Customer Reviews

Doom

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

 

 

I do agree that the Doom movie (and therefore this novelization) isn't much like the Doom game. But after all 'Dafydd Ab Hugh' wrote a four book series based on the first two games and Matt Costello is currently putting out Doom 3 books. You can always read those for the 'true' Doom experience. For what it is, this novelization is a fun read.

I'm surprised how much I enjoyed John Shirley's adaptation of the Doom movie. Really. I picked it up because I wanted to blow off some steam with a nice, goofy read about space marines shooting monsters. I got that in spades.

What surprised me though, was that even with these meager ingredients, John Shirley's strength as a writer was able to shine through, polish it up a little and make it something better. The book is pretty compellingly written and worked well as a thriller for me. One of those books where I would tell myself 'one more chapter' before putting it down. He takes a pretty laid back, colloquial writers voice. It kind of felt like the story was being narrated to you by one of the soldiers themselves, though the book isn't written in first person.

Though there is plenty of action to be had in these pages, he also builds in a lot of suspense and tension. I also have to give him credit for trying to give his characters a little bit of depth. He doesn't quite pull it off. You are still reading about space marines who call themselves Reaper, Destroyer or Sarge, but I appreciated that he tried. It kept what really should have just been a hack job from being just that.

The book did have the same problem that the (fairly decent) movie had: the ending. The ending just seems to take the concepts the book was playing with a little too far. It makes the mistake of switching from sci-fi/horror to a sort of goofy super-hero brawl to try and pump up the adrenalin at the end.

Still, the novel is a fun, action packed and grisly weekend read. John Shirley seems to have been the perfect author for this project. He really added quite a bit to what should have been terrible. I have to say that I enjoyed Doom much more than my previous John Shirley experience Aliens: Steel Egg.

Doom wasn't a bad film, and this isn't a bad novelization, either. It's well written, and if one can just tear their mind away from the fact that this ISN'T supposed to be religiously based on the game and try to accept it on it's own merits, they might actually enjoy it.

Once again Shirley delivers the goods in this gripping, superbly characterized screen adaptation of the infamous 1st person shooter game that charmed our socks off over ten years ago. What is it exactly that you want out of a video-game-turned-movie novelization? I personally have less interest in a paint-by-numbers representation carefully shaded in to please fans than I am in simply reading a killer story w/believable characters, and that is exactly the author's approach in this satisfying homage to "shoot first ask questions later" pulp sci-fi horror.

It's a shame some folks don't seem to appreciate the simple literary approach of a rip roarin yarn the author has woven here, because if you can check your baggage at the door, you are in for one hell of an intensifying reading experience. This book is the literary equivalent of a sure-shot, one-clip barrage from a BFG emptied into the reader till he's effectively been rendered into so much pulped swiss cheese. I.e, it is best experienced in one sitting (if possible for a great part of its target audience, notoriously short of attention span), because it works like a pot of cold water put on a burner set on high: by the time you get to the last 10 percent, the narrative is boiling over with such fury the reader almost has to hold their breath to get through it all.

It is a sustained symphony of violence so adeptly handled by the author, that when the reader reaches the crescendo it is all one can do to refrain from tearing the pages out as you turn them. This is straight up pulp fiction at its finest, it transports the reader to another world of unbelievable horrors and action in a stylistic manner which renders the whole experience a sustained sense of realism, and that is all one could ask for in a narrative such as this.

Doom / 9781416524106

If there's anything I enjoy as a guilty pleasure more than B-list video-game-inspired movies, it's *novelizations* of B-list video-game-inspired movies. "Doom" by John Shirley does the best it can with the screenplay for the fairly lukewarm movie, but the flaws haven't been shined away entirely.

So what is done well here? The character of John "Reaper" Grimm carries the plot here as bravely as he did in the movie: his personal demons stemming from his childhood and the death of his parents is delved into more deeply and to good effect. The interplay between John and his sister Samantha is also extremely well done, and Shirley does a very good job of showcasing realistic sibling rivalry alongside the ties of family loyalty. The wet, sticky, icky horror of the movie carries over nicely, although the horror climaxes in the first chapter and then steadily decreases (in my opinion) as the guys with guns show up. Still, as a horror/scifi novel, it's a good showing and I can't complain too much.

Whether or not you enjoy the novel will depend a lot on your tolerance for camp. The novel dumps a barrel full of marines onto the scene and then decides to characterize them later on when it can work it in, and whenever the horror action grinds to a literal halt to fill in a marine's backstory with pages of childhood flashbacks, it's a pretty good bet that his number is about to be up. Classic TV Tropes RetIrony material here, and I partly enjoyed it, but there's a flashback VERY late in the novel that goes on for pages and it strained the limits of my patience -- you can't decide to characterize someone 85% into the novel just because you've decided their card is up and expect the reader to go along with the ride.

"Doom" definitely isn't going to stand the test of time with statements that were already out-of-date when the screenplay came out and which are repeated here, such as Samantha Grimm's ignorance of the Human Genome project and I'm pretty sure that "identical" isn't an option for mixed-sex twins -- something she fails to mention as what would have been a good come-back. Even so, I found myself occasionally charmed by the characters and dialogue, especially the John/Sam and Duke/Sam scenes.

It's worth noting that I purchased this book as an eBook and at time of writing (08/13/2011), the book contains more than a couple OCR errors and formatting issues -- there are cases where quotes were rendered in the text as '???', which is very annoying. There were also several sentences where a word was missing or an extra word was added -- I have no idea if these errors are in the paper version as well as the eBook copy.

If you like pulp horror and/or B-list video-game-inspired movie novelizations, you could do worse things with your money than buy "Doom", but I do recommend finding it for a bargain price.

~ Ana Mardoll

The Author did very well when you consider this is a book that is based on a screenplay that is based on a video game. Buy the book to support the author but if you have other books you like save your money and either buy it used or get it from the library.

Far in the future an urgent distress signal is received from a UAC research station on Olduvai mars. Soon after an elite strike team comprised of some of the most battle hardened marines is sent to Olduvai to detain and neutralize the strange threat, but they will soon come face to face with the hellish nightmares unleashed on Olduvai by the scientists' unorthodox experiments. Olduvai...... a place where doom waits.

This is one of the best books I have ever read, because it has a great plot, action, and suspense. However it shouldn't be read by people under 14 because of sex, gore, violence, graphic descriptions, very strong language, and drug references. I would also recommend this for boys more than girls.

This book might be based on the movie, but neither have ANYTHING to do with the game. None of the monsters are from hell, they're all the horrible results of lab experiments gone wrong. None of the weapons look like the ones from the game except the BFG. It's an abysmal, insulting attempt at both a movie and a book of one of the most popular PC games ever.

Anyone who gives this book a good rating has NEVER played the game. If you really want to read books that cover the REAL storyline of Doom, read the books "Knee Deep in the Dead", "Hell on Earth", "Infernal Sky", and "Endgame" by Dafydd ab Hugh. The some of the books are even named after chapters of the video game, so that should tell you you're gonna get the REAL story.

An embarrassment to the video game and all of the fans. I can't believe ID Software actually let them use the title "Doom" on this garbage. Read "Knee-Deep In The Dead" and "Hell On Earth" for what the movie SHOULD have been. It was like the screenplay was written by someone who played the video game 10 years ago and made up the story from what they remember. There are NO monsters from the game, NO Hell and NO Flynn Taggart. Don't waste your time. Hollywood ruined ANOTHER story that had great potential, and they turned it into a piece of marketed, unoriginal crap.