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invictius

the 3rd novel - any good?

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I've read the first two, years ago, but wasn't able to find the third. That Arleen teleporting through to the inferno ep nekkid sounded pretty hawt (I was 12 at the time, don't look at me like that :P). I remember it being about something on a spaceship... any reccommendations/spoilers?

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Don't buy it. If you accidentally happen to find a copy, shoot it.
The third and fourth books don't have anything to do with Doom. Rather the two space marines find themselves up against (I'm not kidding about this dude), aliens known as the freddies and the newbies.

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Mwall4136 said:

How did it get published? Makes me wonder, are the first two any good at all?


The first two are quite good, especialy E2M3 (the level where it's extremely dark, many traps, and when you hang a left at the start, theres nukage followed by an enclusure, more nukage, etc...): *spoilers ahead*








Doom guy finds doom gal close to death, and throws her into a soul sphere, and ooze flows all over her, bringing her to perfect health. Also, a cyb was deactivated by one of them climbing onto the rocket launcher hand and ripping the wires out...

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One of the authors, Dafydd ab Hugh, has written a ton a stuff. 10 books or more. Might as well buy the first book.

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Mwall4136 said:

How did it get published? Makes me wonder, are the first two any good at all?

God knows.
My theory was that the first two books were used as an excuse so that the author could get two other books he'd written published.
What kind of shitty name is "End Game" anyway?

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The doom monsters were created by freddies to invade us. Because of the massive scale of space and slowness of evolution when freddies found us at first we were primitave. They assumed we'd be like that when they returned. When they did return they had genetically created creatures to scare us into obedience inspired by our myths. But we evolved really fast, and when they returned we were gun totting psychos who pretty much kicked their ass.

Newbies were creature who the freddies also tried to invade but they evolved so much quicker than anything else that they had advanced enough to kick the freddies ass 2x over and then continue as a single mind hive organism to go kill just about enything and everything in their way.

I swear to god im not kidding.

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Craigs said:

Don't buy it. If you accidentally happen to find a copy, shoot it.


I have to agree with this assessment.I made the grave mistake of actually buying the last 2 books. I made an even bigger mistake by reading them. I want to know what space travel to distant galaxies to fight "freddies" and "newbies" have to do with doom or the first 2 books for that matter.

This book in my opinion is a waste of money and time. Do yourself a favor and dont put yourself through any unnesessary pain and suffering.

Craigs said:

Rather the two space marines find themselves up against (I'm not kidding about this dude), aliens known as the freddies and the newbies.


Really, "newbies" and "freds"...
Could we have maybe been a little more creative than this...

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Yes. I have a copy of Infernal Sky sitting on the chair right next to me, and I'm still mourning the loss of the copy of Knee Deep In The Dead that I once had. Must replace that.

I'd also like to find Hell On Earth, while I'm at it.

No, seriously. the third one just sucks after about the second chapter. Although I still like the phrase: "Flynn Taggart, bring me some duct tape from the toolbox, an armload of computer-switch wiring, and the biggest goddam boot you can find!"

That's pretty much the highlight of the entire book, right there.

Final note: Weems was a fuckwit. Thank you.

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BlackAsDaNight said:

Dammit, I just bought the 3rd book yesterday. The first book was class, the secound wasnt anything amazing... so downhill from here is it?


Yes. I'd read just about anything with words on it but, i got so disgusted with it I actually took it back 2 hours after i bought it to get my money back.

By the way, stay away from "End Game" as well. Its even worse than "Infernal Sky" .

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:O You can take books back? What store was this? Man, this would be great for books where I only want to read 1 chapter, and the library can't be arsed to buy them...

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invictius said:

:O You can take books back?

It was only 2 hours later. I told them i bought the wrong book. They allowed me to exchange it for something else.

invictius said:

What store was this?

Barnes & Nobel. I work for a company that delivers freight to my area Barnes & Nobel store and i know the manager and most of the employees.


edit 4/29/05: I was only kidding about taking the book back. Do you actually think i'd waste my time returning a book i didn't like to the store. Against common belief I do have a life... kind of.

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Oh, so joe bloggs can't just take books back...

Everyone else - what happens after the end of hell on earth? I was interested to know what they do with a boot and a bunch of wire...

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I am reading the first book right now. The story is fun, not mindblowing, but it is fun to read. Some of the writing is really weird though. I remember one scene in paticular that when like this.

