Jason X: Death Moon by Alex S. Johnson

Jason X: Death Moon Reviews

• 
  Warren Fournier

  I believe I am one of eight people on the planet who consideres "Jason X" to be a great film. Science fiction and horror are my two favorite genres. And Jason Voorhees is my favorite horror icon of the golden age of 80s slashers. When all of these elements came together in one very self-aware horror comedy, I was in heaven as much as hell. I knew there was no way any studio would dare make any further movie follow-ups to the adventures of Uber-Jason in the 25th Century, and perhaps that is for the best. But I still occasionally have hope that someone might make an official TV spinoff of this ultimate hail-mary of a stale franchise. At least we have books and comics to give us a taste of what could be.
  
  And overall, I was happy with the Newline Cinema House of Horrors series of novels from Black Flame Publishing that continued the Jason X exploits--until this fourth entry by Alex S. Johnson. It loosely involves a camp for wayward girls which just so happens to be located next to a testing facility where Jason has been captured, so naturally this doesn't end up well. While this sounds like fairly traditional slasher material, the writing style makes this a completely different experience.
  
  There was something in Alex S. Johnson's "elaborate languor that bespoke intimate knowledge of the dwarf cannabis sativa bud," to use the author's own words. I swear the man was higher than a mountain goat when he wrote this book. His constant otaku humor makes his sentences impossible to read. He relies on esoteric references with very loose associations, mixed with archaic language and complete neologisms, then colors the whole surreal mess with invented in-jokes of a fictional 25th Century society. If used sparingly, this style could make for quirky science fiction world-building, but his persistent spewing of nonsense only indicates that the author was either A) trying too hard to be the funniest and cleverist hipster on the planet, or B) in a state of drug-induced psychosis, or C) both.
  
  It feels like the author had recently binged on Vonnegut's "Breakfast of Champions," Gibson's "Neuromancer," and Thompson's "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," then took a fistful of amphetamines and cannabinoid edibles, sat down at his computer to write his commissioned Jason Voorhees expanded universe fiction, and said, "Wait, what're we doing here...?"
  
  I'm not kidding. He seems to completely forget what he is writing from page to page. As such, characters are built up only to be forgotten. Entire logical narrative progression from point A to B is left out. Action and agency are sacrificed for stream of consciousness sarcasm. Descriptors are chosen purely because they sound jazzy and not because they actually describe anything. Tone ranges from academic metaphysical musings to base, foul, and intellectually immature. Characterization borders on racist stereotypes and misogyny. Pivotal scenes are intentionally opaque or non-existent.
  
  I assume that most people would buy this book not expecting to have to put in the effort to carefully interpret the text like a James Joyce novel. Even Wittgenstein is more comprehensible. Hell, Ozzy Osbourne being interviewed by Barbara Walters made more sense than this!
  
  After being confused from the very earliest pages, I ended up rereading Chapter One five times to see what I missed. Turns out, I missed nothing. The author was the one missing entire plot threads from his own narrative. He may have thought he wrote it all out. But he didn't. It's like when my wife insists that she told me something for the umpteenth time when I swear this is the first time I'm hearing about it.
  
  What we get instead of linear plot is wacky stuff like this:
  
  "'Founders of ersatz leper colonies,' the E-book read. But no. What it actually said was: 'Parasites glomming on to obscure life forms. Sacred bearers of the Chomsky hash.' The text droned on, an old junkie on the nod, talking ceaselessly into a pair of newly abandoned cowboy boots... Amanda closed the book. Doublelocked it. Put on the special black safety cache. By Narcociste, naturally. Ugh."
  
  If you think you can tolerate, understand , and enjoy 417 unrelenting pages of this, have at. But if you are reading this review, you likely are a fan of the zombie in the bullet-proof hockey mask. You may, therefore, notice that Jason seems to be barely an afterthought so far. You'd be right. And when Jason does appear, it is couched in meta-humor that doesn't let the reader forget he is actually a fictional character from old slasher movies. While other books in the series don't take themselves too seriously, at least Jason remained a force of shock and awe. Here, he is the butt of jokes, like Michael Myers getting karate kicked by Busta Rhymes. This is the worst offence. Johnson seems to have forgotten this book was supposed to be a Friday the 13th property. And Douglas Adams he is not.
  
