Customer Reviews

Knee-Deep in the Dead

5 star:		(100)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Dafydd ab Hugh and Brad Linaweaver's "DOOM: Knee Deep In the Dead" is without a shade of doubt the best of DOOM-inspired fiction, surpassing even its three sequels. While admittedly unrealistic, the action is well paced, the narrative tense and suspenseful. It was interesting to observe how the writers attempted to expand the DOOM universe while staying true to its video-game roots as the game that really ignited the first-person-shooter genre.

The plot is simple and very much the same as the original game. Corporal Flynn Taggart "or 'fly'" is marooned on the moon of Phobos. Making the grisly discovery that his whole unit of marines has been slaughtered by hostile aliens while he stood guard outside the deserted Union Aerospace Corporation facility, Corporal Taggart must enter the facility not only to secure a way back to Earth but to uncover the cause behind this massacre. What he discovers is nothing less than chilling.

Written in the First Person Perspective, the style of the novel is reminscient of the original DOOM PC game, and with a rollicking narrative punctuated with both staccato bursts of gunfire and a generous dollop of light-hearted Sci-fi fantasy, "Knee Deep in The Dead" while not particularly deep is nevertheless a fantastic read with a wide and surprising emotional range-much unlike most other offerings in the genre-.
A fine book.

Get this one now a truly great book! action, suspence, blood, scares it rules! this is DOOM!

I'd definitely recommend this book. It's quite well written, and brings a bit of plot (and lots of humor) to the Doom universe. I'm ordering its sequels as I write this, and I hope they're as worth it as this one is.

The creatures and environments are translated very well (those who have played the game often will know where the characters are a number of times, although the authors do make a few areas up and skip a few others - but can you really blame them?)

If you enjoyed Doom, and have even a passing interest in books, you'll enjoy yourself quite a bit with this one.

Knee Deep In The Dead is one of the best books I have read in a long time. The book follows like the game series, but we meet Fly; a Marine Coporal who is on Phobos; one of Mar's moon. Then he loses contact with one of the bases on Phobos so now he then discovers that the moon is occupied by aliens. So now as he kills zombies, and the aliens, he is then looking for one of his collegues, but then finds her of course, and now they are fighting to get back to Earth while killing off the aliens.
Now as they kill off, they then try to get contact back with earth, but they lose contact and they find the horrible truth that Earth has been conquered by the same aliens they fought on Phobos. They do eventually go to the other Mars moon. A good book and like I said this is a must-have for any DOOM fan.

First off I've been a Doom fan since day 1 of the game's launch. And that was about 10 years ago.
This first book reminds me of the Aliens trilogy.
But it's worse in content. I think the writer has focused too much on the game action instead of trying to build a story based on that plot and thus ended up with some passages that just don't sit right. For example he talks about the megahealth sphere, which is an item in the game that gives you 100 points to your health.
Descriptive narration tends to be superficial and I feel the book only gets better at about page 120 [out of 250 that the book has].
So I'd say it's an OK book, could have been better, read it only if you like the Doom plot.
I give it 4 out of 5 stars, with indulgence. I'm reading book 2 and the story is much richer.

I wrote before at amazon about how I loved this book and felt it was the best computer game novel ever written. Years later, I look back at it and realise that not only do I still love this book, but I appreciate it even more. Though the plot isn't particularly deep, this is an incredibly fun book to read. It appeals on a viceral rather than intellectual level as science fiction. But that's an observation and not a criticism, and it's actually one of the series' strengths.

Why? Because "Knee-deep in the Dead" is character-driven and character-focused. In the hands of any other authors, any other protagonist, any other perspective it would have been deathly boring and no where near as much fun. The authors have built on, rather than underminded the unique elements of the game, remained faithful to it, and the end result is so much deeper and more involving than it ever had a right to be.

