Skullcrack City

There's a black wolf behind me. I can feel its breath on my neck. I don't have a lot of time to write this review.
I came into this book with nothing except the expectation of a story of drug addiction. What I got was a hilarious, creepy, futuristic romp which also had a story about a dude addicted to stuff who bent his little friend out of shape.
I have a terrible attention span, but gosh darn if I didn't crank through this mama jama. Did not see the ending coming, either.
Needless to say, you're in for a crazy trip, so make sure to feed your turtle ahead of time, and get your suitcase full of cash ready.

Genre-busting, head screwing, fever dream of a plot... It's going to hurt and you are going to like it! I didn't read this book... It read me! I couldn't wait to see where it was headed. I couldn't put it down, even though it made me want to wash my hands with alcohol scrub! JRJ must be one sick puppy... Old Angel Dust characters show up in a world built for and by psychopaths. Buy it now!

After reading this, you may feel like that your brain has been removed and dumped into a sack of cerebral fluid. But that's okay cause it's warm in there, and there's a turtle. Enjoyed it immensely. And the turtle was only part of the reason.

I'm trying to figure out how to adequately describe "Skullcrack City" without giving away massive plot spoilers. If Philip K Dick ate HP Lovecraft's brain while mainlining drugs that would make Hunter S Thompson say "Whoa, fella, easy now," any prose that resulted from this unholy mess might, in some way, resemble "Skullcrack City." Looking at the blurbs on the main page, it doesn't sound like my description is too far off the norm.

So, is it a good book? Definitely, and I think it's well worth reading. Is it perfect? Not quite. The prose, while it definitely picks up towards the back half, does wallow a bit in the main character's drug-fueled paranoia a bit much in the middle. Our protagonist (for he's certainly no hero) is a bit of a whiny ass for a while, and seems hopelessly out of his depth much of the time. This is intentional, I'm sure, but it sometimes makes for some passages that are a bit of a slog to get through.

Overall, I liked this book, and I'll be giving the author's other work a look as well.

I bought this book to keep me occupied on a flight to Australia. Good thing I bought others. Dull, meandering "plot," and I am using the word loosely. I quit reading after about four chapters. The main character spends time alluding to a shady conspiracy, his attempts to score drugs and masturbation resulting from taking said drugs. Just pretty boring. I bought this book because it was recommended based on my prior purchase of "John Dies at the End," which was a far superior, entertaining read. This book is nothing like that. I read other reviews prior to purchasing and frankly just don't see what those other reviewers saw in this particular book.

This book is freaking bonkers and makes very little sense. It starts off good with a drug-crazed banker trying to destroy his bank by bringing them down from the inside. There are a few humorous moments during that section and it is entertaining enough to get you interested in the rest of the book. But once the protagonist is "rescued" by a pair of former junkies things go downhill with a quickness. It turns out the conspiracy the main character's drug addled brain came up with in the beginning is much weirder than even he could imagine and the book becomes a nonsensical journey to stop the evil Vakhtang from implementing their plot to destroy life as we know it on earth.

This morning I was in bed staring at the ceiling until I felt my eyes glaze over; my brain a flurry of activity: How in the hell do you write a review for a book like this?
I buddy read this with my best friend, Mindi (which means we just acknowledge we'll read a specific book around the same time. Haha! She devoured this one & I went meticulous with it). Mindi offered to write her review first so I could see where she went with it and now that I've read her review and a few others from some people I trust, I have what I want to say, sorted.
*cracking my knuckles and taking a deep breath* Let's do this.
I think the tendency here would be to make a lot of comparisons--Skullcrack City reminded me of *this* or this is a mash-up of this & that but Skullcrack City isn't really like anything else and Jeremy R Johnson has his own, peculiar voice so I'm going to try to avoid comparisons.
This book cannot be pigeonholed into any one genre or even three. If I was forced to shelve it under anything, I'd put it under "Bizzaro Fiction"/"Cyberpunk"/"Horror".
The first part of the book is unputdownable-I was immediately sucked into the protagonist's insane lifestyle. For several chapters Johnson demonstrates what he does best: Character-driven world building with decorative, hilarious, mind-blowing language. Line by line this is technicolor brilliance, I almost wanted to whip out my journal and write quotes down so I could use them to impress my friends with my fancy expletives (but I didn't because I was busy reading and I didn't want to kill the vibe).
After an event in the story, we enter into an entirely different narrative style and that same protagonist had suddenly grown on me in a way that wasn't there before. It was a complete shift in gears that was so jarring, at first I couldn't hang with it, what's different about Doyle? Why do I suddenly like him and I'm accepting this love interest thing with this newly introduced character, Dara? But then I remembered I met Doyle in extreme duress and in a drug-induced state of paranoia--this is Doyle, sober. There was a come-down here in the middle of the book and then just as things feel a little 'roomy' and 'normal' Johnson shifts gears and I'm off to the races-again. It's bananas and I loved it. It required a total abandonment of all my presumptions and anticipation--this is a ride and it was best if I just let go of the safety bar, put my hands in the air and enjoyed it.
Just because this book sounds f----- up and weird shouldn't turn you off--I can recommend this to literally anyone because I can easily build bridges from this story to anyone's pet-favorite genre (except maybe YA Fantasy-I got none of that showing up here). I think it would help to read his collection, Entropy in Bloom, first. Just to dip your toe in Johnson's unique brand of weird and you'd get an introduction to the League of Zeroes, which goes deeper in Skullcrack City-I enjoyed that immensely and I was glad I already knew about 'Body Mods".
Finally, This is your brain *shows egg* this is your brain on drugs *cracks egg into a hot pan* this is your brain on Jeremy R Johnson *slides egg into a VitaMix blender on level 10*
Drinks it.