  Now, Johnson's spoofy cyberpunk approach does have potential. While other Jason X stories tended to be simply variations of "Alien," I appreciated that Johnson was trying something different here. In these Jason X stories, I always wanted a greater sense of what the future would be like, and to explore how the dynamics of predator and prey might change as a 20th Century backwoods hillbilly psychopath, who is used to hunting teenage camp counselors, is thrust into an alien world of advanced technologies and a more sophisticated, if not jaded, civilization. Opportunities abound for making critical speculations on how the evil that drives Jason Voorhees is a reflection on the corruption of a society grown dependent on big tech. Comparisons could be made between the soulless Jason and the android slaves of this century, or the emotionless machine of corporate and governmental power structures. Jason could initially be portrayed as a fish out of water, but eventually come out ahead through sheer primal force against the nebulous and seemingly unstoppable force of progress. Uber-Jason vs. Ubermensch. Jason punches down; Uber-Jason punches up.
  
  I think the author was trying to go for these deeper themes. He certainly went down the rabbit hole in detailing the debauchery of whole generations growing up in the age of singularity. An entire camp of party animals addicted to psychedelic drugs and virtual reality becomes prime grazing grounds for the sin-stomping Jason. But as I've already said, the author suffered from anterograde amnesia. The result is a very thick book that barely contains an iota of any story, let alone one that Alex Johnson may have initially had in his head before it came tumbling out of his ears to leave only gigantic plot holes and overused jokes about fractals, "Mandelbrot juice", and Lord Shiva. He took an already niche market and made it even more inaccessible. So we didn't even get a decent slasher at space camp. Who, then, did he intend this book for other than himself?
  
  Yes, I know the idea of Jason Voorhees in the future is silly in the first place. But that wasn't the problem here. The problem was that this author wasted an opportunity to use his clearly expansive imagination to make a satisfying mashup of futuristic adventure and 80s slasher. He was given a job to land a plane, but got so sloshed out of his gourd that he crashed it. You can tell he enjoyed himself immensely while writing this. Too bad it can't be enjoyed by literally anyone else.
  
  Well, that may not be entirely fair. Perhaps if you are a fan of cyberpunk fiction or bizarro, you'd get more mileage out of this novel than I did. But I can't in good conscience rate this very high. What saves it from getting a bottom-of-the-barrel rating for me is that the sheer wrecklessness of the approach led to some isolated moments of surreal genius, and I did enjoy some elements of his alchemy with the English language.
  
  Otherwise, to quote a line from the original Jason X movie, "This sucks on so many levels."
  
  SCORE: 2 machetes out of 5.
• 
  Atom Bezecny

  "Much of this book tries very much to cash in on the things that make Cool Hipster Books Cool and Hipstery. To be more specific, it tries to be controversial. Egregious cursing, sex, porn, drugs, gore, and video games are set hand-in-hand with Hemingway and philosophically-reworked Marx Brothers quotes, plus a plethora of flowery adjectives that even the Romantics would have turned from in disgust. It is the last thing you'd expect to see in a book based on a movie where Jason Voorhees kills people on a future spaceship. But for that, I sort of low-key love this book? Sure, it may not function in terms of a conventional novel, but one thing I've always wanted to do is write a tie-in novel that completely fucks with the thing it ties in with. A surreal, postmodern Star Wars novel; a Dune novel that has a secret code in it; a Warcraft novel that's incomprehensible unless you've read the complete works of Jane Austen. I think that writing a bizarro Friday the 13th novel shows I'm not alone in having that impulse. I wonder if Alex Johnson laughed the whole time writing this. If he wasn't laughing I get the impression it was because his mouth was being used for bong hits instead. (I joke. It looks like Mr. Johnson has found a reasonably successful career as a bizarro writer, and I'm actually thinking of grabbing a couple of his other titles, if anything for the sake of the Book Club of Desolation. After all, it would be entirely against my ethics to ignore a book called Doom Hippies.)"
  
  Full review at Adam Mudman's A-List:
  http://mudmansalist.blogspot.com/2017...
• 
  Chadwick Saxelid

  The indestructible cyborg killing machine that Jason Voorhees has become is recaptured (yet again) and brought to the moon of Earth II for diabolical research purposes.
  
