781250195821 |
|||
| oclc = |
|||
| dewey = |
|||
| congress = |
|||
| preceded_by = [[What the Hell Did I Just Read]] |
|||
| followed_by = |
|||
| wikisource = |
|||
}} |
}} |
||
'''''If This Book Exists, You're in the Wrong Universe''''' is a 2022 [[cosmic horror]] novel by [[Jason Pargin]]. It is the fourth book in the ''[[John Dies at the End]]'' series, written under a working title "David Wong Dies in This One".<ref>{{cite web|last=Pargin|first=Jason|title=The next John and Dave book, plus a general update for the end of 2020|url=https://johndiesattheend.com/the-next-john-and-dave-book-plus-a-general-update-for-the-end-of-2020/|publisher=johndiesattheend.com|accessdate=22 May 2023}}</ref> It is also the first of Pargin's novels published under his real name beginning from the first edition, after he had abandoned the "David Wong" pseudonym his previous books were published under.<ref>{{cite web|last=Pargin|first=Jason|title=I was David Wong|url=https://jasonpargin.substack.com/p/i-was-david-wong|publisher=Substack|date=24 July 2021|accessdate=22 May 2023}}</ref> |
|||
The novel picks up with Dave, his girlfriend Amy and his friend John about two years after the previous book ''[[What the Hell Did I Just Read]]''. Now approaching their thirties, the trio lives in [Undisclosed], a dying [[American Midwest]] town sitting on a hole in a fabric of reality from which interdimensional entities repeatedly attempt to break through. Having become famous for being able to deal with such situations in the past novels, John and Dave are frequently called upon by both police and local inhabitants, even though a surprisingly large percentage of such calls end up being mundane nonsense. Dave is the main narrator of the story, relating events to the reader in first-person, while John and Amy supplement him with their third-person accounts. |
|||
==Synopsis== |
|||
On July 4, John, Dave, and Amy are visited by a man with an alien parasite attached to his brain. Seeing that he is about to die whether the parasite is removed or not, they prepare to euthanize him in the forest near a public beach. Upon his death, the body explodes into eggs: there was never a man, the parasite only wanted to spread its eggs near a crowded area. They burn the eggs (and the forest) and recapture the parasite but are unable to damage it and resort to trapping it in a block of solid resin. |
|||
On August 22, Time Captain materializes in John's bedroom, but is partially fused into a wall and dies gruesomely. After cleaning up, John and Dave respond to a house call from Regina Galveston, whose 9-year-old daughter Gracie exhibits signs of worrisome behavior. They discover Gracie's novelty toy, an egg connected to a smartphone that asks to be fed human body parts through the app and confiscate it. Amy joins the investigation, and they discover that Gracie was gifted the toy by her older brother Bas, who has a book from the future and along with his followers is trying to perform a summoning ritual. All attempts to stop Bas fail as he displays teleportation powers which he uses to retrieve the egg, all while John, Dave and Amy keep simultaneously experiencing missing time, minutes to hours at a time. |
|||
The egg's demands escalate, progressing from fingernails, hair and teeth to human tongues, eyeballs, and eventually whole skins. The attempt to interrupt the final feeding devolves into a massive shoot-out involving SWAT and John is killed. As the summoning is completed and a creature emerges from the egg, time stops. Time Captain approaches Dave and explains that he and his friends have done this countless times before, progressively getting further but never achieving success. Time Captain offers Dave to reset the timeline again, but as they travel back in time he is fused into John's wall and dies. |
|||
Realizing that in all previous loops John ended up dead while his roommate Joy never got involved, Dave asks them and only them to come up with a brand-new plan. John knocks on Bas' door and offers him weed; Bas is too surprised to refuse. As they get high, Bas claims that his father Dalton killed his other sister Silva. Unable to prove this to anyone, Bas desired revenge of the entire world and was approached by his old self from the future with the power and knowledge to make that happen. Appealing to Bas' love for Gracie, John and Dave manage to change his mind by promising to remove Dalton from their lives for good. Bas' followers still proceed with the summoning, but Joy uses her powers to put them in a trance and convinces them to abandon the cause as well. |
