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Doom #1
Knee-Deep in the Dead
The Gates were there on Phobos when mankind first arrived. Inert, unyielding, impossibly alien constructs, for twenty years they sat lifeless, mute testaments to their long-vanished creators, their secrets hidden. Then one day, they sprang to life...
Meet Corporal Flynn Taggart, United States Marine Corps; serial number 888-23-9912. He's the best warrior the twenty-first century has to offer, which is a damn good thing. Because Flynn Taggart is all that's standing between the hell that just dropped in on Mars and an unsuspecting planet Earth...
Meet Corporal Flynn Taggart, United States Marine Corps; serial number 888-23-9912. He's the best warrior the twenty-first century has to offer, which is a damn good thing. Because Flynn Taggart is all that's standing between the hell that just dropped in on Mars and an unsuspecting planet Earth...
250 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published June 1, 1995
About the author
Dafydd ab Hugh
27 books42 followersDafydd ab Hugh (born David Friedman) is a U.S. science fiction author.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 144 reviews
September 11, 2010
The chief amusement of this book was that it made me nostalgic for all of that time that I wasted as a teenager playing the game on which this book is based -- but hey, it was an awesome game, so, y'know, I enjoyed reading this a lot.
It wasn't The DOOM Comic of yore (comic reading link, youtube dramatic reading), of course, which is and always will be the DOOM adaptation against which all others must be compared, and I think that where it missed most of its mark was that, unlike the comic, the book tried to take the "oh noes, demons are invading our space station" concept in a semi-realistic way -- which meant that this was basically the novelization of the protagonist's trauma and mental breakdown mushed awkwardly with the demands of the plot that the protagonist blow a lot of demons the fuck up. These things can mesh instead of mush -- see, for example, Alien -- but this book seems a little too self-conscious of its genre conventions to really get you into the head of the protagonist where you need to be to make that work, at least if you're me. (I will grant that most of that self-consciousness was probably necessary for the nit-fixing of the original game elements for semi-coherent world-building.)
Speaking of the protagonist, though: a lot of this book was the sensitive exploration of the feelings of the protagonist (a Marine named Fly, short for Flynn) for a fellow Marine named Arlene, who appears in person about halfway through the book. When Arlene isn't present, she's a kickass Marine who runs through the station well ahead of Fly, killing things, blazing the trail, and making Fly generally feel second-best; he spends his time day-dreaming about what great friends they were and how all of the Marines respected her so much. When she appears, Fly immediately goes into macho protect-the-little-lady mode, which the book obliges by setting Arlene up to be rescued a couple of times. And, of course, it's Arlene who's all we-must-rescue-the-homeworld in order to inspire Fly to do his part in the fighting. I think that the story of Arlene and her sidekick Fly would have made a much better book, especially because any concept of "chain of command" was pretty much blown out of the water from page one, so it wouldn't matter that Fly technically outranked her.
Or maybe I just need to go digging through my old backups to see if I have a copy of DOOM which can be installed on a modern computer so that I can blow up a few demons of my own....
It wasn't The DOOM Comic of yore (comic reading link, youtube dramatic reading), of course, which is and always will be the DOOM adaptation against which all others must be compared, and I think that where it missed most of its mark was that, unlike the comic, the book tried to take the "oh noes, demons are invading our space station" concept in a semi-realistic way -- which meant that this was basically the novelization of the protagonist's trauma and mental breakdown mushed awkwardly with the demands of the plot that the protagonist blow a lot of demons the fuck up. These things can mesh instead of mush -- see, for example, Alien -- but this book seems a little too self-conscious of its genre conventions to really get you into the head of the protagonist where you need to be to make that work, at least if you're me. (I will grant that most of that self-consciousness was probably necessary for the nit-fixing of the original game elements for semi-coherent world-building.)
Speaking of the protagonist, though: a lot of this book was the sensitive exploration of the feelings of the protagonist (a Marine named Fly, short for Flynn) for a fellow Marine named Arlene, who appears in person about halfway through the book. When Arlene isn't present, she's a kickass Marine who runs through the station well ahead of Fly, killing things, blazing the trail, and making Fly generally feel second-best; he spends his time day-dreaming about what great friends they were and how all of the Marines respected her so much. When she appears, Fly immediately goes into macho protect-the-little-lady mode, which the book obliges by setting Arlene up to be rescued a couple of times. And, of course, it's Arlene who's all we-must-rescue-the-homeworld in order to inspire Fly to do his part in the fighting. I think that the story of Arlene and her sidekick Fly would have made a much better book, especially because any concept of "chain of command" was pretty much blown out of the water from page one, so it wouldn't matter that Fly technically outranked her.
Or maybe I just need to go digging through my old backups to see if I have a copy of DOOM which can be installed on a modern computer so that I can blow up a few demons of my own....
November 5, 2014
While reading this I was reminded of a Stephen King quote:“...most writers can remember the first book he/she put down thinking: I can do better than this."
Knee-Deep in Shit is more like it.
Doom Guy not only has a supporting cast, but he can't stop talking about them. Even in the middle of a demonic invasion, he'll spend as much time fighting as expressing his admiration for a female Marine and reluctance to go beyond the "buddy" zone. The same crutches are used over and over. So many times, he is spared fighting or struggling because the monsters turn on each other. Which, yes, it happened sometimes in the game. But this was clumsy. I was excited to get a cheap paperback as the basic theme of Doom has so much potential, but there are hardly even any naughty words. Hardened Marines are saying stuff like "you're full of spit."
The first couple chapters were pretty promising, with lines like "Mars loomed in the sky...burning red as all the blood of all the armies ever spilled in uncountable battles across the drooling stupid face of eternity." But the rest of it can be summed up with this gem as they hear the Cyberdemon in the distance: "We rotated slowly, tracking the noise, and I thought about that movie with the tyrannosaurus stomping around." Nice allusion, brah.
And another thing! He wouldn't shut the hell up about that one swastika in the game that was so controversial. I get it, include it in the story, point out how tasteless it was (Wolfenstein or no) and then move on. But no, he keeps bringing it up again and again. It's not funny, and it's not smart.
Can't believe I'm writing this, but I finally understand the appeal of writing fanfic. Pass over this vanilla book and write your own Doom story. It will probably be better.
Knee-Deep in Shit is more like it.
Doom Guy not only has a supporting cast, but he can't stop talking about them. Even in the middle of a demonic invasion, he'll spend as much time fighting as expressing his admiration for a female Marine and reluctance to go beyond the "buddy" zone. The same crutches are used over and over. So many times, he is spared fighting or struggling because the monsters turn on each other. Which, yes, it happened sometimes in the game. But this was clumsy. I was excited to get a cheap paperback as the basic theme of Doom has so much potential, but there are hardly even any naughty words. Hardened Marines are saying stuff like "you're full of spit."
The first couple chapters were pretty promising, with lines like "Mars loomed in the sky...burning red as all the blood of all the armies ever spilled in uncountable battles across the drooling stupid face of eternity." But the rest of it can be summed up with this gem as they hear the Cyberdemon in the distance: "We rotated slowly, tracking the noise, and I thought about that movie with the tyrannosaurus stomping around." Nice allusion, brah.
And another thing! He wouldn't shut the hell up about that one swastika in the game that was so controversial. I get it, include it in the story, point out how tasteless it was (Wolfenstein or no) and then move on. But no, he keeps bringing it up again and again. It's not funny, and it's not smart.
Can't believe I'm writing this, but I finally understand the appeal of writing fanfic. Pass over this vanilla book and write your own Doom story. It will probably be better.
May 23, 2020
The original Doom is a rather mindless and repetitive game, so to see this novelized was quite the curiosity. To further my resolve to read this, my friend went so far as to tell me the novel was actually very good. Based on this, I thought it was time to give this a try!
People expecting some grandiose literary work with a fully in depth story should probably look elsewhere. This book is written in the spirit of the game! Those complaining about the books sequence where the characters, mainly Flynn, go from room to room killing creatures have clearly never played this video game. Since I am writing this in 2008, Doom 3 has already come out, and I was appalled to see some reviewers comparing this story to that of Doom 3. This book came out long before Doom 3 was released AND it is based on the original Doom! How someone can sit here and attempt to make that logical comparison is absolutely beyond me.
Doom is a very straight forward game, you have no idea what's going on, but you clearly have to shoot these creatures and get out. The book plays off this concept and the largest edition you get is a developed character who actually has the goal of finding his friend. Otherwise this book captures the essence of Doom perfectly, it's also done very jokingly, which is great. It keeps the book moving with the cynical character and I found myself chuckling from time to time at the sheer absurdity of it! When Doom was originally created there was basically no story-line and the main object of the game was to "get out." While the objective remained the same for Doom 3, Doom 3 had a much more developed story, just don't expect that kind of treatment with these books.
If you're looking for an excellent adaptation in the spirit of the first Doom, then this is an absolutely must read. If you like dark and cynical sci-fi, this is also a must read. If you were looking for something serious, with detailed explanations about Doom and its background, or something scary... yeah stop whining about it and look someplace else. Enjoy this book for what it is; I sure did, and I consider myself to have a good sense of humor!