Just consider the protagonist, Flynn "Fly" Taggart. He's a muscle-bound marine, yes, but he's nowhere near your typical action hero. If he took Keirsey's temperament test, I imagine he might have turned out as an INFP (I'm one too, so perhaps I like to think that he would). Fly is rabidly individualisitic, driven with intense focus by his own personal sense of morality. He believes in the ideals of the USMC as a personal passion, not out of patriotic duty. Equally important for him is his devotion to his platonic female friend Arlene Sanders (perhaps an ESTP, which is the INFP's match of "duality"--but pay me no mind), for whom he would gladly lay down his life (though not so much for anyone else). Further more, let's look at Fly's character. He has an overactive imagination, he makes connections to things he knows of that have no real importance to the story, he has a delightful sense of humor, even in the most horrific situations, and manages to be both sarcastic and utterly serious at the same time. And he's very emotional, sometimes inappropriately so. He's one of the few male action heroes who cries openly more than once (at one of the funniest points in the book, he cries when he's run out of enemies to kill). Granted, he's not insane and is in fact very resourceful and tactical, but he sometimes does foolish things and fights his way through Phobos, Deimos, and Hell (or the "hyper-space tunnel") in a manic, cautious, haphazard fashion. And he isn't annoying as a character. Instead, we love him and always want to see what he'll do and say next.

In another novel, spending half of the time with a single character who fights through hordes of monsters would have been boring, but not here. Instead, we get a funny, involving, and viceral and even touching novel full of exploration, discovery, and struggle.

In short, this book is so much more than a video game novel. The authors have invested in it an unusually rich enthusiasm not often found in undertakings like this.

I heard that Warner Brothers had finally purchased the rights to make a DOOM movie, but there are two critical flaws. First, and most ergregiously, they plan to make a PG-13 film! This is a seriously delusional treatment for a game that's notorious for it's violence, that should be at least as gory as, say Evil Dead and Starship Troopers put in a blender. Anyone who was a kid when the original DOOM came out is not any longer and gore is what the fans will crave. Secondly, I don't know if the movie will be based on the book, but there's no indication that it will be. I would hate to see someone like Vin Diesel or the Rock in place of good ol' Fly Taggart.

My boyfriend let me borrow this book to read. I have never even played the game though I'd like to, and the book sounded greatly interesting when he read me the first page in the book over the phone to me one night. I was hooked right in instantly when I started reading it, and it was very hard to put down. My boyfriend told me it would probably would be difficult for me to really understand because I'm putting myself, a female, in a guy's shoes but I understood perfectly. Emotions ran extremely high and it practically felt I was strolling along with Fly as he searched for Private Arlene Sanders. I loved the way it was written and I found myself laughing out loud at the humor. The alien descriptions and gore scenes were awesome and well written. Not once was the reality of this book covered up, or sugar coated. It probably was the best reading experiences I've ever had and I really want to find the other books because the ending was a cliff hanger. I had two favorite parts in the book. The first was when Fly encountered his first hell-prince and when Fly and Arlene found the crucified hell-princes. Doom: Knee Deep in the Dead was a great book and it definately got me hooked permanently. I'm glad I got the chance to read it because it was a great experience and it got me more into Sci-fi stories than I already am. If you ever get the chance to read it, please don't pass it up.

I'm a 21 year old college student, for backround, and for anyone who says this book is just for little kids has forgotten how to enjoy a great book. This book is, in a word, FUN. I wasnt sure what to except when I first picked it up, but my god, the authors injected so much character into this book its amazing.

The main character, Fly, seems completely real. It's well written, engaging and just damn fun! The writing is so good that I compare Fly's hundred pages of being alone to the way Tom Hanks successfully carries Castaway by himself for most of the film.

Buy this book, its the best in the series and worth your time. I've reread it so many times I've lost count!

This book is exceptionally gory and it doesn't ever reach an intellectual point or conclusion. Those are the sole negative aspects of it.

The characterization is pretty good for a shooter novel, and it is a fun book that actually succeeds at giving some type of story to the concept of DOOM, the bestselling First Person Shooter (FPS) game that really got the computer gaming industry going in storm. This is quite surprising, as the game itself tends to ignore the story, quite rightly. Nothing is more annoying than a transparent, crappy attempt at giving a story to a game that doesn't really need one. The great thing about this book is that it doesn't really give a crappy attempt, it actually succeeds. It also gives reasonable justification for the characters traveling down the base into the parts that are densest in monsters.

The book also does a good job of explaining normal human reactions to the types of things that the characters would experience in DOOM.

It's a great book and it is really fun to read. It's food for a couple hours of diversion from schoolwork and other types of boring stuff. I recommend it to anyone that likes the genre. Its really well done.
Harkius

This book was the best of the doom series. It takes place on phobos and deimos where Fly and Arlene are trapped in a battle against denomic forces. The story has humor and a good action packed storyline. Thats why I would give it five out of five.