Apocryphail Phriday: Knee Deep In The Dead

I haven't seen the movie with the Rock.
But it had to be better than this.

In 1993 a video game came out from ID Software that would more or less invent the First Person Shooter genre. This game was Doom. It became wildly popular. This being the nineties, that meant it got spinoffs. And so, in 1995, Dafydd ab Hugh and Brad Linaweaver published "Doom: Knee Deep In The Dead", a full novelization of the first video game in the franchise.

It remains a textbook example of how never, ever to write a video game novel.

The problem is not the hard-on for the Marine Corps that makes Michael Bay look like a weed-smoking flower child. Nor is the problem the confused gender politics and inability to decide whether the heroes are snarky nerds or grunting jarheads.

The problem is not even the network of cliches that renders this story completely and utterly unengaging.

The problem is that this novel, this novel about the most badass Marine in the world mowing down an entire army of demons on the moons of Mars, is terrifyingly, life-suckingly dull.

Dull, dull, dull, dull, dull from Dullsville with a side order of dull and something dull on top.

Let's jump right in, shall we?