  Unfortunately there is a "finishing school" for spoiled and chronically misbehaving young women, called Moon Camp Americana, adjacent to the diabolic research center housing Jason Voorhees. Being so close to so much out of control naughtiness gets the sin sensing Jason all hot and bothered, so he breaks out and proceeds to stomp the ever loving raunch out of all the spoiled and misbehaving young women trapped on what has become a Death Moon.
  
  The above plot synopsis is what the fourth, and next to last, Jason X spin-off novel is supposed to be about, I think... But I am not all that certain. There are numerous moments in the book where what I described above appears to be happening. But those moments are both fleeting and buried beneath an irritating and distracting layer of surreal cyberpunk futurism.
  
  In a review for another Jason X novel I complained about the author not taking full advantage of the franchise entry's futuristic setting. I felt (and still do) that there was great potential for the Jason X inspired novels to indulge in some "serious" science-fiction infused silliness. Silliness that the Earth bound Friday the 13th novels (all of which take place in the "here and now") could not.
  
  Well, Death Moon serves as a bitter reminder to always be very careful whenever making a wish. The reason being that you just might get whatever it is you wish for, only to discover that you really did not want it at all.
  
  Author Alex S. Johnson seems to be trying hard, very, very hard, to make Death Moon a tongue in cheek splatstick spectacle. A spectacle filled to overflowing with countless references to oddball psychotronic movies, like Shock Waves and Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS, etc. I have no problem with that.
  
  Johnson also seems to want to write an over the top cyberpunk novel about the surreal joys and horrors that could be found within the singularity. (When human consciousness merges with machines, you know?) I also have no problem with that.
  
  What I did have a problem with, though, was that the two concepts did not work together, at all. The future world that Johnson created in Death Moon did not resemble the future world setting of Jason X in any kind of way, shape, or form. While I did find some of the ideas and cultural changes in Johnson's bizarro world of tomorrow interesting, I also found them to be painfully distracting and out of step with the kind of book that I thought I was reading.
  
  The book I thought I was reading, the book that Johnson was supposed to be writing, would be about Jason Voorhees and his over the top gruesome exploits. Instead it was a surreal collage of is it live or is it staged nonsense that only confused and irritated me.
• 
  Russell Holbrook

  Holy shit! This was an incredible, completely unique take on the Friday the 13th universe! Suppose you're not familiar with this series. In that case, it springboards from the world created in the tenth Friday the 13th film, Jason X, in which Jason was cryogenically frozen and awakened on a space station in the future or something like that. Anyway, it's nuts and it's a super fun horror freak-out! So, Death Moon dives deep into that futuristic, sci-fi space Jason world and takes it to unknown, unexplored regions! This book is kind of like beat poetry meets horror meets experimental psychedelic literature. If you can hang with it, this is an incredible trip into a twisted, hallucinatory landscape in which both the story and the writing itself are an out-of-body experience. I definitely recommend this to horror readers who are looking for something that is completely different from anything they may have read before. Sometimes it really goes out there but if you stick with it and give in to the crazy, it's a far-out and super fun ride! I wish I could articulate it better but, in the end, I feel that this book is something that you just have to experience for yourself. It's kind of difficult to believe that this kind of depth, experimentation, and exploration was given to a Friday the 13th novel but, it was. If you're looking for the basic slasher then this is not for you, but, if you want to trip out and read something completely unique in the Jason universe, then definitely check this out! I'm probably repeating myself at this point but, I was just blown away by this weird and wonderful work. I know that a lot of people diss on this book but I like it. And, that's one of the many beautiful aspects of art, it's all personal preference, it's not "good" or "bad", in my opinion, it's just what each of us prefers, what we enjoy, what makes us feel alive and makes us cry out with joy, "Holy shit, what did I just read!?" Hallelujah, Jason lives!!
• 
  Jayden de Raat

  It's that bad.
  
  If you actually want to read the Jason X books you can get away with skipping this one and going straight from Planet of the Beast to To the Third Power (the best book in the series IMO) since there's a scene in that book that recaps the events of this book and is easier to comprehend than this abomination.