"I observed the map and noted the triangular layout, it reminded me of a robot riding a tricycle" That was a pretty big WTF moment. I think I re-read that 5 times before I gave up and went on.

I cant believe the stuff you guys are talking about, Freddies and Newbies? WTF, are you guys serious? I hope there arent any HPBs and Llamas either.

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Mwall4136 said:

One of the authors, Dafydd ab Hugh, has written a ton a stuff. 10 books or more. Might as well buy the first book.

I read one of his star trek novels. It wasn't very good.

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invictius said:

Oh, so joe bloggs can't just take books back...


I was only kidding about taking the book back... but my opinion on the book hasn't changed.

invictius said:

What happens after the end of hell on earth? I was interested to know what they do with a boot and a bunch of wire...


If you want to know here it is

**** be warned spoilers ahead *****

If you bought the book you would have to jump to chapter 2 to actually find out(I kid you not).

They use it as a rope to climb down a couple of floors to the 40th floor to reach a strong sturdy rope left behind by some kind of construction project. They climb the rope down 20 stories kick in a window and jump in just as an archvile ("fire eater") was about to attack....

Steelghost said:

I cant believe the stuff you guys are talking about, Freddies and Newbies? WTF, are you guys serious? I hope there arent any HPBs and Llamas either.


We kid you not. Your lucky... no HPBs or Llamas, but the book has 2 aliens called the "Klave" whose names are " Sears and Roebuck". I swear to god i'm not kidding.

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Although that was the name that Flynn and Arlene gave them.

Note that it isn't technically the "Freddies", but the "Freds", which doesn't sound quite as comical.

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Mwall4136 said:
How did it get published? Makes me wonder, are the first two any good at all?

Not really, though I read only the first one. At least the DOOM comic and the DOOM movie were amusing in a way, while the first novel is run-of-the-mill stuff.

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Cauldronborn said:

Although that was the name that Flynn and Arlene gave them.

Note that it isn't technically the "Freddies", but the "Freds", which doesn't sound quite as comical.


You may be right as it has been some time since i have read the book. However, "Freds", "newbies",and "Klave" still have no business being in a novel about doom.

myk said:

Not really, though I read only the first one. At least the DOOM comic and the DOOM movie were amusing in a way, while the first novel is run-of-the-mill stuff.


I have to agree with you, but as sad as it sounds when it comes to books and movies based on video games this is as good as it gets. If you need proof just watch the "Resident Evil" movies or "Final Fantasy"

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Ok it gets much MUCH worse and all of this is true!

There are 2 aliens named sears and roebuck that are perfect mirror versions of each other and connected by an invisible spinal cord. Their EXACT description was "magilla gorilla in a combat suit"

People are the only race in the world that actually die. Aliens of other species do not die, but simply sit there lifeless able to see and feel all around them but not able to move until a new host body comes along for them to inhabit and they are actually put in arenas of entertainment to keep them busy until that happens.

It actually goes into a whole trip of bs about faith and death and all that. Even a robot is scared because he knows that when he dies there is nowhere for his conscience to go he will just cease to exist.

These books are bad! And not even good bad! They are not even good as non doom books! They are just plain silly. AVOID AVOID!

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The first two books were very good as i recall. The first being goddamn AWESOME! The second was kind of slow in a lot of areas, but still very DOOM (except when they pretended to be zombies in that grocery store...Shaun of the Dead, anyone?)

The third and fourth books just seemed to take a plunge into the absurd, waxing idiotic on the idea of "cloning souls" and inserting these souls into video games. Pretty lame stuff. Any why a wookie like Arlene would marry some mormon computer geek is beyond me...Skip them if you want, but I'd read them anyway out of morbid curiosity.

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The SuperFly said:
but still very DOOM

How? It was full of dumb explanations and the action was dull. Or maybe you mean the writing quality was akin to DOOM's 320x200 resolution?

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At least the second novel still dealt with zombies and monsters instead of sentient plants and gorilla men is what I meant.

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The SuperFly said:
At least the second novel still dealt with zombies and monsters instead of sentient plants and gorilla men is what I meant.

My bad; I quoted badly, since I referred to the first one (didn't read the second one.)

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my advise is just to buy the first book and don't get anymore... waste of money! The secound is ok, but plenty more better books.

