Dead Space: Martyr by B.K. Evenson – review

Dead Space:  You’ve played the game; now see where its origins lie, deep in the ocean in a volcanic crater, and deep in the macabre imaginations of the creative geniuses at Electronic Arts.

“Altman be praised!” is a recurrent phrase heard in EA’s spectacular and addictive Space Opera/Horror game Dead Space. Altman is a bizarre, almost Messianic figure, but the game doesn’t explain exactly who Altman is, nor why people would want to praise him. We, as the players, are just left with the aftermath of his decisions and his actions, which led to the formation of the infamous Church of Unitology religion and the dead rising again as twisted, horrific monsters. These monsters, once our friends, lovers, and acquaintances, or hordes of strangers we never met, are the raison d’etre for the game–they are the creatures we must defeat, and kill, to advance in the game.

As with any good prequel, in B.K. Evenson’s Dead Space: Martyr, some questions are answered, some remain unanswered, and some more are raised. The question, though, that should be and likely is in the minds of the fans who play Dead Space is, “How true to the game is the novel?” This burning question is the one that can mean a book based on a game is awesome, mediocre, or entirely bad. This is a question that is always in my own mind as I read and review novelizations of games.

Being a prequel, of course, means that the novel can’t be exactly like the game we know and love to play, because it deals with a time prior to the one in which we play. The motivations of the main characters are developing, and events are transpiring, to lead up to the kill-or-be-killed mentality one must have to survive in Dead Space. So the standards by which I judged Dead Space: Martyr were not how well it sticks to the plot of Dead Space, but rather how well does it work and how believable it is in leading up to the situations we find ourselves in while playing Dead Space.

Personally, I enjoyed reading Dead Space: Martyr more than I enjoyed reading the other game novelizations I’ve reviewed here (Alan Wake and EVE: The Burning Life). This is because I didn’t have the expectations that the novel should be like the game, as it’s a prequel, and also because it reads like (to me, anyway) a novel that is not based on a game; it seems like a book anyone could get into, even those who’ve never even heard of the game. I think that B.K. Evenson does a great job building up tension and suspense, and explaining how someone like Michael Altman (“Old Man” as it’s translated by a drunken but highly educated Yucatec Mayan native of Chicxulub to Altman in a bar) can go from being a scientist who is “supposed to be profiling the underwater portion of the [Chicxulub] crater,” to being a prophet, a martyr, a founder of a religion, the developer of a theory that would curse our world for centuries to come.

The novel tells the tale of the discovery of the original marker, the dark, multi-ton twisted obelisk discovered buried deep underground and in the ocean in the volcanic Chixculub crater known by the natives as the Devil’s tail. Its discovery and the initial encounter with it by two men in a bathyscaphe was one of the earlier highlights of the novel (it’s also what awesome cover art is based upon). The confined, enclosed space of the bathyscaphe and the twisted obelisk calling out to the scientist Hennessy, and the provoking of Hennessy by his dead brother, Shane, to kill Dantec, the other man with him, bring to life Hennessy’s feelings of claustrophobia and paranoia. His painting of the interior of the bathyscaphe and his own body with the symbols on the marker using Dantec’s (and later, his own) blood is as good writing as I’ve ever read from the imaginations of any horror author.

The novel does have some aspects to it I didn’t like as much as others, or I think were overdone, like the frequent mentioning that everyone in the area of the crater are experiencing headaches, and terrible, apocalyptic dreams. To get across the idea that what the main characters are feeling and experiencing is a shared experience is important, and the author definitely gets this idea across very well, but in my opinion, I think the headaches and dreams are dwelt on too much. Also, I thought the beginning and ending sections of the novel were more action-packed and moved along at a better pace than the middle, though there was plenty of action there, as well.

Dead Space: Martyr is a gory action-packed prequel that is a great addition to the Dead Space franchise. It will leave you slathering in anticipation for the release of Dead Space 2. If you like reading novels that involve people being driven insane, the dead coming back to life as hideous caricatures of their former selves, necromorphs, and apocalyptic visions of a distopian future, then you should check out B.K. Evenson’s novel.