Customer Reviews

Death's Head: Day of the Damned

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

The first Death's Head book was great. The second was very good. Day of the Damned was fair at best. Bad story line and poorly developed.

This was as I expected... Unpredictable. From beginning to end. Well, the characters were as expected when taking the first two stories into account. With any good writing reoccurring characters must grow from their experience unless they are too stupid beyond belief and Gunn delivers with intriguing twists and turns. Plot line however was unexpected, at least for me, but then I usually read with an open mind. By the time I finished this one I was wanting more, the next installment.

This is no Slacker it is full bore ripass. Swen is guy with the brass b---- He is tough and knows what to do, he learned the hard way...Go read this you'll be up all night can't put it down....Ken

its has all the action that I have come to love about this series but I was left thinking WTF at the end, I REALLY do not know if I liked or hated the ending. So I am going to sit on the fence and read the next book allowing the author to convince me that plot was a good idea LOL

I don't know what most people are talking about. Okay, the first book in the series is arguably the best, but this one is almost as good, and it's certainly better than Maximum Offense. Sven has his problems as a character, but he's getting some depth here, and Gunn attempts to trim the fat when it comes to Aux; ie, eliminate the characters that aren't that memorable. I would defineatly recommend this book, and i hope Gunn continues in this direction with the next.

Ok...I truely loved the first book! A slow day in Barnes & Noble and I decided on a new author and book, what a fun read. The second book was a little different, but ok, the thrid book, was problem after problem.
1) was not well thought out
2) was very hard to follow
3) disappointing plot
4) where does it go from here?

I will buy the fourth installment, I am hoping it turns around and captures the craziness of the first book.

Great story, not too believable, but do we read SF because we believe it or for entertainment. This is great entertainment and pure escapism. Worked great for a trip from Louisville to Denver. Short trip.

Book Three "Day of the Damned" of the Death's Head series was a bit different than the first two. That is not necessarily bad. There was more political intrigue in this book but it did help to fill in some questionable areas in prior books.

Debro and Anton got their ticket OUT of Paradise and now are living their 20 years of exile in BFE. There is a Romeo/Juliet type romance going on between Vijay and Aptitude but rather than the Capulets and Montagues, there is General Shadow Luc, aka The Wolf, who wants Aptitude for himself.

There is civil war in Farside and political goings-on and kidnappings and killings of powerful people and many who are just regular folks. There are new creatures. Rather than the ferox, we now have the furies - very hard to kill.

But all of this doesn't take away from the main core of the book - killing, blood, sex, gore, drinking, sex, much more killing. And meanwhile The Wolf and Sven keep playing "Which one is bigger" (could be because Sven is noticing what a tender little morsel Aptitude is even if she's too young for him).

By the end of the book, all are "guests" of The Wolf at his lair and then, poof, they aren't and someone we know is now VERY powerful. We have to wait until next book to find out more. That's the only problem with serials. I hate waiting.

Oh, and what the h*** happened to Anton? And Haze? I guess we wait to find that out, too.

As said before: quality is decreasing book after book. Found it sometimes ridiculous or pretentious.

I've read all three of David Gunn's Death's Head novels and for anyone looking for hardcore fast paced military SF action it's hard to go past this continuing series.
I'm not going to discuss the plot of Day of the Damned as others have already done so, what I would like to make clear is that the particular narrative style that David uses is the perfect medium for the main character.
Descriptions of places, spaceships, hardware and people, not to mention alien creatures and equipment, are brief but evocative, giving the reader just enough information for their own imagination to draw a picture of what the author is describing.
David Gunn doesn't waste time on the non essentials. The main character and the action is what drives his Death's Head tales and he's got that down pat.
I think that with Day of the Damned the author has fully established himself as the current number one author of action packed military SF.
Book three is tighter, more refined and broader in scope than the first two novels in the series.
The main character is growing nicely and there's plenty of room for more hard as nails adventure as the series progresses.
David Gunn might be the new kid on the military SF block but in the short time he's been writing his Death's Head novels he's proved that being new doesn't mean being boring or using the same old themes and scenarios.
With his tense and tough first person narration as seen through the eyes of futuristic soldier Sven Tveskoeg the three novels that currently make up the Death's Head series are fast paced and realistic. No starship troopers sense and sensibility saga here, Sven's world is down and dirty and plenty nasty. There's no heroes and possibly no good guys, per se...only a small cog in a big machine trying to survive the only way he knows how, by sheer brutality and rat cunning.
Sven's a great character and I forsee David Gunn as being a writer to keep an eye on. I don't see anyone else writing the kind of gutsy MilSF that David is penning.
If you like hardcore SF action and adventure with a military base then the Death's Head series should be on your list.
I will say it's not for everyone. It's violent, sexy, dark and gritty and isn't anything like Heinlein's classic MilSF novel.
There's no pages of social commentary or a whole chapter devoted to the in and outs of life in the futuristic universe. It's just fast paced fun and exitment, with enough plot twists to keep the reader interested.
Think of Sven as the Mack Bolan of the spaceways and you'll have a pretty good idea of what the Death's Heads books are like.
I'm looking forward to the next novel in this continuing series.
As for those reviwers who've said that book three isn't as good as the first two novels, or that book three lacked a plot...well I'm afraid I'm really going to have to disagree...book three had a very decent plot...and one has to remember that we've looking at evrything through Sven's eyes as events happen to him and around him. The reason we don't know what's happened to OctoV is because Sven himself doesn't know yet.
Obviously we will discover what happened to the Emperor as Sven continues on his path across his futuristic universe in the next novel(s).