I have the version with the "new doom look" cover, it would be nice to have the old covered ones instead to add to my little doom fan collection along with my doom t-shirt haha

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I LOVED the first novel. I still re-read it again sometimes, as it makes for a great time killer and weekend read. It got everything right. The tone, style, pacing, and Fly is actually an interesting character whom the reader (or at least, I did) actually likes and is constantly engaged with the entire novel. You'd think that a novel being pretty faithful to the game (for the most part) would be boring, as he spends probably half the book alone battling monsters as you do in the game, but it's not. The main characters don't know half of what they want to, and so they're constantly commenting on the absurdity of their own predicament as they plunge deeper and deeper into this hellish maisma. It works far better than you'd think it would, and better than it has a right to.

The more that I think about it, however, the more that I conclude that any other approach to the Doom material pretty much would have killed it, no matter what kind of substitute story or characters would have been supplanted. This is exactly the case with what ails the other three Doom novels and the Doom movie (which is far worse, IMHO). The quality of the Doom novels seemed to degrade the further away from the games they got.

THe second novel was still pretty good, though it was significant step down from the first. The pacing is deathly slow and there's not much action until the last third of the book. More unforgiveable still, is the second book's further deviation from the game (though the author's still have some liscence to do this). There are still good moments, however, and some interesting new characters.

The third and fourth books don't really have much of anything to do with the games. They have a few bizarre and intriguing ideas, though, but these perhaps would have been best explored if the author's had published them as a seperate entity entirely and just followed through with the Doom II storyline instead.

I think the authors' biggest sin in departing from the Doom storyline was in their attempt to inject a little bit of "realism" into Doom and make the concept more plausible. In some cases, this works, such as the fact that the chaingun is replaced with an SMG (as this is how it funcitons in the game anyway), the explanation that Imps secrete oils that make each other immune to their own fireballs, and the Spider Mastermind's psionic powers. In other cases, it's irritating and distracting. Why do the Barons of Hell need to have "wrist launchers" instead of just shooting green energy bolts out from their hands? Why must the Lost Souls now be mechanical creatures with jet packs rather than disembodied evil spirits? The Imps don't need to hurl flaming wads of muscus either (though this still works), the Spider mastermind doesn't need to reside in a crystaline tank, revenants do not wear shorts or have a thin lair of skin, and the Arch-Vile does in fact resurrect fallen creatures.

These little deviations can at least be ignored in the first novel and most of the second, but they are hints at the direction the authors intend to take in parts 3 and 4. The open speculations the main characters make about the nature of the monsters (that they are genetically engineered since they look to nightmarish to be real) can also be tolerated as well, since no complete explanations are provided or confirmed (this is one of the main strengths of the first book) and actually help to make the storyline that much more interesting.

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Slink said:
The more that I think about it, however, the more that I conclude that any other approach to the Doom material pretty much would have killed it, no matter what kind of substitute story or characters would have been supplanted.

Heh, I can think of millions of ways to write something better than that using DOOM's simple background (and not deviating from it an ounce). It's hard to grasp how anyone can consider such weak writng any good, with unevocative descriptions and uninspiring action. I was vaguely amused buecause it was about DOOM, but some parts were a blatant drag even for a game fan, and unlike the comic and the movie, which were both something disjointed and in a strict sense bad, it had no character.

Maybe you never read literature, just serial/pop novels. I don't know.

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myk said:

Heh, I can think of millions of ways to write something better than that using DOOM's simple background (and not deviating from it an ounce). It's hard to grasp how anyone can consider such weak writng any good, with unevocative descriptions and uninspiring action. I was vaguely amused buecause it was about DOOM, but some parts were a blatant drag even for a game fan, and unlike the comic and the movie, which were both something disjointed and in a strict sense bad, it had no character.

Maybe you never read literature, just serial/pop novels. I don't know.

I'm probably not looking at it objectively since I first read the book in my freshman year in High School, but I'm not claiming it's good literature, only a good read. The Doom comic had some of the worst writing I've seen anywhere, and the Doom movie was poorly written as well. Both were worse, IMO, than the original Doom novel. Or just not half as entertaining, I'm not sure.

And don't make any stupid assumptions about my literary experience because I liked this book. I graduated From BSC with a BA in English and a writing concentration in May of 2005, and I helped edit both volumes, of thebridge, which is the first student-run journal of fine arts. Volume 1 was awarded a Gold Metal in the Anual Critiques, which is a national contest for student-run magazines sponsored by the Columbia Scholastic Press Assosciation (CSPA) at Columbia University. The second volume was named a finalist for the Crown Award, which is the highest bestowed by this organization. Not only did I help edit both volumes, but my work is also featured there as well.

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