Jeremy Robert Johnson is a Disinfo agent. He wants us all to accept that the world of the Vakhtang, Face-rec masks, the mission, primates with expanding jaws, super-stimulant Hex, scarab beetles that pierce chests in order to remove GPS trackers in the afterlife, Buddy with his brain in a box is just a work of fiction. So I will write a review about this work of fiction and proceed as if it's something other than the stone cold, hard won truth of our shambling Frankenstein's Monster we call Reality.

At one time asleep, S.P. Doyle is snapped to the waking trance of a powerful street drug known as 'Hex', named such because it ruins everything. This black market cabinet of curiosities creates ghoulish side effects for users, including tardive dyskinesia, xerostomia, severe genital engorgement, double chronic masturbation (chronic chronic), tachycardia, arrhythmia, hypertension, hyperreflexia, more masturbation, eidetic imagery and hallucination of canis lupus (i.e. 'There's a giant wolf behind me, isn't there? No? I just heard him growl! Is he still behind me!?') In the event that too much is ingested at once, the eyes liquefy.

Disenfranchised at work, Doyle decides to expose the crooked, unethical practices of his employers and finds the stakes in his drug fueled crusade continuously raised. F*** IT! WHY NOT? becomes his mantra as he ventures farther out on the cusp of absolute existential ruin. He meets his match with super-primates with ever expanding mandibles and is rescued in the nick of time from becoming the conduit of a clandestine endgame courtesy of the Vakhtang. After he is purged by 'debugging' scarabs, he learns to navigate an entire new chessboard as the Vakhtang put Doyle's own mother into play to lure him out of hiding. He is befriended by covert paragons of virtue Ms. A and Dara, who have their own mantra that outweighs Doyle's 'F*** IT, WHY NOT': They ruin everything. And after coming to know Dara, after having his mother and pet turtle threatened, he cannot let them ruin any more.

Jeremy Robert Johnson juggles a panoply of characters here from the nihilistic-but-hopeful Superfriend team of Doyle, Dara and Ms. A to a conspiracy theorist who actually has the forethought to make a 3-D printer using a 3-D printer when they are outlawed in this bleak future and a Nazi war criminal who has sidestepped punishment due to his standing with the Vakhtang and his agreement with our government as part of Operation Paperclip. We even see shout outs to characters from Johnson's previous works through the mainline of Eraserhead Press with Buddy from League of Zeroes, whose actions late in the book actually gave me that 'f*** yeah' feeling where I had to throw my hands in the air and high five someone who wasn't there.

I used to loathe five year cycles of anticipation for new projects from my favorites, be they musicians such as Tool or NIN or authors such as Johnson or Clive Barker. Now, I realize the wait is a fair trade off in order for us to enjoy such masterpieces as Skullcrack City, Everville, 10,000 Days and The Fragile. Yes, Bizarro has indeed found its Everville while refreshingly devoid of Lix. Also, Johnson's favorite word must be ovipositor along with anything else that falls between the squiggly lines of parasitology and pharmacology. Skullcrack City is an excursion that begins with cryptopolitical maneuvering and ends up a Body Horror Beowulf scribbled in rolling papers recycled from a love letter to Fatalism.

Jeremy Robert Johnson always knows just when to bounce, be it dialogue, narrative or symbolism. You will not be disappointed, unless it's just over your head.

