Customer Reviews

Doom: Hell On Earth

5 star:		(32)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

As a life long DOOM fan I finally got round to reading the first two books in the original series of novels based on the games- DOOM & DOOM II: Hell on Earth. Credited as being co authored by Dafydd ab Hugh & Brad Linaweaver and first published in 1995 by Pocket Star Books.

The first book- Knee Deep in the Dead, named after the first episode of the original game is pretty good for a literary videogame adaptation aimed at youths. It follows the games plot to a T- battling the demons, teleporting from one Mars moon to the next, only slightly differing by adding in a side kick marine (one Arlene Sanders) to our hero's aid (named Fly Taggart) that, and well the other main difference is that in the end the authors wimp out on sending our two heroes to Hell itself and instead they travel down a hyperspace tunnel after defeating the Cyberdemon on Deimos and into the bowls of the moon and what they dismiss as a simulation of Hell.

Also the ending differs in that instead of `Hell' opening up a doorway back to Earth once the marines have defeated the Spider Demon Mastermind, it turns out Deimos has been used as a space ship by the invaders and now sits within Earth's orbit. The book ends with our hero's facing the problem of how to get back to the invaded Earth. Despite the deviations from the source, reading through KDITD is vastly enjoyable for the DOOM fanboy as it is mostly faithful to the game and a number of sections from the game are vividly described and elaborated upon. For the best sense of immersion replay the game then read the book.

Book two: Hell on Earth- does not fare as well and has little semblance to the game DOOM II: Hell on Earth on which it is supposedly based. The first 30 plus pages see our heroes stranded on the Deimos moon base building a rocket to get home. A task that would not have been necessary had they been presented with a doorway back to Earth by the invaders once they had defeated the Spider Demon as happens in the first game. This section is boring to read and you get the feeling this was done by the authors to soak up some pages and draw out the plot.

Once they have constructed the rocket and land back on US soil (Salt Lake City) they are captured by one Albert Gallatin an ex marine & Mormon and then taken to the President of the Mormon church where they learn the government has sold out and is working with the invaders. SLC is one of the few pockets of human resistance left and after our heroes recall their battle on the Martian moons to the President, he puts together a strike team of Fly, Arlene, Albert and one 14 yr old computer genius- Jill and sets them off on the mission of disabling the alien force fields that surround Los Angeles, capturing vital alien intelligence and then delivering it to a military resistance base in Hawaii.

Aside from disabling the force fields, all of this has little semblance to the plot of DOOM II. The authors seem to have a hard ons for religion as our hero Fly often recalls his catholic upbringing with nuns, while Albert references passages from the Mormon scriptures and there are even a few conversations about religion tossed in. All this in a book based on a videogame that contained zero religious references. A game which on the contrary, had nothing to do with religion and in fact seemed to represent the total opposite of religion, that being rebellion & liberation and which was even labeled Satanic by the media of the time.

What with the religious themes going on- Mormon's being one of the last pockets of human resistance after the governments and most of the military have sold out, and Hell never actually being visited, you do get the feeling that after the first book, the authors decided to use the monsters and rough theme of DOOM to tell a story about their own interests (the Latter day saint movement) rather than write the best and most faithful series of DOOM novels they could for the fans. After all, the only reason these books became best sellers was because they were tie-ins to the games.

The other problem I have with Hell on Earth is that with four, eventually five main characters, it's just too much. The games are all just one guy going it alone. In the first book our hero gets a side kick which is fine, but in the second novel we have a whole cast. You get the feeling this was done to make the books easier to write for the authors, but they could have stuck with two characters and fleshed out the books with memories/dream scenarios etc. Personally I would have just preferred one guy- accurate game plots and more killing: - endless descriptions of map architecture, sights, sounds, smells and death. Maybe I'm the only one who feels that way, but I doubt it.

Anyway, I'm gonna round this up. The first book- Knee Deep in the Dead is a good read for DOOM fans and best read directly after playing through the original game one more time. The way sections of the game are vividly recalled really sticks you right back in the first game, but this time offering a different level of immersion.

