#itbe

If this Book Exists, You're in the Wrong Universe (ITBE, YITWU) is the fourth novel in the David Wong series. It follows the motley crew (Amy, David, John and Joy) and their attempts to sabotage another existential threat. Like the others, it is a horror novel wrapped around a picaresque black comedy troupe that dips into slapstick.

Spoilers: ITBE is the Wong gang discovering that a cult of disgruntles has formed around a hodgepodge theology that blends incel misogyny, simulation theory and philosophical zombies called Xarcrax. Xarcrax is a supremacist political movement, a prophet, a mechanism for social revolution, a manifesto and the new age when all the prophecies are fulfilled. The term does all the heavy lifting for the cult's ideas because they are ultimately a shallow disguise for a future narcissist's epic rage quit across future timelines. There are many moving parts in the story because the plot is a ridiculously overcomplicated, messy tower of cards (as in all the Wrongiverse novels) but the fun is always the characters and their muddled attempts at do-goodery.

Pargin's novel, as his priors, thrives on the tension between low-brow humour and effortless but insightful digressions into history, sociology, philosophy and the critical examinations thereof. This shaky roller coaster of time travel and cosmic horror hinges on dei ex machina to wobble and wheeze to a reasonable conclusion. It uses eye-rolling jokes as punctuation and spackle to hide bad joints, but it's written with heart, so it deserves love*.

ITBE will never be nominated for a Booker Prize but it's a dirty-secret book where the flaws are the joys of reading it. It's a trashy, B-grade film where we all point and howl at the fishing line yanking up the rubber monster and when the boom mike creeps into the shot. What counts for this measure of ITBE is how spicy it is and If this Book Exists, You're in the Wrong Universe, is a warm 60 000 Scoville units - maybe too burny for palates refined on white rice but tasty for connoisseurs of junk literature.