People expecting some grandiose literary work with a fully in depth story should probably look elsewhere. This book is written in the spirit of the game! Those complaining about the books sequence where the characters, mainly Flynn, go from room to room killing creatures have clearly never played this video game. Since I am writing this in 2008, Doom 3 has already come out, and I was appalled to see some reviewers comparing this story to that of Doom 3. This book came out long before Doom 3 was released AND it is based on the original Doom! How someone can sit here and attempt to make that logical comparison is absolutely beyond me.
Doom is a very straight forward game, you have no idea what's going on, but you clearly have to shoot these creatures and get out. The book plays off this concept and the largest edition you get is a developed character who actually has the goal of finding his friend. Otherwise this book captures the essence of Doom perfectly, it's also done very jokingly, which is great. It keeps the book moving with the cynical character and I found myself chuckling from time to time at the sheer absurdity of it! When Doom was originally created there was basically no story-line and the main object of the game was to "get out." While the objective remained the same for Doom 3, Doom 3 had a much more developed story, just don't expect that kind of treatment with these books.
If you're looking for an excellent adaptation in the spirit of the first Doom, then this is an absolutely must read. If you like dark and cynical sci-fi, this is also a must read. If you were looking for something serious, with detailed explanations about Doom and its background, or something scary... yeah stop whining about it and look someplace else. Enjoy this book for what it is; I sure did, and I consider myself to have a good sense of humor!
June 20, 2019
Action packed, funny, and full of character. Absolutely better than it had any right to be. More people should read this book, seriously.
November 8, 2021
if i could rate this 0 stars, i would. DNF
read up until page 46/236, cant get my self to read any further
i found it hard to understand the doom games stoyline, i looked online and i found that there is a novel series that is ( loosely ) based on the Doom games.
so i tried reading this book, in hopes it could would help me understand the games more, even though the novels have a different story then the games.
----the plot
the story starts of in somewhere??? i couldnt even tell what was happening other then the fact that he said there were torn body parts and blood in the place.
then the officer asked them to kill a set of people ( a group of monks ) for no reason and it made no sense at all?? at this point into the story monsters havent been introduced and dont exist so why is he asking them to kill random people??
next thing i know the charachters are going to mars because something happened on one of its moons
our charachter, Fly , finds zombies there and also demons ? i get the demon part but what do zombies have to do in doom? ( edit : turns out there are zombies in doom my bad ) anyways he kills them and the zombies manage to tell him a good amount of info but the charachter is too stupid to understand what theyre saying which pissed me off.
----the charachters
we were introduced to so many charachters so quickly that i didnt even understand who was who. our main charachter is arrogant as hell and idk if this is just the writer or the charachter but everytime a female is introduced he talks about " she is just as much of a soldier as any other man " and compares her to men with EVERY. SINGLE. WOMAN.
>>Of course, there was a lot more to Arlene; she had a brain.
( ???? not even taking this out of context thats all he says)
also our main charachter refers to himself as Yours Truly throughout the story and it was annoying
>>before it could reacquire its target, Yours Truly,
>>The old survival mechanism was definitely starting to kick in for Yours Truly.
----the writing
i shot the monster. i turned around. i pushed the trigger. i realized that some of the moster had fallen on a lever which i had not realized opens a door.
the whole writing was somewhat similair to that, i did this and i did that.
the charachter would repeat lines about how he wished he would not find this girl he likes dead. every few lines he would go on and on about how he was worried her body was in between the piles of body or how he worried she had become a zombie, just to end it with something like " no i know she is too strong to become a zombie."
>>I prayed she was lying dead on the deck, not stumbling toward me with dry, unblinking eyes and a sour-lemon smell.
>>“No,” I heard myself talking to no one, “she’d never allow herself to be turned into one of those.”
the author would slip in " god damn it " or " jesus " every few lines and it got annoying fast.
>>"If Arlene were being shot at, God damn it, I intended to shoot back!
>>My whole body went cold. Jesus—Arlene was down there.
oh and this book had a big case of white room syndrome a good 90% of the time
i think you can tell this book did not match my expectations at all as i love the game
the games main story is that a gate to hell is opened in one of mars' moons and another of mars moons disappears, thats just the main games the story gets deeper later on , i think that could definetely give you a great story yet this book managed to mess that up so much.
read up until page 46/236, cant get my self to read any further
i found it hard to understand the doom games stoyline, i looked online and i found that there is a novel series that is ( loosely ) based on the Doom games.
so i tried reading this book, in hopes it could would help me understand the games more, even though the novels have a different story then the games.
----the plot
the story starts of in somewhere??? i couldnt even tell what was happening other then the fact that he said there were torn body parts and blood in the place.
then the officer asked them to kill a set of people ( a group of monks ) for no reason and it made no sense at all?? at this point into the story monsters havent been introduced and dont exist so why is he asking them to kill random people??
next thing i know the charachters are going to mars because something happened on one of its moons
our charachter, Fly , finds zombies there and also demons ? i get the demon part but what do zombies have to do in doom? ( edit : turns out there are zombies in doom my bad ) anyways he kills them and the zombies manage to tell him a good amount of info but the charachter is too stupid to understand what theyre saying which pissed me off.
----the charachters
we were introduced to so many charachters so quickly that i didnt even understand who was who. our main charachter is arrogant as hell and idk if this is just the writer or the charachter but everytime a female is introduced he talks about " she is just as much of a soldier as any other man " and compares her to men with EVERY. SINGLE. WOMAN.
>>Of course, there was a lot more to Arlene; she had a brain.
( ???? not even taking this out of context thats all he says)
also our main charachter refers to himself as Yours Truly throughout the story and it was annoying
>>before it could reacquire its target, Yours Truly,
>>The old survival mechanism was definitely starting to kick in for Yours Truly.
----the writing
i shot the monster. i turned around. i pushed the trigger. i realized that some of the moster had fallen on a lever which i had not realized opens a door.
the whole writing was somewhat similair to that, i did this and i did that.
the charachter would repeat lines about how he wished he would not find this girl he likes dead. every few lines he would go on and on about how he was worried her body was in between the piles of body or how he worried she had become a zombie, just to end it with something like " no i know she is too strong to become a zombie."
>>I prayed she was lying dead on the deck, not stumbling toward me with dry, unblinking eyes and a sour-lemon smell.
>>“No,” I heard myself talking to no one, “she’d never allow herself to be turned into one of those.”
the author would slip in " god damn it " or " jesus " every few lines and it got annoying fast.
>>"If Arlene were being shot at, God damn it, I intended to shoot back!
>>My whole body went cold. Jesus—Arlene was down there.
oh and this book had a big case of white room syndrome a good 90% of the time
i think you can tell this book did not match my expectations at all as i love the game
the games main story is that a gate to hell is opened in one of mars' moons and another of mars moons disappears, thats just the main games the story gets deeper later on , i think that could definetely give you a great story yet this book managed to mess that up so much.
April 3, 2020
Дум, конечно, круто, но его новеллизации это очень больная тема. В принципе, номинализации чего-либо это вообще больная тема. В подростковом возрасте мне эта книга нравилась гораздо больше, но и сейчас я получил крупную дозу удовольствия, правда косяков и кринжа я стал замечать существенно больше. Есть хороший фансервис, есть плохой фансервис, хороших диалогов нет, главный герой иногда забавный и интересный, а иногда он открывает рот.
3,5/5 тыквенных монстров.
3,5/5 тыквенных монстров.
June 13, 2022
Not quite as much fun as I was hoping it would be, but still better than a video game novelization has any right to be. But then, it is freakin Doom we’re talking about here. All hail the coming of the Destroyer—the Slayer’s time is now.
March 22, 2016
With the upcoming Doom reboot on the horizon to be released, this is an opportune time to take a look at the novelizations of the original Doom games. Four books were jointly penned by Dafydd ab Hugh and Brad Linaweaver in the mid-90s: Knee-Deep in the Dead, Hell on Earth, Infernal Sky, and Endgame. This review is for the first book in the quadrilogy, Knee Deep in the Dead.
Knee-Deep in the Dead is an adaption of the first game in the Doom series, and attempts to cover the events from the game’s three episodes, “Knee-Deep in the Dead,” “The Shores of Hell,” and “Inferno.” The adaption is a muddled mix of verbatim content from the game, severely altered content from the game, and both authors’ own embellishments. The first-person perspective story focuses on Fly Taggart, a marine that negotiates the bases on both moons of Mars - Phobos and Deimos - in an attempt to halt an alien invasion. Aliens have been pouring through gates on these installations, turning humans into zombies and perverting the architecture with grotesque displays.
At an extreme surface level, the overall “gist” of the Doom games are transferred to text surprisingly well. The original source material only had the barest of plot to support the game, and this threadbare plot is conveyed in Knee-Deep in the Dead accurately. Beyond this observation, the book quickly crumbles apart due to sub-par writing, juvenileness, and weird results from trying to adapt the first-person shooter nature of the game into textual form.