|||
The preparations already made are too far gone, and the egg completes the final feeding on its own. From it emerges the parasite that travels into the past to approach John, Dave, and Amy on July 4; from Bas' future book Amy learns that in year 2112 it will be freed from the block of resin and complete its goal. The stuffed "Magpie" toy inside the egg turns out to be alive as well and begins ripping off people's faces, which remain alive and screaming. Bas, Gracie, Joy, Amy, John, and Dave take cover inside John's van, but the "Magpie" quickly grows large enough to swallow it whole. They use the van's sound system to play holy music ("[[Free Bird]]"), which explodes the "Magpie" from the inside. |
|||
Dave finds himself outside of time and meets another version of himself. "Fancy Dave" explains that the time loop ''was'' part of the summoning: the final stage required 1 trillion human faces, which could only be collected across parallel timelines. They find that future "Magpie" had grown large enough to cover the entire planet, full of screaming human faces. The two Daves come across Bas and his old self, who disappears after Bas categorically rejects the old man. Fancy Dave explains that Bas was the key and that all timelines created as part of the summoning will be undone. Time rewinds back to July 4, only now the parasite never arrives because old Bas was never there to bring it forth in the first place. Only the six people who were inside the "Magpie" when it exploded remember the previous iteration of the next 50 days. Bas approaches Dave to remind him of the promise, which Dave fulfills by killing Dalton Galveston. |
|||
== Characters == |
|||
* '''The Narrator/"Dave":''' After becoming a minor internet celebrity, his real name has become common knowledge online, so he abandoned the "David Wong" alias{{refn|name=Wong|group=N|Reflecting Jason Pargin doing the same with this very novel}}, although John and Amy still call him "Dave" in their respective narrations. His status of the perfect extradimensional doppelganger of the original Dave has progressed, and he is confirmed to be the BATMANTIS??? from ''[[What the Hell Did I Just Read]]''; he has been turning at night while only keeping vague memories of it in his human form. |
|||
** '''"Fancy Dave:"''' A healthier and more successful version from another timeline, who is also working on stopping the summoning. He unintentionally causes Dave, John, and Amy to experience missing time by giving them knowledge they're not supposed to have yet in their present. Fancy Dave is determined to stop the "Magpie", despite knowing that this will erase his entire life in which he and Amy have children, which the other Dave fails to realize. |
|||
* '''Amy:''' Dave's girlfriend, who managed to monetize his and John's "hobby" by charging their online fans to watch livestreams of their investigations; this is now her and Dave's only source of income. Amy is missing her left hand, struggles with back pain and is blind without glasses, which gives her non-threatening appearance and allows her to connect to 9-year-old Gracie Galveston and obtain crucial information from her. |
|||
* '''John:''' Unlike Dave and Amy who live only off their online fans, John supplements his income with numerous other gigs but also spends a lot more, constantly purchasing dangerous or illegal devices with the goal of using them against the next supernatural threat. At one point it appears that no matter the outcome, John is destined to die in every iteration of the time loop, echoing back to the original title of ''[[John Dies at the End]]''. |
|||
* '''Joy:''' A hive-mind collective of 777 shape-shifting interdimensional insects, who at the end of ''[[What the Hell Did I Just Read]]'' assumed the form of a Korean actress and moved in with John as a roommate. Unlike the other hives from that book, Joy is fascinated with humans and works in a nursing home where she can look after them at their most helpless. Her staying behind played a critical role in all previous iterations of the time loop failing, as her abilities allow her to save the day as well as help Dave come to terms with his own inhuman condition. |