I had no idea how much I needed something like this book.
I'm a long time fan of the works of one mister Charles Stross, specifically his "Laundry Files" series, and so I've spent a lot of time looking for books which could fill the emptiness in between releases of those books. Never had any of the books I'd been recommended as akin to the laundryverse satisfied me, very few did I finished (no, the Delta Green books are not worthy substitutes at all). And then along came Skullcrack City, not even recommended to me as similar to those of Stross, this one just appeared on my general recommendations in the store, I read the blurb, it made me curious, and in I went into Skullcrack City.
It does not full the emptiness in between Laundry Files books, Skullcrack City stands on its own and, well, owns. And shall I dare to say, I find Jeremy Robert Johnson's prose more enjoyable than Stross' "blue led prose" (like Lovecraft's purple prose, but with XXI subjects, gadgets and parlance).
This book is like one of those crazy, horror/sci-fi B-movies from the fifties when the monster and alien furor allowed directors minds to run amok. Only Skullcrack City is actually very good and not just "campy good" or "so bad is good" or even "so weird is good". Oh, but it is weird, wonderfully weird.
Jeff VanderMeer talks about "cooking" Lovecraft, about those writers who do not simply pick up something the man from Providence thought up and expand on it, but instead let the lovecraftian stuff simmer and inform the seed of their stories. Those are the good ones, the writers who take Lovecraft and re-write him for the new times. There's the aforementioned Stross, who has cooked Lovecraft into the Cold War era nuclear existential horror, there's Peter Watts who cooked Lovecraft into post singular, digital universe, neurological existential horror. And there's Jeremy Robert Johnson, who cooks Lovecraft into an insane broth of post modern sensibilities and fifties B-movie aesthetics.
This book just grabs you like a mutant brain eating gorilla with the first, drug addled act, threatening to open your cranium like a coconut, and only lets go a little bit to let you breath with a wonderful, dialogue-only respite (I love, love, love those dialogue only exercises, there's something freeing about a portion of prose where all you get is dialogues and no narrator interfering), then throws you head first into the graphically horrific, imaginatively gore filled rest of the book.
There is a thing that conflicts me, though. The ending. See, a part of me sees the ending as sudden, not quite abrupt but certainly unexpected. Not unexpected in terms of this book, at no point does the ending feel jarring, unexpected in terms of what modern books have us used to. And it's not even the ending of the main text, but the Coda that has this quality. But then another part of me finds that ending really refreshing, likes that ending very much. Because the most surprising thing is that the book actually ends, certainly there is room for sequels, but as it stands this is a very nice, self contained book which answers most of it's questions at the end. The way the book is going near the end, and the way genre books are nowadays, have you convinced that this is going to end in sequel bait, that this will be nothing more than Skullcrack City, Book 1 of the Vakhtang Sequence, and when it neatly ends you are left almost giddy, you are thrown back to the halcyon days when genre books told you a story and then finished that story and you felt satisfied and content, unlike modern times when a trilogy is the least amount of books you can expect a story to be told in (and then for that trilogy to grow into a monstrous serpent of sequels and prequels and sidequels with no end in sight).
Oh, I would absolutely enjoy reading more about this world, but I will also be happy with this being all and just reading other, different works by mister Johnson.
This is one of my new favorite books.

JRJ is the reigning king of the"Holy crap what even is this? I love it, it's so screwed up!" kind of dark, surreal fiction that I love so much. It's easy to be TOO weird or grotesque just for the sake of being weird or grotesque, and so I am really picky about which of the "bizarro" authors I read. JRJ is my favorite, and one of the most talented writers I have come across in a long time. Labeling his writing as any one genre is such a mistake, but this book in particular is certainly Bizarre among other things!

Skullcrack City is his longest work to date, and maybe his most surreal. Not for the faint of heart! Given this much room to grow, things get even more intense than usual.

I did not write this book. Some OTHER Jeremy Johnson did. But with a snappy title, a cover by Soto (all hail), and blurbs by Palahniuk and Wong I decided to buy the one-way ticket to Discouragement City and crack it open. Skullcrack City starts out like Douglas Copeland- like JPod; hilarious, savage, satirically undoing the inhumanity corporate culture. Then it moves slyly stylistically between grooves of Gibson and Wong while still being very much JRJ's own style. There are a lot of moving parts, plenty of surprises, some very effective violence, cult stuff... Come on. So after all set to hate this book, but I would settle for discouragement, I found neither. Skullcrack City is beautiful. I laughed, I got misty, I even lost myself in the prophetic poetry of it all. Dang it. I'm recommending this book to people (but I'm going to let them think I wrote it, just for a little while, okay?).

Skullcrack City is a four-course meal of a novel. Rife with humor, horror, action, and an imagination so unrivaled, I’m surprised my brain didn’t turn to liquid and leak out my ears.

Seamlessly stitched together from a bunch of disparate genres, this is a Frankenstein’s monster of a book that doesn’t hesitate to attack the villagers from every angle. Bizarro, crime, horror, humor: the writing employs several different genre-narrative techniques at once that somehow gel into a cohesive whole.