The writing jointly done by ab Hugh and Linaweaver alternates between average and inconsistent. The gunfights and action sequences start off elaborate, but in the latter half of the book degenerates into Fly lamenting that the gunfights are so monotonous that they can be glossed over in description, which he subsequently does. The relationship between Fly and Arlene, another marine, is a considerable pain point of the story. Fly alternates between lust and wanting to maintain Arlene as “his buddy” through the book. Before meeting up with Arlene, Fly’s thoughts of her became increasingly unnerving and singular to the point of obsession. He cares not for any other companion in his unit – dead or alive – he solely focuses on finding Arlene and no one else.
When partnered up, the dialog between Fly and Arlene, and Fly’s internal thoughts in regards to her, highlight the juvenileness of the story. Instead of treating each other with respect and as serious comrades at arms, the dialog and actions between the both of them are akin to how fourth graders view each other. Relationships aside, the book is severely presented in a PG or PG-13 format, despite the source material being some of the most graphic and controversial material at the time. The characters don’t swear and descriptions of gore, blood and dismemberment are generic and sterile. A climatic scene of Arlene wielding a chainsaw to combat a few demons should have been written with Evil Dead visceralness in mind, but instead it is dumbed down to simply limbs being sawed off.
The occult and demonic themes are whitewashed over and instead presented as aliens attempting to project humans fears back at them. It is a more convoluted explanation than the simpler monsters from hell version from the source material. Fans of the game will find this alteration incredulous while non-fan will simply find it too farfetched and executed poorly. What is considered actual Hell in the video game is considered what the aliens (not demons) think hell would look like.
There are moments in the book that the authors try to integrate situations and locals from the game verbatim into the book. Exact descriptions of rooms with specific patterns of darkness or locations of elevators are peppered through the book, which can be a good or bad thing. Doom fans may recognize the scenes and cheer while non-fans will be jarred by the random instances of very specific nuanced writing that is not consistently used to describe other locations in the book.
Regardless of the poor writing, the inconsistency of what the book is trying to juggle from the original game, and lackluster characters, the writing is still written fast paced and satisfies the B-grade action/horror cravings a reader may desire. The book is written to be accessible and it probably on par with other novelizations of video games. Novelization of a video game probably presents different challenges when compared to novelizations of a film or TV series, so credit where it’s due to ab Hugh and Linaweaver for giving it a shot. In the end, Knee-Deep in the Dead is fun, perhaps more due to a Plan 9 incompetence more than anything, and really would only be appreciated by fans of the game (if at times begrudgingly).
Knee-Deep in the Dead is an adaption of the first game in the Doom series, and attempts to cover the events from the game’s three episodes, “Knee-Deep in the Dead,” “The Shores of Hell,” and “Inferno.” The adaption is a muddled mix of verbatim content from the game, severely altered content from the game, and both authors’ own embellishments. The first-person perspective story focuses on Fly Taggart, a marine that negotiates the bases on both moons of Mars - Phobos and Deimos - in an attempt to halt an alien invasion. Aliens have been pouring through gates on these installations, turning humans into zombies and perverting the architecture with grotesque displays.
At an extreme surface level, the overall “gist” of the Doom games are transferred to text surprisingly well. The original source material only had the barest of plot to support the game, and this threadbare plot is conveyed in Knee-Deep in the Dead accurately. Beyond this observation, the book quickly crumbles apart due to sub-par writing, juvenileness, and weird results from trying to adapt the first-person shooter nature of the game into textual form.
The writing jointly done by ab Hugh and Linaweaver alternates between average and inconsistent. The gunfights and action sequences start off elaborate, but in the latter half of the book degenerates into Fly lamenting that the gunfights are so monotonous that they can be glossed over in description, which he subsequently does. The relationship between Fly and Arlene, another marine, is a considerable pain point of the story. Fly alternates between lust and wanting to maintain Arlene as “his buddy” through the book. Before meeting up with Arlene, Fly’s thoughts of her became increasingly unnerving and singular to the point of obsession. He cares not for any other companion in his unit – dead or alive – he solely focuses on finding Arlene and no one else.
When partnered up, the dialog between Fly and Arlene, and Fly’s internal thoughts in regards to her, highlight the juvenileness of the story. Instead of treating each other with respect and as serious comrades at arms, the dialog and actions between the both of them are akin to how fourth graders view each other. Relationships aside, the book is severely presented in a PG or PG-13 format, despite the source material being some of the most graphic and controversial material at the time. The characters don’t swear and descriptions of gore, blood and dismemberment are generic and sterile. A climatic scene of Arlene wielding a chainsaw to combat a few demons should have been written with Evil Dead visceralness in mind, but instead it is dumbed down to simply limbs being sawed off.
The occult and demonic themes are whitewashed over and instead presented as aliens attempting to project humans fears back at them. It is a more convoluted explanation than the simpler monsters from hell version from the source material. Fans of the game will find this alteration incredulous while non-fan will simply find it too farfetched and executed poorly. What is considered actual Hell in the video game is considered what the aliens (not demons) think hell would look like.
There are moments in the book that the authors try to integrate situations and locals from the game verbatim into the book. Exact descriptions of rooms with specific patterns of darkness or locations of elevators are peppered through the book, which can be a good or bad thing. Doom fans may recognize the scenes and cheer while non-fans will be jarred by the random instances of very specific nuanced writing that is not consistently used to describe other locations in the book.
Regardless of the poor writing, the inconsistency of what the book is trying to juggle from the original game, and lackluster characters, the writing is still written fast paced and satisfies the B-grade action/horror cravings a reader may desire. The book is written to be accessible and it probably on par with other novelizations of video games. Novelization of a video game probably presents different challenges when compared to novelizations of a film or TV series, so credit where it’s due to ab Hugh and Linaweaver for giving it a shot. In the end, Knee-Deep in the Dead is fun, perhaps more due to a Plan 9 incompetence more than anything, and really would only be appreciated by fans of the game (if at times begrudgingly).
January 26, 2012
This review is being written over 15 years after the fact. The boy who read this book and loved doom, has grown up, but still this book is remembered fondly.
The big thing about this book, is unlike the scholastic series of Video game books, this is written as if it was a real book, that only owes a theme from the game, and it comes off surprisingly good. It's not high end fiction, it's not pop fiction, this is a novelization of a video game that takes a good amount of liberties to keep it interesting.
If you have ever played Doom there's not much there for a book, but the book success in making the travel more than mindless shooter. The only negative is there's a romance story that feels like the author felt it was necessary. Sadly I don't think it added much to the book, but overall the book is well written enough to avoid getting too bogged down there.
Again, for a video game novelization, it's quite well done, but not something I'd brag to people about reading.
The big thing about this book, is unlike the scholastic series of Video game books, this is written as if it was a real book, that only owes a theme from the game, and it comes off surprisingly good. It's not high end fiction, it's not pop fiction, this is a novelization of a video game that takes a good amount of liberties to keep it interesting.
If you have ever played Doom there's not much there for a book, but the book success in making the travel more than mindless shooter. The only negative is there's a romance story that feels like the author felt it was necessary. Sadly I don't think it added much to the book, but overall the book is well written enough to avoid getting too bogged down there.
Again, for a video game novelization, it's quite well done, but not something I'd brag to people about reading.
December 9, 2023
DOOM (the game) came out in 1993 when I was 8, so I first played it when I was bit older - I think 14 or so - and, to be honest, I was expecting this book to be pretty awful, but it’s actually not bad. For some reason I own all four of them, so I figured I'd give one a shot!
To get right into it, the story follows a man named Flynn Taggart, Fly, or as he keeps annoyingly referring to himself as “Yours Truly,” as he arrives on Mars’ moon Phobos. He’s detained for mutiny, but when shit starts to go down, he escapes his guards and heads into the grinder to rescue the woman he loves: Arlene.
For the first 170 pages of this 250-page book, we have just Fly. And all he’s doing is repeatedly shooting monsters - which you’ll recognize from the game - while doing stuff you do in the game: get key cards to open doors, avoid toxic goo, and explode barrels to kill monsters or demons or aliens or whatever they are. As such, it gets pretty tedious because, as we don’t know Arlene aside from what Fly tells us, I don’t really give a shit as to whether she’s alive or not, and watching Fly just do the same kind of shooting and talking to himself is really not that great. What I love about military sci-fi is the team aspect - I love the dynamics and found family and banter.
Yet, in being true to the game this book gets a 10/10 - but why not just play the game? Or is this book for people who love DOOM so much they needed this when they couldn’t be shooting monsters virtually? Like on a plane or something? In class? Walking? Did people love DOOM that much back in the early 90s?
I liked Fly. He was a good guy (which the novel shows in the first chapter), and the way he thought of and treated Arlene was not with the machismo I was expecting. In truth, I thought his unrequited love was kind of sweet. I also liked how she was depicted basically like Vasquez in Aliens - super muscled, tough, no-nonsense; she’s a soldier whom he happens to have the hots for, and his friend, not his prize, which I thought was fantastic, actually.
The writing was fine - there were some ridiculous lines and some not bad ones. The book also had allusions and references to other stuff that I wasn’t expecting and some that I didn’t get. In truth, I think the authors did the absolute best they could with the subject matter.
Anyway, while this book was kind of boring at parts, the next one actually sounds amazing, so I’ll probably read it in 2024.
