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BladeWolf

Is it worth reading the Doom novels?

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I have a uni project coming up for Creative Writing, I'm assigned to write a book review for any well known fictional work post 2000. I was thinking, are the Doom novels worth a read for this? I've heard mixed reviews about it, and I'm pretty sure almost all my classmates would go for some other more reputed writers of the time, so I was thinking of trying to be unique. What do you guys think? Are they worth a read?

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No. 

 

Instead read @dsm's writing Doom - Evil Unleashed. It's been on here for a long long time (2002 I think)

 

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I recommend the first two. They're fast paced Doom fanfic trash, and quite entertaining. I read them about ten years ago and remember them being enjoyable, but don't know how well they hold up today. A lot of liberties are taken with the source material, but I remember thinking the authors' takes on some of the game's elements were pretty creative. Even if you just read the first one, it's very short and full of action.

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The first one at least is a fun retelling of Doom 1, but honestly is little better than fan-fiction.  The second is fine, and after that they get progressively weirder.  For example there's a lot about aliens and Mormons.  It's odd.

 

I enjoyed reading the first as a kid, but that's about it.  

 

However, even if they were brilliant they wouldn't qualify for your assignment: they all came out before 2000.

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Echoing some of the same comments already mentioned, although it's been a minute since I've read 'em, I do recall the first 2 novels sticking closer to the game story / lore and being pretty decent, good cheesy fun that you can smash thru over the course of a lazy afternoon, haha! The third and fourth do deviate from the Doom feel a bit, but are sorta charming in a bad fanfic kinda way, hahaha!

 

Doesn't really help with your assessment at all, but if you want some solid Doom reading of an un-official variety, @Impie's three-part "The Plutonia Experiment" series is a real good time as well!

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Honestly I like all 4 of them well enough, but these other comments aren't off or anything. Like it's been mentioned, the first one is very faithful to the source material - you should recognize shot-for-shot most levels from Doom 1 throughout the book, though it skips over some of them.

 

The second book deviates from the isolated nature of the first novel (and the original games), though it still incorporates a lot of Doom 2's enemies accurately and has some loose interpretations of the levels (for example, the Cyberdemon and Spider Mastermind fight from Gotcha! is featured toward the end of the novel in an interesting way.)

 

The third and fourth novels go completely off the rails and stop being about the original setting of Doom/Doom 2 entirely - spoilers below:

 

Spoiler

The third novel introduces entirely new outside alien races, and it's revealed that the "demons from hell" are actually genetically engineered soldiers by one faction in an intergalactic war. These soldiers were meant to approximate the kinds of demons in Christian iconography and stuff the aliens examined from the 1500s in order to bring humanity to its knees and conquer another planet on the chessboard. However, when the aliens returned 500+ years later, humanity was well beyond the sort of biblical fear the aliens were trying to weaponize, and far more technologically advanced than expected.

 

Much of the third and fourth novels are filled with traveling on spaceships, and there's far less action than in the first two, instead focusing more on the spiritual and philosophical. There are a couple of nominal references to the original games (Soulspheres are basically a panacea made by the non-aggressor alien faction in the intergalactic war), but it's definitely a lot less... Doom than you'd want in a book about Doom (like the 2004 Doom movie).

 

The first two are worth a read imo. I'd only recommend the third and fourth books if you're *really* interested in reaching the grand conclusion of Flynn and Arlene's journey.

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I liked the first one. Was fun recognizing levels and locations based on the descriptions.

 

I stopped reading the 2nd one when a Revenant was described as "a boxer in shorts". And really did not like the direction the story was taking anyway.

 

Haven't read the 3rd and 4th one.

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No, and your Uni said a “well known” book,  not a “well known by doom fans” book. The vast majority of people will have no clue what these books are, even if they played Doom in the past. They also came out before 2000. 


Besides, the novels suck, and people who try to convince us they're somehow canon or call it “lore” are crazy. 
 

If you are seriously interested in reading them, I at least recommend not doing so for your school project. 

Edited by TelicAx7

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read the first one, but that was ages ago, so take this with a grain of salt, but i really enjoyed it. certainly not a masterpiece, more in the vein of warhammer 40k omnibus (albeit very much shorter). a bit trashy, but fun if you dig the source material.

 

edit: just to clarify, i'm talking about the 1995 novel "knee deep in the dead". don't know about any new novels which might have come out in tandem with the new games.

Edited by JBelle

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Seems we get this thread fairly regularly. If we're talking about the original novels from the mid 90s, I think they're only worth a read for the pure novelty of it. They're not super engaging, and while the first book captures the original game's atmosphere fairly well, they are embarrassingly juvenile for having been written by grown ass adults. The descriptions of different areas from the games are probably the only element you'll get any joy out of.

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The only good thing I can say about them is that I found the first book in the highschool library when I was a Freshman. This was 2001. It was a terrible book aimed at, or written by, people with a 6th grade reading level.

 

However, reading it made me curious at what was going on with Doom, I hadn't really played it since Quake came out, and I had moved on to other games. But reading the book led me to jDoom, and Doomworld, and back to Doom in general.

 

The books are trash though.

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The thing that sticks out in my mind is the Soulsphere apparently being a blob of goo that covers the Doomguy and heals him, which is a mental image that cracks me the hell up!

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3 minutes ago, Doomkid said:

The thing that sticks out in my mind is the Soulsphere apparently being a blob of goo that covers the Doomguy and heals him, which is a mental image that cracks me the hell up!

Don’t forget about the Revenants wearing jerseys with red boxing shorts. Now that’s CLASSIC.

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2 hours ago, Doomkid said:

The thing that sticks out in my mind is the Soulsphere apparently being a blob of goo that covers the Doomguy and heals him, which is a mental image that cracks me the hell up!

I remember that the soulsphere flies at him and splatters all over him when he sees it, for whatever reason.  

I agree that the best parts are when the various levels are described.  I'm pretty sure most of the levels from E1 are described (although they are all are underground, and then when they get to the Anomaly it's on ground level for some unexplained reason) all the levels from E2 (including the secret map) and from E3 the first two levels, then the secret map and the boss map.  I suppose they couldn't be arsed in the end.  

The dialogue is extremely cringy, there's loads of factual and continuity errors (like they mess up the spider mastermind's rate of fire mathematically at one point), and some of the enemy descriptions are borderline offensive - the imps can talk, cacos have 'tube mouths' instead of grins, lost souls are mechanical, barons fire their fireballs from 'wrist launchers'.  And the main characters are annoying as hell.  

Rant over

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On 9/8/2021 at 6:44 PM, BladeWolf said:

Are they worth a read?

they are so bad that they're actually bad. as people said, the first ones have easily recognizable map descriptions, and this is the only reason one may want to read the books. sadly, they aren't trashy enough to become a good trash, they're just bad.

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