There Are No Giant Crabs in This Novel: A Novel of Giant Crabs
(John Dies at the End Book 5)
by Jason Pargin
St. Martin’s Press
Pub Date Nov 03 2026
Horror
DESCRIPTION/SYNOPSIS:
New York Times bestselling author Jason Pargin’s nightmarishly hilarious John Dies at the End series is back to entertain all who dare enter.
A massive, sticky pile of severed human limbs suddenly appears in the parking lot of a vacant department store in a desolate small town. A set of footprints is found trailing away in the snow, as if a single pair of bare feet had wandered off the pile. If this wasn’t puzzling enough, the cops soon find that no one seems to be missing the limbs. Some of the fingerprints on the severed arms belong to living people with all their appendages intact, others match no one on file, and the rest of the limbs somehow have no prints at all.
This sounds like a case for local weirdos John, David, and Amy, partly because the cops don’t want the headache and partly because David’s own arm is in the pile, despite an identical copy of it still being attached to his body. When a mysterious man then shows up at David’s home claiming to be in pursuit of an entity he calls “the Penetrator,” it seems clear the trio is in for a long weekend.
In addition to stopping whatever this nonsense is, the gang will also have to quell the panicked headlines that threaten to ensue, which could prompt the feds to try to just wipe the whole town off the map (again). As such, the first thing you need to know is that, contrary to whatever ugly rumors you may have heard, there are no giant crabs in this novel.
REVIEW:
I’m a fan of Jason Pargin’s videos and discovered by accident that some of his assorted video topics end up in dialogue and prose passages in his books. I had previously read and enjoyed the amusing road trip novel I’m Starting To Worry About This Black Box of Doom, which is a standalone novel, not part of his “John Dies at the End” series. It wasn’t until after I was approved to receive an eGalley for There Are No Giant Crabs in This Novel: A Novel of Giant Crabs that I realized this was book 5 of the “John Dies” universe! That had me a bit worried I’d feel lost reading the volume 5 before I’d even read the first book. I checked my Kindle library and it turns out I had the first two books of the series in my vast digital TBR, so my fallback plan (if I got confused) was to read through at least those two if not a previous four books before reading the fifth book.
Fortunately, I wasn’t confused as I read “No Giant Crabs,” though I did sense references to events that had probably occurred earlier in the series. Either they were references or humorous asides. Either way, I wasn’t confused or deterred from having a blast with the wild ride of this fifth book. Anyway, in “No Giant Crabs” and now I suspect in the whole series, there is a sense of reckless abandon and anything goes with the plot, which certainly keeps things entertaining. This is an inter-dimensional free-for-all, with two sides much more advanced than our humble dimension, fighting over a third dimension where time runs at an accelerated rate and allows years-long technological breakthroughs to occur in days or weeks. One side is led by a sociopath who thrives in the glory of war and mass casualties, almost as if that’s en end in itself. The other side is run by a sentient intelligence that predicts the future and runs the day to day lives of all the people who trust its course and decisions implicitly. In contrast, our dimension is a combination of a fly in the ointment and a prize to be won—but mainly to provide our people as cannon fodder for the ongoing war.
John, David and Amy have become experts in the weird and supernatural and are tasked by a government agent to solve the problem or else the history of their town and their very lives will be rewritten before our Earth can fall prey to the technologically advanced warring forces. The playing field it tilted wildly against them, and Earth, which only adds to the joyous chaos. They approach the battle with a workmanlike sense of duty and often zig when you expect them to zag. When you’re fighting a sociopath and a sentient AI who gleefully/algorithmically toss soldiers into a literal meat-grinder of a war, it pays to be rebelliously unpredictable. It might even be required. And if you revel in plate-spinning-chaos plots, then There Are No Giant Crabs in This Novel: A Novel of Giant Crabs just might be required reading.
Update: I have since finished John Dies at the End!
Note: I received an eGalley of There Are No Giant Crabs in This Novel: A Novel of Giant Crabs from the publisher via NetGalley in consideration of an unbiased review.
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