To get right into it, the story follows a man named Flynn Taggart, Fly, or as he keeps annoyingly referring to himself as “Yours Truly,” as he arrives on Mars’ moon Phobos. He’s detained for mutiny, but when shit starts to go down, he escapes his guards and heads into the grinder to rescue the woman he loves: Arlene.
For the first 170 pages of this 250-page book, we have just Fly. And all he’s doing is repeatedly shooting monsters - which you’ll recognize from the game - while doing stuff you do in the game: get key cards to open doors, avoid toxic goo, and explode barrels to kill monsters or demons or aliens or whatever they are. As such, it gets pretty tedious because, as we don’t know Arlene aside from what Fly tells us, I don’t really give a shit as to whether she’s alive or not, and watching Fly just do the same kind of shooting and talking to himself is really not that great. What I love about military sci-fi is the team aspect - I love the dynamics and found family and banter.
Yet, in being true to the game this book gets a 10/10 - but why not just play the game? Or is this book for people who love DOOM so much they needed this when they couldn’t be shooting monsters virtually? Like on a plane or something? In class? Walking? Did people love DOOM that much back in the early 90s?
I liked Fly. He was a good guy (which the novel shows in the first chapter), and the way he thought of and treated Arlene was not with the machismo I was expecting. In truth, I thought his unrequited love was kind of sweet. I also liked how she was depicted basically like Vasquez in Aliens - super muscled, tough, no-nonsense; she’s a soldier whom he happens to have the hots for, and his friend, not his prize, which I thought was fantastic, actually.
The writing was fine - there were some ridiculous lines and some not bad ones. The book also had allusions and references to other stuff that I wasn’t expecting and some that I didn’t get. In truth, I think the authors did the absolute best they could with the subject matter.
Anyway, while this book was kind of boring at parts, the next one actually sounds amazing, so I’ll probably read it in 2024.
August 20, 2017
Read the review of the entire series (plus much more ranting on the overuse of exclamation points!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) at The Books in My Life.
The video game Doom’s plot can be stated in a single sentence. You are the lone surviving space marine gunning down legions of zombies and demons on Pluto’s two moons and Hell itself. That’s it. Grab your guns, shoot the bad guys, win the game. This does not make for very compelling fiction, so Knee Deep in the Dead expands big time.
Flynn “Fly” Taggard is facing a court-martial after punches his superior. This doesn’t mean he’s not heroic, as he was doing this to protect a group of monks in fictional Kefiristan from being mercilessly killed by a trigger happy marine. It does mean that he needs to be punished for his insubordination.
The punishment is to accompany a platoon into outer space to investigate the appearance of “creatures” on Pluto’s moon Phobos (Latin for fear—dum dum dum!). However, he’s not allowed to help the marines; instead, two guards babysit him on one end of the base while the marines advance to the other end to see what has happened to the Union Aerospace Corporation’s (UAC) employees. When these marines are overheard being slaughtered on the guards’ walkie-talkies, Fly Chuck Norris’ his way to obtaining one of their weapons, then takes off after his comrades, which includes his “best buddy” Arlene Sanders.
(Warner: Spoilers are forthcoming, but it doesn’t really matter. Just read on.)
None of this makes any goddamn sense.
But no matter because this is a book about shootin’ shit. Fly guns down his former friends, now zombified. He faces increasingly more difficult foes and begins to suspect they are all being controlled by an alien mastermind. He catches up with Arlene and faces down the towering steam-demon. They end up in Hell, but it’s not really Hell, it’s just an alien rendering of Hell. The team has intuitively figured out that the aliens have manufactured what humans believe hell spawn look like and are using the creatures to invade Earth, which at the end of the novel ominously hangs above Fly and Arlene, riddled with signs of alien attack.
And that’s it. Sure, there are side plots and other characters, but the bulk of the novel is shootin’ bad guys, which is all you really want from a book like this. It occurred to me as I was reading that if you had never played the game, you would have little idea what anything looked like. There are entire chapters that depict the characters moving through level after level. The bad guys are stationed where they are in the game. The trick walls are there. The winding, nonsensical landscape remains, explained away as alien architectural manipulation. The game’s items—health packs, armor bonuses, soul spheres—are conveniently scattered about. Every single zombie and demon is included, though they are stupidly renamed by the duo (“imps” are now “spineys” and “cacodemons” are now “pumpkins”). The descriptions of the setting are loose and not detailed, so good luck if you’ve never played.
But is anyone who hasn’t played the game going to read this? Doubtful. So let’s forgive that one.
Let’s not forgive the constant exposition. Nothing is revealed in this story. It’s all explained by the characters, which makes Fly’s attempts to come off as a rednecky all-American freedom fighter (oo-rah!) increasingly questionable. He downplays his intelligence, instead deferring to Arlene for brains, yet he quotes literature just as well as Arlene and packs a fairly impressive vocabulary to boot. Basically, and this becomes increasingly evident when Arlene picks up the narration in the second book, Hugh and Linaweaver are the narrators, not the characters. This is problematic considering the book is written entirely in first person. Characterizations are inconsistent and unrealistic. Fly can quote literature and knows a lot about science fiction because Arlene has dragged him to numerous movies (convienient, right?), yet he doesn’t know who H. P. Lovecraft is. What this boils down to is lazy, rushed writing, and you can feel every second of it as the duo rips through the narrative and arrives at the inevitable set-up for book two.
But maybe we can forgive this. You’re weren’t expecting high art here, were you? We can even overlook the typos, which become increasingly ever-present as the series progresses. (“The” is spelled “hte” at one point.)
Here’s the cardinal sin, the one that can’t be forgiven by this reader: the overuse of the exclamation point. It plagues nearly every single page and translates to “Look how cool this is! It’s just like the game!”
Let me randomly turn to a page and find an example: “My God, it even had a You Are Here arrow!” That took me about five seconds to find. Shall we try again? “No fair changing the rules now!” One second. “…[N]ow I was surrounded by a dozen floating pumpkins!” Ugh.
Overall, I’d pry this bad (and I do mean bad) boy open again in another ten years. Well, I would have if I didn’t read the whole series this time around and realized exactly why the final two novels are so disliked.
The video game Doom’s plot can be stated in a single sentence. You are the lone surviving space marine gunning down legions of zombies and demons on Pluto’s two moons and Hell itself. That’s it. Grab your guns, shoot the bad guys, win the game. This does not make for very compelling fiction, so Knee Deep in the Dead expands big time.
Flynn “Fly” Taggard is facing a court-martial after punches his superior. This doesn’t mean he’s not heroic, as he was doing this to protect a group of monks in fictional Kefiristan from being mercilessly killed by a trigger happy marine. It does mean that he needs to be punished for his insubordination.
The punishment is to accompany a platoon into outer space to investigate the appearance of “creatures” on Pluto’s moon Phobos (Latin for fear—dum dum dum!). However, he’s not allowed to help the marines; instead, two guards babysit him on one end of the base while the marines advance to the other end to see what has happened to the Union Aerospace Corporation’s (UAC) employees. When these marines are overheard being slaughtered on the guards’ walkie-talkies, Fly Chuck Norris’ his way to obtaining one of their weapons, then takes off after his comrades, which includes his “best buddy” Arlene Sanders.
(Warner: Spoilers are forthcoming, but it doesn’t really matter. Just read on.)
None of this makes any goddamn sense.
But no matter because this is a book about shootin’ shit. Fly guns down his former friends, now zombified. He faces increasingly more difficult foes and begins to suspect they are all being controlled by an alien mastermind. He catches up with Arlene and faces down the towering steam-demon. They end up in Hell, but it’s not really Hell, it’s just an alien rendering of Hell. The team has intuitively figured out that the aliens have manufactured what humans believe hell spawn look like and are using the creatures to invade Earth, which at the end of the novel ominously hangs above Fly and Arlene, riddled with signs of alien attack.
And that’s it. Sure, there are side plots and other characters, but the bulk of the novel is shootin’ bad guys, which is all you really want from a book like this. It occurred to me as I was reading that if you had never played the game, you would have little idea what anything looked like. There are entire chapters that depict the characters moving through level after level. The bad guys are stationed where they are in the game. The trick walls are there. The winding, nonsensical landscape remains, explained away as alien architectural manipulation. The game’s items—health packs, armor bonuses, soul spheres—are conveniently scattered about. Every single zombie and demon is included, though they are stupidly renamed by the duo (“imps” are now “spineys” and “cacodemons” are now “pumpkins”). The descriptions of the setting are loose and not detailed, so good luck if you’ve never played.
But is anyone who hasn’t played the game going to read this? Doubtful. So let’s forgive that one.
Let’s not forgive the constant exposition. Nothing is revealed in this story. It’s all explained by the characters, which makes Fly’s attempts to come off as a rednecky all-American freedom fighter (oo-rah!) increasingly questionable. He downplays his intelligence, instead deferring to Arlene for brains, yet he quotes literature just as well as Arlene and packs a fairly impressive vocabulary to boot. Basically, and this becomes increasingly evident when Arlene picks up the narration in the second book, Hugh and Linaweaver are the narrators, not the characters. This is problematic considering the book is written entirely in first person. Characterizations are inconsistent and unrealistic. Fly can quote literature and knows a lot about science fiction because Arlene has dragged him to numerous movies (convienient, right?), yet he doesn’t know who H. P. Lovecraft is. What this boils down to is lazy, rushed writing, and you can feel every second of it as the duo rips through the narrative and arrives at the inevitable set-up for book two.