Now there was a moment, in the middle, where I thought the book started to drag its feet. I’m a reader who likes IDEAS, and not just ideas, but BIG IDEAS that play out in BIG SCENES. And as we move through the rising action that lie at the center of this book, it almost felt a little too noir-ish for me. This, after we spent the beginning of the book playing out what is essentially a drug-addled techno-heist that smoothly segues into weird monster/cosmic horror. I said to myself, “Oh boy, we’re losing steam here.” And it really bummed me out because I liked the opening chapters so much. But HOLY COW was I wrong in thinking this novel was just coasting on fumes, because the upswing from the middle into the ending is FULL-ON bonkers. It was exactly what I wanted. And more.

I tried to not discuss the plot in this review at all. The blinder you go in, the more shocking it will all play out.

This is the kind of book you want to tell your friends about. Johnson nailed it.

I was drawn in by this book's amazing cover and title, and also because it has applause from the author of one of my other all-time favorite books, John Dies at the End. And I was NOT disappointed.
This book has visceral, cutting imagery and at points (while S.P. Doyle is "under the influence") moves to a kind of stream of consciousness writing that makes you feel like you're literally right there with the character, experiencing this bizarre and haunting world. I was immediately taken in by the first couple of pages.
The characters themselves were very fleshed out and real. They have their own motivations, their own quirks, and their own flaws.
Overall, a great, entrancing read that I would recommend to anyone who's a fan of horror.

Sometimes people ask me what my favorite book is, and in the past its always seemed like a weird question to me. The first thing that came to mind were old classics - Dune, Childhood's End - not just because they were good, but because its not really something that stuck out in my mind. I've read a lot of contemporary authors and many of them were very, very good, but there was never a moment when I told myself, "Yes, this is my favorite. I would read it again and again and recommend it to everyone"

Until now. It's this. This is my favorite book.

I had heard a lot of good things about SC, and was expecting something interesting, but not like this. This is William Gibson without the pretense of noir. This is Arthur C. Clarke infected with a zombie virus. This is the Cohen Brothers with the aesthetic of a Troma film. This is gonzo drug-writing, stirred with the paranoid world-building of PKD, smashed in the face with a gore-covered hammer wielded by a rabid Cronenberg. The aesthetic choices alone could make this a campy, fun book, but what rounds it out is the fact that it is incredibly well-researched and excellently written.

Stop reading this. Go out and get this book and anything else this guy puts out. You will not be disappointed

This is a staggeringly well-written and amazing book. The scope, the skill, the story, everything about it is just fantastic. Deep and complex, yet funny. Gory and scary, yet heartwarming.

You know that bit in Hitchhiker’s Guide about the wall of Magrathea’s factory floor? How it’s described as not just defying the imagination, but seducing and defeating it? That’s what this book does. To the imagination, to genre, to literature.

It’s … a cyberpunk Lovecraftian gritty horror thriller screwball cult action comedy conspiracy with elements of romance and family drama … the ultimate combination of so many awesome things into a gestalt beyond gestalt … all things to all people … Brian Keene referred to it as “a total mind-(bleep)” and that’s pretty much it in a nutshell.

To attempt to summarize: would-be whistleblower plunges into a drug-fueled crazy world of paranoia with extradimensional demons AND brain-eating genetically engineered monsters; desperate race against time, fate of humanity in the balance. Plus, a pet turtle who somehow, despite a spectacular cast of great characters, still steals the show.

A truly masterful masterwork. I’m calling it now: next Wonderland Award Winner, right here.

If you are familiar with Bizarro Fiction at all, then you are familiar with lots of novella length works.
If you are familiar with Jeremy Robert Johnson at all, then you are likely a fan of his many amazing short stories.
This book breaks that mold in both cases by being a full-length novel, and it does so brilliantly.
I would do no justice to the story by trying to encapsulate it here, but I will say that JRJ has successfully channeled his insanity into something large. A story that shows off this writer's wit and intellect as well as his short stories do, and yet manages to reign it in only just as much as necessary to be able to carry it to full term.

If you are not familiar with Bizarro or Jeremy Robert Johnson, I highly recommend you grab a book and start it. I have truly enjoyed everything of his I have read.

Skullcrack City does not get quite as dark as some of his other work. While I love the brutality he shows in some of his short stories, I was relieved not to have this book delve into those areas for too long. In everything he writes, though, I am always able to find a grin in even the sickest moments. This is truly good stuff.

Recommend for fans of David Wong, Carlton Mellick III, Tony Vigorito, Christopher Moore and anything else very smart, funny, and twisted.

I'm very aware that SKULLCRACK CITY was written (in part) to challenge the notion of description, but I'll do my best: It's like a proto-cyberpunk, full-blown paranoid Philip K. Dick was inspired by conspiracy theories discussed on The Joe Roan Experience if Joe, Brian and CoCo Diaz were stoned out of their mind on mushrooms. Does that give you a good idea of what SKULLCRACK CITY is? No? I tried my best.

