JimK:  I hardly know where to begin. 

Let me start by saying that I apologize to myself for making me read this piece of crap.  And, if you feel the need to buy this (which you should not do) then at least buy it here.

Honestly, I can’t think of a better way to tell you how awkwardly and immaturely this book was written than to just show you.  Page 1, Prologue:

     “Why are there monsters?”
An exhausted woman looked at her little boy, who had asked the question that was burning in her own mind. His voice didn’t tremble. She reached over to wipe his face. They were not wearing camo right now, and the smudges of dirt were only dirt. It wasn’t right for a ten-year-old boy to be a seasoned veteran of war, she thought, but all of the human survivors on Earth understood what it meant to fight for their lives against alien invaders.

That’s not the worst writing in the book, but it’s pretty bad.  It’s halting and rambling at the same time, with fragments of ideas slammed together into paragraphs, none of which really work.  However, it gets so much worse.

A long time ago, when she was only ten, her only question was “Are there real monsters?” What a wonderful world that had been, a sane world where nightmares stayed where they belonged, lodged in the gray matter between the ears. Only in dreams would you encounter giant floating heads that spit ball lightning; angry crimson minotaurs; shambling human zombies fresh from their own death; flying metal skulls with razor teeth dripping blood; ghosts colder than the grave; fifteen-foot-tall demons with heavy artillery in place of hands; obscenely fat shapes, only vaguely humanoid, that could crush the life from the strongest man in a matter of seconds; and, finally, there was the special horror of the mechanical spider bodies with things inside them that were far worse than any arachnid.

Anyone remember creative writing in high school?  Remember how we were taught - mostly by failed writers who were freaking high school English teachers! - to never write a shopping list?  Yeah, well, Pocket Star Books paid Mr. Hugh and Mr, Lineweaver actual spendable cash to write that drivel.

It gets worse.  Remember, this is all in the same prologue.  I’m on page 2.

     There was no way to answer David, no explanation for why dream shapes crawled across the land that once was a country called the United States on a planet called Earth.
     She thanked God that her son was still alive. After her husband died, there were only three of them. Three. The number made her cry. There weren’t three for long.
     She’d never had time to grieve over the man she loved. The monsters didn’t giver her any time at all. Her daughter, Lisa, had been thirteen.
     At least her husband had died bravely, ripped apart by the steel legs of a spider-thing. For a brief moment the woman had caught a glimpse of the evil face peering out from the dome mounted on top of the mechanical body. She couldn’t stop herself from crying out!  Her husband couldn’t hear her. But the spider-thing heard everything.
     She still blamed herself for that momentary loss of control. her daughter might have been alive today if Mom hadn’t freaked out and drawn the attention of the mechanical horror at that instant. The sounds of the monster were the worst part as it headed toward the remaining members of the family. The heavy pounding would stay in the woman’s head forever, along with the screaming of her terrified daughter - right before the girl’s head was torn off.
     A human head makes a sound like nothing else when it’s played with and crushed.

That’s the end of page 2.  What in the blue bloody hell is going on here?  Someone got paid to write that?  Forget the terrible imagery, the broken prose, the mixed tenses and the Creative Writing 101 freshman style. Forget all of that.  The passage violates it’s own internal logic.  Of fucking course she never had time to grieve the death of her husband before her daughter was killed.  It happened in the same god-damned moment!  Pops ate it, the thing turned around when Moms screamed, and the thing played soccer with her daughter’s head right then and there.  It’s just…stupid, is what it is.  It took two men to write such a terrible sequence of events.  The whole thing about her obsessing over the number three? Makes no sense.  In her mind they went from four to two in one event.  There never was a time when she would have registered “three” as a family unit.  Shitty, immature writing worth of a Learning Annex night class, that’s what that shit is.

Let’s talk about the head.  The big shocking end to the page.  The “dun-dun-dunnnnn” moment, if you will. “The heavy pounding would stay in the woman’s head forever, along with the screaming of her terrified daughter - right before the girl’s head was torn off.”  Is that the best way to write what is being imparted here?  How about this:

The sounds of that day would haunt the woman forever.  The memory of the heavy pounding of the spider thing’s footsteps would only be overshadowed by the screams of her daughter as the monster tore Lisa’s head from her shoulders.

OK, it’s not perfect, but it’s a damn sight better than what is in this book.  Now, that last line, the one that made me realize I was about to read the worst book I’ve ever read.  “A human head makes a sound like nothing else when it’s played with and crushed.”  That is just fucking ridiculous.  Way too much of an attempt to be Chuck Palahniuk.  However, let’s run with that.  Here’s how I think Chuck would have written it:

The human head makes a wet, heavy thud like no other sound when you play with it on concrete.

You should hear it when it’s crushed.

I should say that I dislike almost all of Palahniuk’s books.  I think he’s too clever for his own good and his “I’m a clever boy” bullshit ruins good and interesting stories.  That having been said, if you’re gonna do his style, do it right.

Doom: Infernal Sky goes on to tell the story of a team of Marines, long after the US and the UAC are destroyed, who go on a mission to find the source of a helpful, friendly alien transmission. They meet the friendlies and go off on a long-term mission to kill the unfriendlies.  It devolves from a Doom story into generic SciFi space bullshit, where the two alien races are basically playing galactic war chess.  Why are they fighting?

Literary criticism.  I shit you not.  The war began because one side wants to faithfully interpret the meaning of some 12 million year old texts, and the bad side wants to decontruct the texts and find alternate meanings (and eventually the “true” meaning).  It’s the clumsiest metaphor for socio-political/religious struggle I have ever read.  It has fuck-all to do with the spirit of Doom in any way.  Once you get a mention of an imp tossing off a fireball.  Other than that, it feels very much like these two gentlemen had a manuscript and they just did a search & replace in Word and plugged in Doom-like names and places.

It’s horrible.  Don’t buy it.  if you read the other Doom books, just skip this one.  If you never read any Doom books but you think you might like to, just buy Doom 3: Worlds On Fire by Matthew Costello.  It’s not great, but it’s miles better than this crap by Brad Lineweaver and Dafydd ab Hugh.  The Costello book also benefits from having a plot that makes sense and takes place directly in the Doom 3 world, with characters you will recognize from the game, doing things that enhance your understanding of events that you personally have (or will have, if you live under a rock and haven’t played it yet) experienced in Doom 3.

Doom; Infernal Sky is made of fail and suck.  Avoid it at all costs.  Don’t buy it unless you are a glutton for punishment.  If, for some reason, you choose not to believe me, well, I can’t help you if you don’t want to be helped. I warned you.