But maybe we can forgive this. You’re weren’t expecting high art here, were you? We can even overlook the typos, which become increasingly ever-present as the series progresses. (“The” is spelled “hte” at one point.)
Here’s the cardinal sin, the one that can’t be forgiven by this reader: the overuse of the exclamation point. It plagues nearly every single page and translates to “Look how cool this is! It’s just like the game!”
Let me randomly turn to a page and find an example: “My God, it even had a You Are Here arrow!” That took me about five seconds to find. Shall we try again? “No fair changing the rules now!” One second. “…[N]ow I was surrounded by a dozen floating pumpkins!” Ugh.
Overall, I’d pry this bad (and I do mean bad) boy open again in another ten years. Well, I would have if I didn’t read the whole series this time around and realized exactly why the final two novels are so disliked.
September 13, 2017
DooM: Knee Deep in the Dead - Brad Linaweaver and Dafydd ab Hugh (1995)
With a game as big as DooM you would expect its paperback counterpart to be at least decent right? Wrong. The book starts you off in the perspective of Flynn “Fly” Taggard, who is a soldier in the middle east. Fly punches his CO and is then court martialed for insubordination, and is imprisoned on Mars’s moon Phobos. On Phobos Fly is being moved by two guards when over the radio they hear screams of terror, following that Fly manages to talk the guards into letting him free and giving him a gun. Everything from here on out is just Taggard traveling through the base killing zombies and chasing his love interest Arlene Sanders, which he doesn't know if he likes her or not, and the story ends up being a strange love triangle. “I stared at the mark. A.S. Arne Saknussen; A.S… Arlene Sanders. My gut dropped to my boots. Arlene! Arlene was alive? It had to be, what other explanation was there? She was alive, and she was doing just what i was doing: going deeper into the station, hoping to find a radio or another living human, or maybe her old pal, Fly.”
The book ends up being overly simple and awkward. The book is nothing like the game, if the book didn't have the name doom, and didn't take place on the same moon, then you would have no idea that it was related to the game series. The book made some of the demons from the game into zombies that can only be killed when they are shot in the head (cliche), but it does somewhat add to the story as it adds humanity to Fly’s character because he is distressed about killing what used to be people he knew. But this is quickly forgotten later in the story when Fly talks deeply about the joy he gets from ripping them apart. To add insult to injury they made Fly a die hard soldier that has strong morals, which is nothing like the character he is based on, but the author ditched that aspect later on in the book as well. Overall the book has a hard time deciding what it wants to be, but that could be because it was written by two people.
If you wanna try the book out for yourself you can most likely find it at a 2nd hand book store, or you can buy it from amazon.com for $1.96.
With a game as big as DooM you would expect its paperback counterpart to be at least decent right? Wrong. The book starts you off in the perspective of Flynn “Fly” Taggard, who is a soldier in the middle east. Fly punches his CO and is then court martialed for insubordination, and is imprisoned on Mars’s moon Phobos. On Phobos Fly is being moved by two guards when over the radio they hear screams of terror, following that Fly manages to talk the guards into letting him free and giving him a gun. Everything from here on out is just Taggard traveling through the base killing zombies and chasing his love interest Arlene Sanders, which he doesn't know if he likes her or not, and the story ends up being a strange love triangle. “I stared at the mark. A.S. Arne Saknussen; A.S… Arlene Sanders. My gut dropped to my boots. Arlene! Arlene was alive? It had to be, what other explanation was there? She was alive, and she was doing just what i was doing: going deeper into the station, hoping to find a radio or another living human, or maybe her old pal, Fly.”
The book ends up being overly simple and awkward. The book is nothing like the game, if the book didn't have the name doom, and didn't take place on the same moon, then you would have no idea that it was related to the game series. The book made some of the demons from the game into zombies that can only be killed when they are shot in the head (cliche), but it does somewhat add to the story as it adds humanity to Fly’s character because he is distressed about killing what used to be people he knew. But this is quickly forgotten later in the story when Fly talks deeply about the joy he gets from ripping them apart. To add insult to injury they made Fly a die hard soldier that has strong morals, which is nothing like the character he is based on, but the author ditched that aspect later on in the book as well. Overall the book has a hard time deciding what it wants to be, but that could be because it was written by two people.
If you wanna try the book out for yourself you can most likely find it at a 2nd hand book store, or you can buy it from amazon.com for $1.96.
December 12, 2017
Was in a Doom mood after playing Doom VFR and couldn’t find any more books like the non-fiction book about the creation of Doom so thought I would pick up a tie-in Novel.
Honestly I was not expecting much going in with this, I just needed something I could come in and out of due to long hours at work and this was a very easy read.
It sort of follows the story of Doom but when I say sort of it’s not really what you think. Doom the game really has no story Your a nameless Marine on Mars where Hell has broke loose that’s all the story there is too it.
The book you can kind of see what they are trying to do but although it succeeds with being a no brainier sci-fi action horror title but it fails in a lot of other areas.
A lot of the names for the creatures are wrong such as Barons of Hell now being Princes Of Hell & Imps being Demons. They underuse the shotgun and also the book contains more of a survival horror aspects at time with things like stealth being introduced which isn’t Doom.
My main gripe with this book however is the main character Doom Guy is now a guy nicknamed Fly? The character although an action hero is more human then he should be, Doom Guy is a fearless, emotionless machine but this book gives him moments where he is scared and even a love interest? It does kind of ruin the aura of Doom Guy who is a character so brutal that Hell itself is terrified of him. This book makes him cheesy and corny just like a lot of the Demons.
Overall I got about what I was expecting out of this a light easy read that to be honest did some aspects of Doom like the action well but it was doomed to be a average book from the start. What makes Doom one of the best games of all time is that it’s no nonsense there is little to no plot and the main character is more robotic then human. This books takes away a lot of what makes Doom great by existing as a book. Too me they should have done the story without Doom Guy and then maybe it might have worked.
Read from the Makers of Doom instead if you need a Doom related book.
Honestly I was not expecting much going in with this, I just needed something I could come in and out of due to long hours at work and this was a very easy read.
It sort of follows the story of Doom but when I say sort of it’s not really what you think. Doom the game really has no story Your a nameless Marine on Mars where Hell has broke loose that’s all the story there is too it.
The book you can kind of see what they are trying to do but although it succeeds with being a no brainier sci-fi action horror title but it fails in a lot of other areas.
A lot of the names for the creatures are wrong such as Barons of Hell now being Princes Of Hell & Imps being Demons. They underuse the shotgun and also the book contains more of a survival horror aspects at time with things like stealth being introduced which isn’t Doom.
My main gripe with this book however is the main character Doom Guy is now a guy nicknamed Fly? The character although an action hero is more human then he should be, Doom Guy is a fearless, emotionless machine but this book gives him moments where he is scared and even a love interest? It does kind of ruin the aura of Doom Guy who is a character so brutal that Hell itself is terrified of him. This book makes him cheesy and corny just like a lot of the Demons.
Overall I got about what I was expecting out of this a light easy read that to be honest did some aspects of Doom like the action well but it was doomed to be a average book from the start. What makes Doom one of the best games of all time is that it’s no nonsense there is little to no plot and the main character is more robotic then human. This books takes away a lot of what makes Doom great by existing as a book. Too me they should have done the story without Doom Guy and then maybe it might have worked.
Read from the Makers of Doom instead if you need a Doom related book.
August 23, 2018
Woah. There have been few times in my life I've actually thought to myself I might not be able to make it all the way through a book. This was one of those times, and this book was brutal. They say in horror, the best strategy is letting the audience's imagination take over, hint don't show, and that's why that image of Leatherface slamming the metal door shut in that old Texas house is so terrifying. They do that in this book too...I guess. They essentially leave everything to the imagination, so if you haven't played the game (recently) you have no idea what anything is supposed to look like or what's going on. It's all just "generic wall" this, "generic gun" that, "generic demon" there; "we walked this way and did this thing and then the chapter ended." The other unfortunate fact is that we're stuck in the head of a narrator who apparently is a 13-year-old boy in middle school. Now I don't know why they would let a 13-year-old boy into the space marines, but apparently they did. Let's just say, whenever he encountered a "pumpkin", I was rooting for the gourd. Sigh. I like the Doom games, but this book is a perfect argument for why trying to literally translate the mechanics of a video game to other media is a stupid idea.
October 10, 2018
I turn the corner and shoot the demon with my shotgun. Then I find some more ammo. Then I open a door. Then I teleport to the next area... ad nauseam.
September 5, 2019
The worst book I have ever read.
May 3, 2022
[cw rip & tear]
1) "I stared in horror. Even eighteen months of picking up after the Scythe of Glory and their Shining Path buddies didn't prepare me for what was left of pik Nizganij.
It was a Bosch canvas, severed limbs and hollowed-out trunks — eaten out by animals, I prayed — planted through the fields like stalks of corn, blood painting doors and walls like the first Passover... except it was human blood, not lamb's blood.