The facts that this novel 1) exists 2) has been published and 3) is actually good, are very soothing to me. Sure, it's crazy and hilarious, but it's actually born from a dark place: corporate america, s***ty mortgages and the helplessness of normal citizens. Where it goes from there more surprising and fun than most cyberpunk novels I've ever read, but be ready and have your mind open. SKULLCRACK CITY is going to leave your comfort zone in the rearview mirror.

I'm a long time fan of JRJ, having devoured WE LIVE INSIDE YOU and ANGEL DUST APOCALYPSE multiple times now, and SKULLCRACK CITY sits right atop the list of favorite JRJ pubs. It's a madhouse mashup of horror, mystery, bizarro and SF with a heaping portion of pulpy goodness thrown in for good measure. Jeremy has proven time and again that he is a master of short form dark fiction. With SKULLCRACK CITY he shows that his mastery extends to the long form as well. A wise person will wait for a long weekend to read this excellent tome. It's a lightning fast thrillfest that sucked me in from page one and didn't let go til the end, when it hacked me up, bleeding and broken and longing for more.

If you're looking for a mind-numbing, intelligent read that will engage and entertain through a long winter evening or two, look no further than SKULLCRACK CITY.

What can I possibly say about this novel that could do it justice? That it's brilliantly written is obvious to anyone who has ever read so much as a paragraph of JRJ's writing. Skullcrack City has all the hallmarks of JRJ; lyrical prose, wonderfully crafted dialogue, dark comedy, startling violence, and deeply realized humanity. It seems that every theme Johnson has touched on in his short stories is somehow represented here, but it also seems completely brand new. I'm talking in circles without really saying anything about the book, but that's because I can't think of any way to directly describe what I just read. This novel just cements what I have known since I picked up a copy of Angeldust Apocalypse, there never has been and never will be another Jeremy Robert Johnson.

This is one of the novels that made me fall head-over-heels with the bizarro genre. It's hilarious, grotesque and absolutely nutty--a perfect blend of crime, horror, sci-fi, comedy and conspiracy. Just when you think you know where the plot's going, it bee-lines in another direction and flips you on your head. A couple years after reading and I still feel that this is one of the best representations of the bizarro genre's strengths. Fantastic.

"Well, it's one louder, isn't it? It's not ten. You see, most blokes, you know, will be playing at ten. You're on ten here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, you're on ten on your guitar. Where can you go from there? Where? Nowhere. Exactly. What we do is, if we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do? Eleven. Exactly. One louder."
- Nigel Tufnel (This is Spinal Tap)

This is how I feel about this book. Having read and adored Angel Dust Apocalypse and We Live Inside You, I knew that Jeremy Robert Johnson had what it takes to produce a full-lenth stunner.
Not only did he nail it, but he outdid himself in a way that makes me feel very admirative. JRJ went all the way up to 11.

Skullcrack City is hard to describe. It is so much more than the story of a man trying to unveil a conspiracy, a lot more than strange, deadly encounters. It is a cosmically enjoyable, funny, engrossing, petrifying, well thought-out novel that us on a bumpy, jaw-dropping journey into the world of characters we grow to adore.
I rediscovered JRJ's highly successful formula from his previous books, adding horror and Bizarro to an ingredient list that again includes a healthy dose of science-fiction-influenced adventure and even comedy - a drug-, monster-laden trek that keeps us engaged and wondering what will happen next. The characters, good or evil, are sublime, with a special mention to Doyle and Dr. T, two of the most fascinating characters I have ever read about.
What appears to be a chaotic plot at first ends up making sense, in a way you would have never expected. Oh and that ending... pure class.

Definitely the best book I've read this year.

Skullcrack City is not a book that can be neatly categorized. Combining elements of Sci-Fi, Horror, Bizarro, Crime -- you've got this, at times morbidly funny, story about a Hex-junkie who used to work in a bank until he found himself in the middle of this massive conspiracy and now needs to run/fight for his life as the end of all humanity looms on the horizon. The books tackles addiction and a whole lot of self-reflection:

I'll admit it, the first third of the book, while enjoyable to read, took me a long time to get through. I kept putting the book down every chapter or so because "I didn't have time," but when I wasn't reading the book, I kept thinking about it. So I'd pick it up again and eventually got through the rest of it in two days. The final third of book is a masterpiece.

Skullcrack City is a journey that messes with your mind and plays with your heart. I don't know what else to say other than you need to pick up this book and read it for yourself.

This book is fantastic.

The plot is utterly, enjoyably bizarre and unhinged from start to finish, the story telling is tight, and the voice is truly unique, but not in a trying-too-hard sort of way. It feels natural and draws you into what might otherwise be a very daunting world.

