A four part (Knee-Deep in the Dead, Hell on Earth, Infernal Sky, Endgame) series of novels based (very loosely) on the world of Doom. The story follows a pair of marines, who struggle to survive the vanguard of an alien invasion which attacks their base on the Martian moons. However, even if the couple manage to escape their hellish entrapment, what waits for them back on earth?

I have to say, when I read the Doom series for the first time, many years ago, I was greatly disappointed. It was basically a textbook case of fanboyitus, a malignant and pervasive condition, which causes the patient to react with utter contempt for any non-canonical re-imagining of a beloved franchised storyline. (I was also shaking off the last dying shreds of the fundamentalist brand of religion I had believed in when I was a child, and found some of the characters theological musings to be a little troubling.) Let me get his out of the way, while the Doom series is not faithful to original storyline of the games (the monsters are alien bio-weapons, not literal demons) unlike other reworkings I’ve mused upon, these book actually wind up being very, very good in spite of it.

If I had too describe these books, I would say that they are what you would get if Dostoevsky teamed up with some of the more imaginative writers from the golden age of sci-fi pulps. What you get is four books full of cracking good action sequences, some suspense and horror, as well as a myriad of well-developed characters with different views on God, politics, and the whole nature of things. You have to respect a work of fiction broadminded enough to make one of the heroes a bad-ass Mormon alien-fighter.

I’m not trying to make the books sound better than they are, they are after all mass-marketed franchise tie-in. Thing is, you forget that while your reading them. The authors have put a lot of thought into this series, and even if you don’t like where it goes, even if you find the writing a little clunky, you should be able to appreciate this series for what it is.

Frankly, I had a blast. My experience was all the sweeter for the fact that it was a serendipitous accident. After intending to go through a few chapters of the first novel for what I remembered from my youth to be some creepy zombie action, I found myself pulled back into the series. It’s damn nice nowadays to read something that’s not only action-packed, but also takes the time to let it’s characters grow and develop as actual human beings. (Especially refreshing after reading ‘The Dead‘. ) This work is not what you’d expect it to be, it displays genuine imagination, it goes to some weird places. Why not tag along for the ride?