Corporal Flynn Taggart, Fox Company, 15th Light Drop Infantry Regiment, United States Marine Corps; 888-23-9912. Everyone calls me Fly, except when they're pissed."
2) "At least for the one day we spent on Mars, we had a view. The domes were made of super-thick, insulated plastic, but were cleverly designed to give the illusion of being thin as a soap bubble. The only trouble was that the view wasn't very impressive — a blank expanse of empty desert broken by an equally barren, dark purple sky. I was only so thrilled with looking at stars. I liked something bigger up there. Although we could see Phobos from Mars base camp, it was so tiny it almost looked like a bright star trucking across the sky. Not enough moon for a melancholy mood.
But now as I crawled the land-cart out under the black, airless sky of Phobos, I enjoyed my first genuine feeling of freedom since I left Earth. Mars loomed in the sky, three-quarters full, larger than any moon and burning red as all the blood of all the armies ever spilled in uncountable battles across the stupid, drooling face of eternity — the face of a monster."
3) "Bill didn't stop; he came closer. Desperate, feeling like Cain, I returned fire. Given the half-dead condition Bill was in, killing him all the way should have been easy. The first bullet took him in the throat, above his Kevlar armor. That should have done the job, but he kept on coming. I pumped more rounds at Bill, and finally one connected with his head. That dropped him.
But even as brains and blood oozed onto the corridor floor, his body continued to flop around the way a chicken does when its head has been removed. Humans don't do that... and they don't have a sour-lemon smell either, which was suddenly so overpowering that I could barely breathe.
I stared, shaking like a California earthquake.
I was looking — at — a zombie."
4) "I felt like a ghoul, but feelings were a luxury. With a shotgun in my arsenal, my survival rating took a big leap up the charts.
I checked the bore and found no obstructions. There were plenty of shells in the bandoleer around her body. I thanked Dudette for being a Marine to the end... semper fi, Mac."
5) "The alien grimaced, facial muscles finally growing rigid. Then for a moment it relaxed. 'We could eat anybody onccce,'' it declared. Then it stopped moving; even the cilia in its mouth stood up straight and froze. The demon was dead."
6) "The simplicity of the layout and the big blocks of stone made secret doors less likely here, although I would pause occasionally and try pushing against anything that looked remotely promising."
7) "Then it died the messiest monster death I had seen so far. One moment the ball was bouncing against the walls; the next, there came a spray of sticky, blue goo that smelled like caramelized pumpkin pie and sounded like an overripe squash dropped ten stories. I seriously considered losing the lunch I had struggled so hard to ingest.
'Oo-rah!' exulted Arlene. 'Smashing pumpkins into small pieces of putrid debris! What the hell was that?'"
8) "We found a cozy room with four doors and a single switch in the center. 'Do you hear that?' Arlene asked.
Until she mentioned it, I hadn't heard anything but our heavy breathing; but then I noticed something so unbelievably loud that a deaf man should have felt it; concentration is a funny thing.
It sounded like the World Trade Center taking a stroll just outside.
We rotated slowly, tracking the noise, and I thought about that movie with the tyrannosaurus stomping around."
9) "To exit the room we had to squeeze through a narrow opening that looked exactly like... well, I didn't like to even think about it.
I volunteered to go first, and she didn't object. 'Fly,' came her voice as we wriggled and writhed through the orifice, 'do you ever get the feeling you're being born again?'"
10) "Suddenly, Arlene gasped; her eyes opened wide. 'Fly, I have it!'
'What?'
'I know how to do it!'
'Do what damn it?'
Her lips moved, silently calculating. Then she grinned. 'I know how to get us across to Earth, Fly!'"
1) "I stared in horror. Even eighteen months of picking up after the Scythe of Glory and their Shining Path buddies didn't prepare me for what was left of pik Nizganij.
It was a Bosch canvas, severed limbs and hollowed-out trunks — eaten out by animals, I prayed — planted through the fields like stalks of corn, blood painting doors and walls like the first Passover... except it was human blood, not lamb's blood.
Corporal Flynn Taggart, Fox Company, 15th Light Drop Infantry Regiment, United States Marine Corps; 888-23-9912. Everyone calls me Fly, except when they're pissed."
2) "At least for the one day we spent on Mars, we had a view. The domes were made of super-thick, insulated plastic, but were cleverly designed to give the illusion of being thin as a soap bubble. The only trouble was that the view wasn't very impressive — a blank expanse of empty desert broken by an equally barren, dark purple sky. I was only so thrilled with looking at stars. I liked something bigger up there. Although we could see Phobos from Mars base camp, it was so tiny it almost looked like a bright star trucking across the sky. Not enough moon for a melancholy mood.
But now as I crawled the land-cart out under the black, airless sky of Phobos, I enjoyed my first genuine feeling of freedom since I left Earth. Mars loomed in the sky, three-quarters full, larger than any moon and burning red as all the blood of all the armies ever spilled in uncountable battles across the stupid, drooling face of eternity — the face of a monster."
3) "Bill didn't stop; he came closer. Desperate, feeling like Cain, I returned fire. Given the half-dead condition Bill was in, killing him all the way should have been easy. The first bullet took him in the throat, above his Kevlar armor. That should have done the job, but he kept on coming. I pumped more rounds at Bill, and finally one connected with his head. That dropped him.
But even as brains and blood oozed onto the corridor floor, his body continued to flop around the way a chicken does when its head has been removed. Humans don't do that... and they don't have a sour-lemon smell either, which was suddenly so overpowering that I could barely breathe.
I stared, shaking like a California earthquake.
I was looking — at — a zombie."
4) "I felt like a ghoul, but feelings were a luxury. With a shotgun in my arsenal, my survival rating took a big leap up the charts.
I checked the bore and found no obstructions. There were plenty of shells in the bandoleer around her body. I thanked Dudette for being a Marine to the end... semper fi, Mac."
5) "The alien grimaced, facial muscles finally growing rigid. Then for a moment it relaxed. 'We could eat anybody onccce,'' it declared. Then it stopped moving; even the cilia in its mouth stood up straight and froze. The demon was dead."
6) "The simplicity of the layout and the big blocks of stone made secret doors less likely here, although I would pause occasionally and try pushing against anything that looked remotely promising."
7) "Then it died the messiest monster death I had seen so far. One moment the ball was bouncing against the walls; the next, there came a spray of sticky, blue goo that smelled like caramelized pumpkin pie and sounded like an overripe squash dropped ten stories. I seriously considered losing the lunch I had struggled so hard to ingest.
'Oo-rah!' exulted Arlene. 'Smashing pumpkins into small pieces of putrid debris! What the hell was that?'"
8) "We found a cozy room with four doors and a single switch in the center. 'Do you hear that?' Arlene asked.
Until she mentioned it, I hadn't heard anything but our heavy breathing; but then I noticed something so unbelievably loud that a deaf man should have felt it; concentration is a funny thing.
It sounded like the World Trade Center taking a stroll just outside.
We rotated slowly, tracking the noise, and I thought about that movie with the tyrannosaurus stomping around."
9) "To exit the room we had to squeeze through a narrow opening that looked exactly like... well, I didn't like to even think about it.
I volunteered to go first, and she didn't object. 'Fly,' came her voice as we wriggled and writhed through the orifice, 'do you ever get the feeling you're being born again?'"
10) "Suddenly, Arlene gasped; her eyes opened wide. 'Fly, I have it!'
'What?'
'I know how to do it!'
'Do what damn it?'
Her lips moved, silently calculating. Then she grinned. 'I know how to get us across to Earth, Fly!'"
October 21, 2023
"'No! I must kill the demons' he shouted
The radio said 'No, John. You are the demons'
And then John was a zombie."
This was such a bizarre book and here are some reasons why
-Fly is a marine and he didn't swear once, which seems wildly un-marine
-Fly's strange insistence of him and Arlene being JUST FRIENDS GUYS WE HOOKED UP ONCE AND IT WASN'T RIGHT SO WE'RE JUST FRIENDS OKAY. This is almost throughout the whole book he keeps saying this
-The odd harping on the swastika? Like it KEPT being brought up over and over and over. Like yikes yall, you're fighting literal demons, time and place
-Fly quotes Archy and Mehitabel and Rudyard Kipling, but then has no idea who Lovecraft is???
-Almost every fight ends with the demons killing each other, which is def not how it goes in the game
-The misnaming of enemies but some are the same? Like imps and pinkies are the same, but cyberdemons are called steam-demons? And cacodemons are called pumpkins? Very bizarre
The radio said 'No, John. You are the demons'
And then John was a zombie."
This was such a bizarre book and here are some reasons why
-Fly is a marine and he didn't swear once, which seems wildly un-marine
-Fly's strange insistence of him and Arlene being JUST FRIENDS GUYS WE HOOKED UP ONCE AND IT WASN'T RIGHT SO WE'RE JUST FRIENDS OKAY. This is almost throughout the whole book he keeps saying this
-The odd harping on the swastika? Like it KEPT being brought up over and over and over. Like yikes yall, you're fighting literal demons, time and place
-Fly quotes Archy and Mehitabel and Rudyard Kipling, but then has no idea who Lovecraft is???