I've read it twice, and I've given hard copies to people knowing that I still have my kindle version should I ever feel the urge.

If you like John Dies at the End, you'll love Skullcrack City. Love love it.

Jeremy Robert Johnson puts together one crazy mo-fo in this sci-fi/bizarro/who-knows-what-else mash-up. A drug fueled psycho-delic dick breaking dream world of corporate espionage. Killer jacked-up mutant-mouthed Popeye-jawed gorilla-armed man-things. Reality teetering on the precipice of an endless void and a turtle named Deckard that silently scorns while Shenanigans jerks it raw in a Hex addled fugue. Solid 4.5+ the store Stars!

This is some serious cosmic serendipity manifested consciousness sh*t. Indeed.

You always remember when you read something truly special and unique. That rush of adrenaline as the plot speeds up and you find yourself gripping the book a little tighter. Rereading a page to see if what you just digested happened or if your mind misunderstood. Skullcrack City is a novel that does that and more.

Banking, drugs, reality television, genetic experimentation and a conspiracy that ties it all together. How is one man in a dead end job he hates, a turtle that is the only creature he loves, and with piles of drugs supposed to handle it all? With fast action, brilliant writing and the occasional ignored call from his mother.

If you love Palahniuk, Burroughs and reading books that open your mind then this is the book for you. Unflinching and unexpected- this is by far one of the best books I have read in a long time.

And it has an adorable turtle named Deckard. That alone should make you read it twice.

I'm not gonna tell you what this is about because you can read the synopsis above. I'm not gonna tell you Jeremy Robert Johnson is one of the best in the business because if you're here, you probably already know that or at least heard it from someone. I'm not gonna tell you this is a superb novel because that's freaking lazy. I am, however, going to tell you this: there's an incredibly exciting literary space where crime, horror, science fiction and bizarro meet, and JRJ is the king of that realm. This is smart, entertaining writing with healthy doses of weirdness, action, and blood. This is the kind of book that makes me happy to be a reader. Now you know. Get this now and buy a second copy for your best friend. They'll thank you later.

I stumbled into this book through sheer dumb luck and a lot like the novel's protagonist I fell deeper and deeper into the complex world it revolves around (both the real-er one we inhabit and the darker-HOLY-SHIT-I-NEVER-WANNA-GO-THERE-EVER-YOU-HEAR-ME-?! other one) I read this on kindle for which I am glad because I think a physical copy would just be coated in my palm sweat and tears of laughter. Seriously, it's SO insane. I was actually travelling around Japan with my mum and sister while reading it which just added a whole other element of what-the-fuck-ness to that trip and since then I've bought actual physical copies for two friends and told everyone in search of 'something new and interesting' to read to just read this goddamnit!! Since reading this I'd follow Jeremy Robert Johnson anywhere... Actually... That's not true. I'd let him send me grubby postcards with weird dark stains on them back from wherever he ends up... 'cause those places be hella insane and awful and seriously, stop reading this, go read the book!!

I wonder sometimes what the author must have put himself through to produce a novel like this. A few times towards the end, I wept at how beautifully written it was. Yet it's utterly insane. It's incredibly dark, yes, but in a highly palpable, sexy, heartfelt way. It's the kind of situation where the genres and subjects it covers are largely irrelevant to that fact that it's just really, really good writing. Not to mention brilliant. One of my favorite parts about this book is the great sense of humor that's woven throughout it, not despite the dark subject matter but somehow because of it. And that reveals the underlying tone of the narrative, as told through SP Doyle, who ended up becoming one of my all-time favorite characters.

I could say a lot more about this fine piece of work. But it might dilute the power of you seeing it for yourself. Even if you're not into bizarro, which I'm not really, I highly suggest you check this one out. Ridiculously good.

This was out of this world good, excellent on so many levels. My feeble mind currently lacks the cognitive ability to adequately review this book. I wish I was as cool as this book. I wish everyone I knew would read this book. I wish Jeremy Robert Johnson lived next door and would read to me...ok enough wishes, I have made my point, I hope.

This starts out great and only gets better. This is where I'd usually offer a synopsis of the novel, but this one's too packed to even attempt that. If you like horror, action, crime or sci-fi, then buy a copy of this immediately. Skullcrack City is like a big spider of a novel that's pregnant with novellas. As you read, it's like you're stepping on the spider and all the babies are coming out and running around like crazy. Just pulling the off the amount of ideas JRJ does here is worthy of attention, but to do it while also showing off incredible research and a prose that's up there with the best of what weird fiction has offer make this book one that I have to recommend whenever the subject of great weird books comes up.

Oh man what an incredible book. You have to pardon spelling or grammatical errors in this review because im pretty tired. The last quarter of this book is so good I couldn't put it down and ended up not getting that much sleep last night.