|||
* '''Dr. Albert Marconi:''' A [[reality television]] personality with actual knowledge of supernatural. Recovering from a near-fatal heart attack, Marconi is unable to come to [Undisclosed] in person like before, leaving the group to save the world on their own. After time is rewound, he retains a faint memory of events and manages to catch the artery blockage in time. After Marconi boasts of being willing to do anything to protect their reality, Amy pressures him into taking her, Dave, and John on his full payroll with health insurance. The novel also contains excerpts from Marconi's fictional book ''"Projections into the Void"''. |
|||
* '''Time Captain:''' Tim Kaplan, a fellow resident of [Undisclosed] who much like John and Dave encountered and managed to survive the Soy Sauce, only to be manipulated by it in the same way John and Dave were. Believing that rewinding the time was their only hope of preventing the summoning, they were in fact key component of the ritual, creating the parallel timelines required for it. Only his death in John's bedroom freed him from the endlessly repeated existence. |
|||
* The Galvestons: The family of the famous self-help guru '''Dalton Galveston''', who killed his daughter '''Silva''' for her perceived sexuality, made it looked like suicide and moved his family out of California to escape the "western degeneracy". '''Sebastian "Bas" Galveston''' tried to report on him, but neither police nor his mother '''Regina''' would listen, causing Bas to lash out against the entire world in revenge. After being approached by his old self, Bas gifted his other sister '''Gracie''' a regular store-bought egg toy that only worked as the focal point of the summoning because of his involvement. |
|||
== Sequel == |
|||
Pargin had announced that he had signed a deal for a fifth book in the series, tentatively scheduled to come out in fall of [[2026]].<ref>{{cite web|last=Pargin|first=Jason|title=I have signed a new 3-book deal with the publisher|url=https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_posts/22595348-i-have-signed-a-new-3-book-deal-with-the-publisher|publisher=goodreads|date=2 June 2022|accessdate=22 May 2023}}</ref>{{Unreliable source|date=May 2023}} |
|||
==Reception== |
|||
Writing for Literary Quicksand, Colin Skow praised the book, calling it "a rollercoaster ride with weightless drops, loops, pits of destruction, and scythes for chopping off heads".<ref>{{cite web|last=Skow|first=Joli|title=Review: If This Book Exists, You’re in the Wrong Universe by Jason Pargin |
|||
|url=https://literaryquicksand.com/2022/06/review-if-this-book-exists-youre-in-the-wrong-universe-by-jason-pargin/|publisher=literaryquicksand.com|date=16 June 2022|accessdate=22 May 2023}}</ref>{{Better source needed|reason=The current source is insufficiently reliable ([[WP:NOTRS]]). The website lacks clear editorial policies, the book review submission guideline is very basic, and not all reviewers are subject matter experts. Overall, this site does not appear to meet [[WP:RS]] requirements.|date=May 2023}} Collin Henderson of Horror Obsessive praised the way the book described and dealt with trauma, calling it "hilarious and scary work from an author who has perfected the art of mixing absurdity with existential terror".<ref>{{cite web|last=Henderson|first=Collin |title=‘If This Book Exists, You’re in the Wrong Universe’ Delivers More Hilarious Chills From Jason Pargin|url=https://horrorobsessive.com/2022/10/28/if-this-book-exists-youre-in-the-wrong-universe-delivers-more-hilarious-chills-from-jason-pargin/|publisher=hhorrorobsessive.com|accessdate=22 May 2023}}</ref> |
|||
==Notes== |
|||
{{reflist|group=N}} |
|||
==References== |
|||
{{reflist}} |
|||
[[Category:2022 American novels]] |
|||
[[Category:American comedy novels]] |
|||
[[Category:American horror novels]] |
|||
[[Category:Books by David Wong (writer)]] |
[[Category:Books by David Wong (writer)]] |
||
[[Category:Cosmic horror]] |
|||
[[Category:Novels about parallel universes]] |
|||
[[Category:Novels about time travel]] |
Revision as of 12:56, 27 May 2023
Redirect to: