Darksiders: The Abomination Vault by Ari Marmell with Bob Walter (Reading) is the audio book I just finished and boy, it was AWESOME! The voice was perfect for this book! I felt I was there and in the battles, or in hell or heaven or where ever the trek lead. A fantastic story, a stand alone, of one of The Horsemen, Death, as he tries to solve a riddle before it sends Heaven, Hell, and everything created into chaos. Totally glued to my tablet the whole time! The plot had so many twist, surprises, and suspense, and even humor in there. Strange creatures along with known creatures helped created this strange world. The writing itself was so well done that I felt I could smell, feel, hear, see. and taste everything that was going on all the time. His words were magic in themselves. Wonderful! I have never even seen this game or played video games but it is suppose to be from a video game. ( )

I really didn't think I would like this but I've been using Overdrive to listen to audiobooks and the list is kinda sparse so I decided to give it a try. The narrator's voice was strange, to dramatic and it made it seem even cheaper than the fact that this was a book written about a video game. Also there was a LOT of fighting.

BUT I ended up really liking it. I really enjoy the whole "politics of Heaven and Hell" thing. I enjoyed it more in "God's Demon" from Barlowe, but this was still a lot of fun, just lighter overall. The humor seemed misplaced at first but then as I got further in I liked it more.

So I would say, make sure you give this some extra time to settle in before you make a final judgement. ( )

Actual rating: 2.5 stars

Death, the Horseman of the Apocalypse, and his crow Dust are awesome (Kratos, God of War, BAMF awesome). The weapons called Grand Abominations are really inventive in a super-disturbing way. The writing is competent, a mix of snarky modern dialogue with a melodramatically boastful high-fantasy tone (that most likely fits well within the Darksiders game). Otherwise, as a gamer and a reader, I'd rather play this game than read a novelization of it. There were several scenes in this book (especially some of the ten-to-fifteen page battle scenes) where I could picture playing it and enjoying it a lot more. I wonder if this book would add anything for die-hard Darksiders fans that I, having not played the game, am missing, but I don't think it truly stands on its own. If anything, though, this book made me want to give the game a try, so I think I will stick with reading original fiction (I'd like to read Marmell's YA series for sure) and only reading video game manuals.

Are there any really excellent video game tie-in novels out there? Recommendations to change my mind? ( )