Doom

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 show more 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 taking 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. show less

Hmm I bought this because I thought I recognised the author as the writer of some enjoyable light weight space opera in the seventies. But nope I must have been mistaken this is as badly written as you could imagine a computer game novelisation to be.