I can say this is definitely one of the best books I have ever read. I have read a lot of books too! The story is perfectly crafted in a way the little bits of information unfold at just the perfect times. Everytime I felt like I was starting to get a little lost the author drops a little nugget of information that just puts everything in perspective. I started reading the book with a slow golf clap but by the end I was at full standing ovation and there wasn't a dry eye in the house. For those that claim they don't understand the book are obviously not reading it carefully enough.

The story itself I would call a Bizarro Science Fiction Epic? In reality it stands alone almost incomparable to other books out there. It starts out with young protagonist who's works as a banker and also does a lot of speed. He decides he wants to expose corruption and bring the bank down but also get a little for himself while he does it. He eventually starts to decompensate both physically and mentally leading to paranoid drug induced delusions, or are they? Eventually he over does it but instead of dying he is pulled into a matrixy parallel type universe where starts to learn that the truth behind the conspiracy he was working to unfold is way more insane than he could have ever imagined. It just gets weirder and weirder from there.

There are parts of the story that are funny. The scenes with Buddy, who stores his brain in a cerebrospinal fluid filled box outside of his head, are hilarious. I got several funny looks from folks as I chuckled and lol'd to myself while reading. The story also gets very dark at times especially when he is battling Dr. T in his mind.

I feel like I can't give too many details about the plot because I won't do it justice plus it is way more fun to read it in context of the book. You have to pay close attention when you read SkullCrack City because the story will switch up on you so fast and the plot twists are at very unexpected places which made it all the more interesting for me. Apparently some folks can't keep up though. That's too bad for them.

All I can say is please do yourself a favor and read this book. It's a fun, funny, dark decent into one of the most original stories you will ever read. JRJ is definitely one of my favorite writers and this book is some of his finest to date. I can't wait to see what else he comes out with!

I loved Skullcrack City. It was like mixing the best parts of China Meiaville (sp?) and Philp K Dick. It was dystopian without being cheesy. The plot is complex and the tonality of the book is ultra dark. There's little hope in a world as twisted as Jeremy Robert Johnson's. I absolutely loved this book.

I loved JRJ collections of short stores and waited years for him to complete this novel, needless to say my hopes were high. Luckily for us, the reader, JRJ doesn’t disappoint with this highly original genre blending masterpiece.

A fantastic genre-defying read by an author who redefines baddassery in new and brilliant ways with each story he pushes into the literary market. This novel has been long overdue on my waiting list, ever since I first picked up my copy of Johnson's "Angel Dust Apocalypse" a few years back. A definite recommendation to all who love their literature with a dash of full-throttle insanity; to any generation with a restless mind; and to anyone who just wants to read a thoroughly interesting and entertaining book. I'll finish by saying that "Skullcrack City" really lives up to its otherworldly title and art, delivering all kinds of madness in its fast-paced journey into the wonderfully bizarre mind of its author.

Aptly named, Skullcrack City will do just that, crack open your skull and fill it with delightful madness. This is by far the most outrageous, balls-out gonzo novel I’ve ever read, and I loved every minute of it. There are only two ways you can achieve the headspace this book puts you in: 1) read it, or 2) grind the souls of Chuck Palahniuk, Tom Robbins, and H.P. Lovecraft into a powdered line and snort it. I recommend the former.

A crazy breakneck mix of science fiction and horror, full of mutants, drugs, cults, conspiracies and more dizzying levels. Distant echoes of Philip K. Dick and William S. Burroughs addiction punk, hurtling through the now-world of reality TV and Wall Street, in a voice that is both lean and ruminative.

A wildly original story, gritty and hilarious, following a frenzied energy into the bizarre without ever seeming random purely for random's sake. Straddling the lines between genres, Skullcrack City wraps horror, sci-fi, and crime into a single chaotic and surprisingly coherent package that defies classification - all centered around Doyle, a drug fueled banker with plenty of character depth. A great deal of fun and well worth a read, I look forward to seeing what JRJ will do next.

If you've ever read any conspiracy/cyberpunk/noir and thought, "Yeah, but it just didn't go far enough to sate my lust for the weird side of it all," then look no further. Not to mention that this book is a joy to read. Try to not read it in a day. I failed. Perhaps you are stronger than me. Either way, snatch this one up and enjoy a brilliant imagination at work.

Skullcrack City is that modern mindfuck of a novel that will actually penetrate the jaded consciousness of the twenty first century thrill-seeking reader.

It's not enough to wax on about the psychotropic drugs, extra-dimensional wolf gods, high level conspiracy and fundamental love story. Johnson's prose is the real star here.

Do yourself a favor.