The second book- Hell on Earth, by comparison is quite average as it has less killing, barely any sections from DOOM II included, and strays further outside events of the game. Also at this point since the authors try to make it more of an original novel rather than a straight forward adaptation of a very simple game that featured no character development, unfortunately this highlights the limitations of their writing skills. Essentially the characters are written very basically and never seem like real people. Instead they read like characters written by a high school kid.

As a DOOM fan I would recommend you to read Knee Deep in the Dead, and then the two DOOM3 novels by Matthew Costello- Worlds on Fire & Maelstrom. Costello himself co wrote the scripts for DOOM3 so the books are very close to the games plot and crucially do feature visits to Hell & thankfully no religious passages. In addition to this the characters in Costello's books seem much more real.

This book's major flaw is NOT its lack of violence, but it's lack of wit, style, and believability. The first few chapters will definatly remind readers of the spectacularly entertaining blood-bath that was KNEE-DEEP IN THE DEAD.

In this one, Fly Taggart and tough-chick Arlene Sanders jerry-rig a mail rocket against the clock to blast themselves back to earth... No really... and they survive too. Still, these guys make it sound a helluva lot more believable than I can, and it only adds to the sense of fun and gives Fly and Arlene even more of that Bruce-Willis-DIE-HARD indestructibility.

They crashland in Utah (reminds me of The Scorpion King, where The Rock falls 20 stories, then stands up and groans, as if he's only popped his back; Fly and Arlene are kinda like that) and are captured/recruited by the Mormons, whose paranoia of American government and the world in general allowed it to become a stronghold in the Alien invasion.

I like regular, "serious" novels, so when I tell you that it gets boring, it's not because I am an action-hungry hormone-crazy blood fiend. It gets boring... with sprawling passages on pointless exposition and Book-of-Mormon quoting. Thankfully, it's not THAT boring. Certainly not the point where I wanted to put this book down.

It's a quite a switch to be confronted with all these new characters when the first book had only 2 most of the time. Readers will probably still be used to that rugged, all-alone-on-another-world feel from the original book. None of these characters are as interesting as Fly and Arlene, though.

The action returns later on in the book, but it lacks the intensity and style of the first book. Not to say that it isn't stylistic or intense.

Overall.. I give this book a more solid recommendation than my star rating suggests because it leads into the last books of the series, which are incredible.

This book has been criticized by other users as having nothing to do with DOOM or anything. But with 4 books, how far do you expect these guys to stretch the simple "Walk-around-find-key-kill-demon" theme? A plot HAD to emerge somewhere. And it emerges big and bold here. While it doesn't hold the striking human characteristics of INFERNAL SKY, HELL ON EARTH is still worth reading more than once.

Saying that this is the worst of the series is like saying that RETURN OF THE JEDI was he worst of the STAR WARS trilogy.....

The second in the DOOM novel series, this one isn't very good. It's very slow at first, and the pace doesn't change much. It still relates to DOOM in general, unlike the third and fourth books, which is good, but doesn't have many references to the DOOM II game itself, which is a shame. This book would be the worst in the series if not for the awful "DOOM: Infernal Sky". It's best to get this book just to know what happens next in the series, or just get #1 and #4 and not care about the story in between. That's my two cents.

On thing I'll point before I start my rant is that I actaully read this book first BEFORE I read KDITD. I saw HOE in the Summer of 1995(I was 12) on the racks of the book portion of(of all places) a grocery store. This was just before I had first played the game which was in the Fall of that year. About three years later in Spring of 1998 I saw the rest of the Doom books and was finally able to makes heads and tales of what was happening.

Now on to the book. I do think that this follows its videogame counterpart much less than the book before it, but this does not really make for a boring read. The first book was more on the lines of a freakish thriller than it was on all-out-action. In the first one, Fly and Arlene are pretty much alone against the (biologically created) aliens, trying to to stop them from coming out of the Martian space ports and into earth and keep a threating situation under contol. In this book, the aliens get into earth anyway and the surviving members of the human race must try to beat back the invader as well as back-stabbing human traitors who sold out their own race. The situation is no longer contained but it has exploded and now must be halted.

Still this book has the traditional Doom sort of violence that will make you think of the video game right away. The action is a bit more unpredicatable as they are on earth, and that allows for a lot more variety of things to occur, as opposed to the Mars Moon bases.