-Almost every fight ends with the demons killing each other, which is def not how it goes in the game
-The misnaming of enemies but some are the same? Like imps and pinkies are the same, but cyberdemons are called steam-demons? And cacodemons are called pumpkins? Very bizarre
August 3, 2023
Monsters in Space
I was very much intrigued by Doom the movie and video so I decided to read the book. The book was good it was action packed and very vivid details of the monsters.
Although the author did spend a lot of time on on the monsters and different times it could’ve been shorten by a few pages. At times the book kept going I’m circles between the characters. I did enjoy the humor.
The book is about Fly as he navigates through the hell trying to find any survivors from his group he then defends into an evil of unimaginable horror. The ending was good although a bit sad. I am not sure about book 2 but I will give it a try.
I was very much intrigued by Doom the movie and video so I decided to read the book. The book was good it was action packed and very vivid details of the monsters.
Although the author did spend a lot of time on on the monsters and different times it could’ve been shorten by a few pages. At times the book kept going I’m circles between the characters. I did enjoy the humor.
The book is about Fly as he navigates through the hell trying to find any survivors from his group he then defends into an evil of unimaginable horror. The ending was good although a bit sad. I am not sure about book 2 but I will give it a try.
April 18, 2024
A fun read, but nothing to be taken too seriously. Good for fans of the series.
February 5, 2022
out of respect for the franchise i’ll give this work of literature a three
April 13, 2022
Twelve-year-olds in 1995 would like this book, but probably no one else. It read like a play-by-play narrative of someone working their way through the game and trying to make a story out of it via pretty amateurish writing. It did have lots of guts and explosions and alien monsters, though, and it was short.
June 21, 2024
I mean, bashing on this feels kinda lousy because every single one of us read this only to feel like you're a kid in the 90s again, and that is exactly what you get. It's fun and nostalgic. I even listened to the old game soundtrack at times while reading. But if you ask me to sum up the story I will do it in three sentences, the rest is filler and gun shots. Just like a Doom game.
October 31, 2020
So, confession time. I tried to find this whole series really hard back when I was in college. This was the era before I bought things online, and long before e-publishing. I was able to find exactly one copy of volume 2 in a B. Dalton in my local mall, and that was it. I miss B. Dalton. So I read volume 2, enjoyed it, and dreamed of what might have been.
Fast forward half a lifetime, and the internet age provides. With the recent reboot fresh in mind, and the recent "Doom: Eternal", I tried my hand at finding this series again. Imagine my joy when I found not only the Volume 1 I had missed, but all four volumes! Imagine it!
In any event, the Doom novels diverge from the game continuities (all of them, in fact), but are an enjoyable read nonetheless. The story follows Doomguy, in this iteration one Corporal Flynn Taggart, USMC, and his battle brother PFC Arlene Sanders (long story), as they fight their way across fictional Kefiristan, and less fictional (though fancifully depicted) Phobos and Deimos, moons of Mars. As in the original games, the Demons, or aliens, are fiendish monsters pouring through 'gates' unwittingly activated by Union Aerospace Corporation.
PROS:
Nostalgia. As much as I loved the movie and the recent reboot Doom games, these books portray Doomguy as he was in the original games; a tough, though fallible, and ultimately mortal marine. Flynn is, yes, one bad mama jama, but he gets hurt, gets scared, gets grossed out, panics, worries about ammo. All the things you went through playing the original game, honestly. This volume lets you relive it in an exemplary fashion, without actually freaking out looking for a blue key card.
Action. This is not a heavy read, for the most part. While some of Flynn's internal monologue is surprising profound, particularly as regards his motivations for continuing the fight, most of what you get from Knee Deep in the Dead is just what you got from the game. Demon Slaying.
Inside Jokes. While it's strange to say I share an inside joke with an author duo I've never met or read any of their other works, there are several places where Flynn, Arlene, or even the narrator mention something that resonated with my memory of the game and made me snicker. Especially when it comes to 'naming' the demons. Sure the manual said what all of them were. But who didn't call the Mancubus a 'fatty,' or Lost Souls "Flying skulls."
CONS:
Shallow Read. This is one for the commute. It reads quick, if you get right down to it. Sure there are three more volumes to be had, but looking at Knee Deep in the Dead on it's own merits, it's only a fraction of the story.
Obscure. This was a bit...hard to find. I feel like it was worth the trouble, since I did really look hard for these at the time, and always regretted missing out on the complete set, but your mileage may vary.
That's it, really. Look forward to reviews on the subsequent volumes as I finish them and assemble my thought. I'me very excited about this series I've had on hold since 1999!
Fast forward half a lifetime, and the internet age provides. With the recent reboot fresh in mind, and the recent "Doom: Eternal", I tried my hand at finding this series again. Imagine my joy when I found not only the Volume 1 I had missed, but all four volumes! Imagine it!
In any event, the Doom novels diverge from the game continuities (all of them, in fact), but are an enjoyable read nonetheless. The story follows Doomguy, in this iteration one Corporal Flynn Taggart, USMC, and his battle brother PFC Arlene Sanders (long story), as they fight their way across fictional Kefiristan, and less fictional (though fancifully depicted) Phobos and Deimos, moons of Mars. As in the original games, the Demons, or aliens, are fiendish monsters pouring through 'gates' unwittingly activated by Union Aerospace Corporation.
PROS:
Nostalgia. As much as I loved the movie and the recent reboot Doom games, these books portray Doomguy as he was in the original games; a tough, though fallible, and ultimately mortal marine. Flynn is, yes, one bad mama jama, but he gets hurt, gets scared, gets grossed out, panics, worries about ammo. All the things you went through playing the original game, honestly. This volume lets you relive it in an exemplary fashion, without actually freaking out looking for a blue key card.
Action. This is not a heavy read, for the most part. While some of Flynn's internal monologue is surprising profound, particularly as regards his motivations for continuing the fight, most of what you get from Knee Deep in the Dead is just what you got from the game. Demon Slaying.
Inside Jokes. While it's strange to say I share an inside joke with an author duo I've never met or read any of their other works, there are several places where Flynn, Arlene, or even the narrator mention something that resonated with my memory of the game and made me snicker. Especially when it comes to 'naming' the demons. Sure the manual said what all of them were. But who didn't call the Mancubus a 'fatty,' or Lost Souls "Flying skulls."
CONS:
Shallow Read. This is one for the commute. It reads quick, if you get right down to it. Sure there are three more volumes to be had, but looking at Knee Deep in the Dead on it's own merits, it's only a fraction of the story.
Obscure. This was a bit...hard to find. I feel like it was worth the trouble, since I did really look hard for these at the time, and always regretted missing out on the complete set, but your mileage may vary.
That's it, really. Look forward to reviews on the subsequent volumes as I finish them and assemble my thought. I'me very excited about this series I've had on hold since 1999!
September 6, 2022
I love the game Doom, who doesn't. I'm not the biggest fan on earth I only just got into it. I finished the first game this week and now I am on the second game, I have yet to play any of the new ones. So when I found out there were doom novels I had low expectations. Most of the other Video game books I had read just felt like a cash in, but found my self pleasantly surprised by this book.
What this book adds is a back story to the Marine named Flynn here (or Fly for short) he is a very tough person, he at some points reminded me of Bruce Wills in Die Hard. Near the start of the book he fights two people both named Ron for a gun after they wont give him one, he is just that type of person. At the same time he doesn't feel unlikable either the book balances his character perfectly. One of the first people Fly worries about is this girl named Arlene who is really into Sci-fiction movies. She is not really his love interest (they only kissed once before the events of the book when they were drunk) more of a person he really wants to see if there okay. I really liked this line of his inner monologue:
"someone must of been robbed by a flashlight as a kid and wanted nothing more to do with them."
The book adds things the game didn't have, in the game all the zombies where just zombies, there wasn't any lore to them you shoot them and moved on with the pixel-ized level (maybe they had something in the instruction manual that I have not read). Here they reveal that they are Flys past Co-workers, not to spoil much but lets just say there is some dramatic scenes with this aspect later in the story. There is some humor and pop-culture references in here too, like when Flynn first sees a Cacodemo- I mean pumpkin, one of first things he compares it to is The wizard of Oz. Not that most of these references felt forced, a lot of them where for other science fiction books and movies, so it felt a bit more natural that way.
Its book I will recommend to people, even people who haven't played the games, as it is a nice fun easy to read sci-fi story (you could probably read the whole thing in the Airport while waiting on your plane.) I heard that this series "jumps the shark" and gets bad, I will keep that in mind if I ever go into the other novels in this series.
What this book adds is a back story to the Marine named Flynn here (or Fly for short) he is a very tough person, he at some points reminded me of Bruce Wills in Die Hard. Near the start of the book he fights two people both named Ron for a gun after they wont give him one, he is just that type of person. At the same time he doesn't feel unlikable either the book balances his character perfectly. One of the first people Fly worries about is this girl named Arlene who is really into Sci-fiction movies. She is not really his love interest (they only kissed once before the events of the book when they were drunk) more of a person he really wants to see if there okay. I really liked this line of his inner monologue:
"someone must of been robbed by a flashlight as a kid and wanted nothing more to do with them."
