For a game that was dismissed initially for ‘borrowing’ from a number of Hollywood sci-fi staples, EA’s 2008 release Dead Space has since inspired a huge collection of cross-media adaptations to add to the series lore. As of this writing, there have been two main series console instalments, a Wii on-rails shooter (Extraction), a downloadable puzzle title (Ignition), two DVD features (Downfall and Aftermath), two soundtracks, one score and two comic books (Dead Space and Salvage). Not bad going for a franchise that didn’t exist two and-a-half years ago.

Dead Space: Martyr is a 400+ page novelisation from B.K Evenson, who gamers may recognise as the man behind the ‘Pariah’ short story from Halo: Evolutions – Essential Tales of the Halo Universe. In the novel’s acknowledgements, Evenson thanks EA/Visceral for ‘trusting me with the best bit of first-person SF/horror dismemberment out there’, and it’s abundantly clear throughout Martyr’s lengthy tale that the author is a gamer and DS fanatic. This alone should be reason enough for Martyr to turn most DS fans heads and indeed the novel is packed with series lore, particularly on the origin of the Church of Unitology and its founder Michael Altman.

Essentially, Martyr is the story of the aforementioned Altman, a geophysicist that discovers an unusual signal beneath the Yucatan Peninsula. Here Altman and his partner discover a gravitational disturbance in the centre of a nearby crater. Soon our protagonist becomes obsessed with the source of this anomaly, a discovery that quickly takes a sinister turn when the military-like Dredger Corporation arrive, a group with a determined interest in the artifact.

Anyone even remotely acquainted with Dead Space can tell you that the mentioned discovery is of course, the Black Marker, the mysterious alien artifact that is the source of Necromorphs and all manner of nastiness and misplaced devotion. With an intriguing setup that should be catnip for DS fans, it’s a surprise that Evenson adopts such as languid pace throughout Martyr, which at times resembles a Michael Altman biography more than a horror novelisation. Evenson is a skillful writer when the proverbial feces hit the fan towards the final chapters, but too often his prose is unimaginative and superfluous, stretching out scenarios whose impact are dulled from poor pacing.

Furthermore, aspects of Martyr’s storyline may appear over-familiar to DS fans – intrigue slowly turns to horror and our chief protagonist is left irreparably changed for the worse – we’re just a few multimedia adaptations in yet these tropes are now to be expected.

As you can also imagine, the events of Martyr will likely fill in a few series curios but when taken alone, are hardly earth-shattering to anyone other than the most rabid fan, nor can you expect events to manifest in future titles in any meaningful way.

It’s tough, however, to critique Evenson, a writer who commendably has a great grasp of his source material and may have been creatively inhibited by the sometimes limited nature of video game fiction, which deviates little from prequels or side-stories. Unlikely to appeal to sci-fi readers unfamiliar to the series, Martyr still manages to provide enough lore to ensure that the most devoted Dead Space will be unable to resist. Sadly, it’s likely to remain a non-essential purchase for the rest of us.

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