The basic plot is more oriented on a specific mission instead of simply blasting and killing stuff. When Fly and Arlene leave Deimos in a mail rocket and land near Salt Lake City, they decide to hike to one of the last strongholds of humanity. They join up with the largely Mormon-male resitance. In good intention, Fly and Arlene find a radio in an effort to report all the stuff from the first book to their superiors. They have no idea that their Commander has been possesed by the aliens, and as they gives name and location to a no-longer-human Colonel of the Corps, the resistance begins to doubt F&A's usefulness but chooses to let them fight in the oncoming assault anyway. The leader of the resitance decides they can be forgiven if they go on a mission to prove themselves worthy. The mission is to make it to L.A. and take down a forcefield generater that blocks people from leaving the country. After this they are to get to a super top-secret military complex in Hawaii. They gain two new allies. Albert, one of the Mormons who has sniper experinece and somehow attracts the affection of the rightiously-atheistic Arlene, and Jill, a tennager who has no cambat experiance but the compuet hacking skills needed to take out the generator.

Some of the most humorous moments in the book were in SLC, where Arlene begins to sound like a radical femenist as she is at odds with Mormon patriarchy, and the scene in the super market where A&A look for some lemons to cover themselves with as a means of blending in with the zomibies. They way the zombies act like disorganized shoppers long after their bodies have died is reason for laughter itself. The whole book is chopped full of Fly's subtle, dumb jokes and humor that made the first book so good. The little voice in the back of his head is still there, so expect it to get more than just its 2 cents in.
I also found the idea of Ken the "cybermummy" interesting. He gets captured by the aliens and is covered with many electronic tech bits that restrict his movement. He is being used as a human computer tool, and gets wrapped up in bandages when he get transported on a train where our heroes find him and pull him from evil's possession.

All in all this is a good book that really expands the Doom story much more than the game's creator ever thought possible. Infernal Sky is also good but about half way through I think the story got messed up when F&A were sent into space once again. If you ever find this as well as the one before it you should by all means pick both of them up.

This book was the point where I started to question what the authors were doing. I love a good alien invasion story, but I found the Doom video games to be more interesting because they weren't exactly aliens; they were something much more frightening. The authors of this novel removed this aspect and tried to put their own spin on the story, thus hurting it. I also didn't find the new characters all that exciting, although I enjoyed the fact that it switched perspective while still remaining in the first person.

This book was okay, but not nearly as good as the first...That and the new characters are rather boring...stereotypes. The only advantage this book has over Knee Deep in the Dead is the addition of the new stuff from the Doom 2 game. All of the wonder and fear is removed and replaced with pointless talking. Overall, read it only because you need it to fill in the plot for books 3 and 4.

I love bargin bins. They're how I obtain most of my books, are often decent quality, and are cheap. And thank god, especially if in between the good ones you manage to pull Hell on Earth. I got this at the same time as the first DOOM novel, and was startled at the differences between them. Knee-Deep In The Dead was a dump fun Aliens rip off that also stuck to the style of the game. Hell On Earth, though, is a lumbering bore, short on plot, character developement, humor and all those other things need to keep this reader awake. To call this a mess would be an understatement.

He had done some very intresting job in Balance of Power and Fallen Heroes, but His Interpration of the Doom character is something to be questioned, I Like his way to express Fly's frustation, or his funny view of horibly things, but the story in general is boring and once you read it you won't ever review it

The sequel to Knee-Deep in the Dead is not as engrossing asthe first, but if you read the first book, you _must_ readthis one as well. It adds two new characters to the team, a Mormon sniper and a 14-yr old computer whiz. It includes some exciting battles on a train, in buildings, and in an airliner. However, the viewpoint changes from one character to the next, and while some may like that, I personally find it annoying, and occasionally confusing. A must read if you're dying to find out how Fly and Arlene get back to Earthside..

Storyline is close to Doom II however, it lacks wits, style and credibility.
It is rich with action, even though it gets to be a little repetitive and sometimes even predictable. It has very little substance and I think the author would have done a better job if he didn't try so hard to basically transmute the videogame action into words.
All in all, if you're a Doom fan, it's worth the read.
Keep in mind this is NOT THE STORY of Doom, as thought by it's creators, iD Software. Rather, it is the author's view.