Jeremy Robert Johnson has got to be the best most exciting writer around. Skullcrack City was an intense experience that I never wanted to put down, big compliments coming from someone who never used to read. It was a crazy awesome genre that you don't get to see all that often... It was disturbing, action packed and made me want more! I highly recommend Skullcrack City!

Because I'm such a fan of David Wong, I wanted to like this book more than I actually did... The plot overall was right up my alley, but the first third of the book was a chore to get through. I just found the protagonist's descent into Hex addiction too helter skelter (that was probably the author's intent?), and mixed with the whole corrupt banking investigation it was a tedious read. It gets better after that though.

Another slam dunk! I fell in love with JRJ after reading one of his short stories a few years back. His stories, this being no exception, are weird, funny, haunting and hard to put down. Do yourself a favor and get your hands on this book. You won't be disappointed.

Amazing author, amazing book! It's so fast paced and crazy I can guarantee that you won't be bored for a single page. All his books are so imaginative and fun. For anyone who enjoys completely off-the-wall crazy books, check this guy out!

If you haven't read JRJ yet, do it now! I read a ton of books, and this is by far one of the best of not only this year, but of this decade. Seriously creepy, weird, funny, thought provoking and mind blindingly cool

Firstly, you should buy this book. In the words of S P Doyle: F*** IT! WHY NOT?

Secondly, and in a little more detail, I’m not quite sure how Jeremy Robert Johnson pulled this off but you should be glad he did. Having read his short fiction I was salivating at the thought of a novel, but couldn’t have anticipated quite how mind-blowing it would be. Using his “League of Zeroes” extreme body modification reality TV short as a springboard, what he’s created here is a delirious mash up of Bizarro, crime, (cosmic) horror, science fiction, conspiracy thriller and black comedy as if written by a hive mind consisting of William S Burroughs, Hunter S Thompson, Philip K Dick and H P Lovecraft after a heavy night on the town that finished up with them breaking into the evidence locker of their local police department’s Vice division and typing one handed as they all held each other at gunpoint.

Alright, maybe I got carried away there, but it’s still pretty amazing. And those authors are just glib points of reference – JRJ has an incredibly distinctive voice all his own, and really writes like nobody else.

The story of a lowly bank drone – the aforementioned S P Doyle - who decides to bring down the system from within, ably assisted by his turtle Deckard and distribution-quantities of the lethal street drug Hexadrine, Skullcrack City morphs at breakneck pace into a race against time to achieve nothing less than the salvation of humankind. Along the way, and in order to avoid the clutches of the skull-cracking, brain-devouring genetically-engineered mutants of the title, Doyle hooks up with a cast of Hex dealers, underground cults and off-the-grid techno-hippies and thus meets Dara, the one-eyed love of his more-than-likely-short-lived life. For an author to encompass both laugh-out-loud dick jokes and an unflinching history of the hideous experiments conducted by the Mengele-like villain Dr Tikoshi, not to mention cover topics like love, addiction, sacrifice and the only reason a man can find not to commit suicide as being the abandonment of a beloved pet is a remarkable achievement. That this is all followed by a coda that chills me to the bone even after the second or third reading is just further evidence that JRJ isn’t afraid to follow his ideas through to the end when most people would probably either quit or have the good sense not to go there in the first place.

Thirdly, I should’ve written this review when I read Skullcrack City a couple of days after release almost a year ago. I’m writing it now because the author put out a call for reviews (on the store.com) that might improve the book’s chances of attracting movie interest and it’s not a big ask, all things considered. Okay, so there’s a very cool prize on offer if numbers reach 100, but I live in the UK so I’m not expecting to be able to claim it even if I win. I’m finally writing this because it’s probably my favourite book of the last year and one of my favourite books EVER… and just because it deserves to have how cool it is drawn to the attention of a wider audience.

FIVE STARS, NO QUESTION. AND ALL OF THEM ON FIRE…

Looking for something that essentially has everything cool jam packed into it at the same time, with every one of those awesome elements coexisting perfectly and being even more enrapturing for it? Look no further! This book is easily in the top 3 greatest debut novels from any author, but it's not like JRJ just appeared out of nowhere. No, this author has been knocking it out of the park from the start with his story collections, and his novella ''Siren Promised''. He's the kind of author that when you're done reading everything he's put out, you feel like harassing for updates on when you can expect something new.

Conspiracies, frantic, drug addled insanity, lovecraftian horror, malevolent corporations, WWII experimentation, touching moments, and turtles. It's an incredibly fast read, feeling more like 150 pages than the almost 400 it contains. It's an injection of pure adrenaline right into your brainstem by a guy who is clearly not a doctor but who keeps saying ''trust me, I've done this a few times before''. What I'm saying is, if you like bizarro fiction, or even if you don't, you should get this book and tell all of your interesting friends to read it.