The book adds things the game didn't have, in the game all the zombies where just zombies, there wasn't any lore to them you shoot them and moved on with the pixel-ized level (maybe they had something in the instruction manual that I have not read). Here they reveal that they are Flys past Co-workers, not to spoil much but lets just say there is some dramatic scenes with this aspect later in the story. There is some humor and pop-culture references in here too, like when Flynn first sees a Cacodemo- I mean pumpkin, one of first things he compares it to is The wizard of Oz. Not that most of these references felt forced, a lot of them where for other science fiction books and movies, so it felt a bit more natural that way.
Its book I will recommend to people, even people who haven't played the games, as it is a nice fun easy to read sci-fi story (you could probably read the whole thing in the Airport while waiting on your plane.) I heard that this series "jumps the shark" and gets bad, I will keep that in mind if I ever go into the other novels in this series.
November 18, 2014
DOOM is a recognizable brand to any 90s kid or true gamer from the PC age of first person video gaming. One of my most vivid memories as a kid is sitting in my underwear at the large IBM PC a kid, around the age of six, blasting away demons, boneys, and hell-princes until late into the night. DOOM changed video gaming and provided a fun, horror filled universe for fans to live in. Sadly, as a kid, I never read the DOOM novelizations. Now, more than twenty years later, I am enjoying this series. The first book in the series is so far its best.
Imagine your worst nightmare becoming a reality. Humanity’s conception of hell and horror are made real by alien invaders who have one prime objective: destroy humanity!
"Fly" Taggart and Arlene, "A.S.", must traverse Mars’ moons and destroy thousands (literally!) of factory produced demon-like creatures and, wait for it . . . zombies! Yes, I think this is definitely one of those long lost zombie tales that should make a come back. Although I am personally burned out on the zombie genre (sorry The Walking Dead fans, but it is true), I felt revived by the undeads in the DOOM series. Their lemon-stinking existence is a constant reminder that when the dead walk the earth (DOOM #2), so will demons.
DOOM reads just like a live-action video game. The authors do a fun job to explain why rockets and MediPacks appear randomly when levers are pulled. Great imagination plus care and love was put into these stores for fans of DOOM. Knee-Deep in the Dead is by far the best of the four part series.
Imagine your worst nightmare becoming a reality. Humanity’s conception of hell and horror are made real by alien invaders who have one prime objective: destroy humanity!
"Fly" Taggart and Arlene, "A.S.", must traverse Mars’ moons and destroy thousands (literally!) of factory produced demon-like creatures and, wait for it . . . zombies! Yes, I think this is definitely one of those long lost zombie tales that should make a come back. Although I am personally burned out on the zombie genre (sorry The Walking Dead fans, but it is true), I felt revived by the undeads in the DOOM series. Their lemon-stinking existence is a constant reminder that when the dead walk the earth (DOOM #2), so will demons.
DOOM reads just like a live-action video game. The authors do a fun job to explain why rockets and MediPacks appear randomly when levers are pulled. Great imagination plus care and love was put into these stores for fans of DOOM. Knee-Deep in the Dead is by far the best of the four part series.
June 25, 2019
Not as good as the comic that would follow it, but it was never going to be. It does follow the structure of the original game (all three episodes, not just Knee-Deep in the Dead) surprisingly closely. Ab Hugh and Linaweaver dutifully/laboriously work their way down a list of game mechanics—specific weapons and monsters, damaging floors, exploding barrels, soul spheres, monster in-fighting, &c.—introducing only a handful of new ones—swimming, microgravity, destroyable doors, pickable locks, &c.—and a few extra characters just to add some variety to what is, after all, a very straight-forward FPS. They're not good writers even by video game novel standards, but they get points for trying to make sense of things that didn't really make sense in the game.
I suppose I should finally get around to playing Doom 2 (or Ultimate Doom?) before reading the next one.
(This edition was clearly scanned from a mass-market paperback, ``cleaned up'' by just reducing the dark-grey on grey-brown text to 100% black on 100% white, and stretched to a size the cheapest POD machine on the market could handle, producing some of the ugliest print I've ever seen in a book that wasn't printed on a high-school photocopier. It's better than not having it at all, I guess, but I wish they'd mark these Printed By Amazon editions more clearly so I could buy something else instead.)
I suppose I should finally get around to playing Doom 2 (or Ultimate Doom?) before reading the next one.
(This edition was clearly scanned from a mass-market paperback, ``cleaned up'' by just reducing the dark-grey on grey-brown text to 100% black on 100% white, and stretched to a size the cheapest POD machine on the market could handle, producing some of the ugliest print I've ever seen in a book that wasn't printed on a high-school photocopier. It's better than not having it at all, I guess, but I wish they'd mark these Printed By Amazon editions more clearly so I could buy something else instead.)
July 12, 2019
This is obviously not going to be high literature, or even groundbreaking writing - it's a simple, mindless, "junk food" kind of read; and for that I actually don't think it's that bad. In fact, it's actually quite okay.
The book doesn't really retell the story of the Doom video game - there wasn't really any story in that game - but reinterprets the game in a way that makes it readable. It brings in its own original sci-fi ideas, which, while half-baked, do move the book along at a compelling pace. It's honestly a stupid, 80's action movie kind of story, but you strangely find yourself wanting to know what happens next.
It's interesting to note that the book actually does capture the feeling of playing Doom pretty well - like the game, the book moves along at a visceral, breakneck speed. Those who have played Doom before will also find references to actual locations in the levels of the game present in the novel, which is always a nice touch.
If you want a quick sci-fi or video game based read, this is a decent choice, and pretty cheap too. It's nothing special, but it's not horrible either.
Also, I'd like to give a shout out to Super Bunny Hop on Youtube - his channel is what led me to this novel, and his videos are wonderful.
The book doesn't really retell the story of the Doom video game - there wasn't really any story in that game - but reinterprets the game in a way that makes it readable. It brings in its own original sci-fi ideas, which, while half-baked, do move the book along at a compelling pace. It's honestly a stupid, 80's action movie kind of story, but you strangely find yourself wanting to know what happens next.
It's interesting to note that the book actually does capture the feeling of playing Doom pretty well - like the game, the book moves along at a visceral, breakneck speed. Those who have played Doom before will also find references to actual locations in the levels of the game present in the novel, which is always a nice touch.
If you want a quick sci-fi or video game based read, this is a decent choice, and pretty cheap too. It's nothing special, but it's not horrible either.
Also, I'd like to give a shout out to Super Bunny Hop on Youtube - his channel is what led me to this novel, and his videos are wonderful.
April 14, 2013
Flynn Taggart is a Marine, threatened with court martial until the Gates on Mars suddenly start working. Aliens that resemble our very human ideas of demons, plus a few zombies thrown in for good measure, take over the base, leaving Flynn on his own. Following marks that he hopes are left by his mate, Arlene, he travels down the levels of the base, the monsters getting worse and harder to kill, the scenery changing at each doorway, and challenges to solve before he can move on.
This was an interesting read in that the author has tried really hard to reproduce the experience of playing the game. However, that means it loses a bit of coherence, as there isn't really much of a story line.......just lists of creatures that Flynn kills. Because it is written in 1st person narrative, you also know that Flynn is going to survive, which makes the danger seem less urgent. Not that the other characters are safe!
Overall, a good read that doesn't need brain in gear to enjoy or think about...looking forward to the next one to see how they get out of the base.
This was an interesting read in that the author has tried really hard to reproduce the experience of playing the game. However, that means it loses a bit of coherence, as there isn't really much of a story line.......just lists of creatures that Flynn kills. Because it is written in 1st person narrative, you also know that Flynn is going to survive, which makes the danger seem less urgent. Not that the other characters are safe!
Overall, a good read that doesn't need brain in gear to enjoy or think about...looking forward to the next one to see how they get out of the base.
September 27, 2013
Two and a half stars, but I'm feeling generous so I'll round up in this case.
I'll admit I'm surprised. Going in I expected this to be absolutely terrible. It's a novel based on an early 90's first person shooter that I found in the dollar bin of a local book store. Turns out it wasn't bad.
Now, it's exactly what you'd expect in terms of story. You follow a SPACE MARINE as he fights his way through hell on Mars (well, since it's based on the original Doom, above Mars, but whatever), trying to locate his best Marine pal and stop the invasion. It's all first person (a nice meta-joke by the author) and the author did a decent job with the material, though it's a bit obvious that he was required to keep the book PG-13 instead of R.
At around page 200 or so I was starting to get action fatigue, but by that point I pushed on to the cliffhanger ending.
If you liked the games or books light on plot and heavy on action then pick this up.
I'll admit I'm surprised. Going in I expected this to be absolutely terrible. It's a novel based on an early 90's first person shooter that I found in the dollar bin of a local book store. Turns out it wasn't bad.
Now, it's exactly what you'd expect in terms of story. You follow a SPACE MARINE as he fights his way through hell on Mars (well, since it's based on the original Doom, above Mars, but whatever), trying to locate his best Marine pal and stop the invasion. It's all first person (a nice meta-joke by the author) and the author did a decent job with the material, though it's a bit obvious that he was required to keep the book PG-13 instead of R.
At around page 200 or so I was starting to get action fatigue, but by that point I pushed on to the cliffhanger ending.
If you liked the games or books light on plot and heavy on action then pick this up.
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