Look at that cover! It’s sharp, and scary, and eye-catching. I knew I had to read this the minute I saw it. The title is intriguing too, calling to mind Brutal Doom, the mod that made the infamously gory and violent video game Doom even more gory and violent. I found the whole composition so arresting that I decided to buy it on the spot.

As it turns out, this is a “Choose Your Own Adventure” style of book, and (again evoking Doom, albeit with considerably less gratuitous carnage) it is largely set on an abandoned moon base which has been overrun by creatures known as Saturmeks: alien entities highly reminiscent of Daleks with chainsaws.

But, I’m getting ahead of myself! The protagonist of the book is Hilary Hils, a research assistant to Prof. Vyvian Wylie. Hils is accidentally teleported forward in time to the moon, where a research base has been taken over by the aforementioned Saturmeks.

And that’s where you come in: from there, it’s up to you to decide how Hils will proceed. Will you simply sit quietly and wait for Prof. Wylie to fix the machine and rescue you? Or will you start exploring the moonbase, and even try to stop the hideous aliens? The choice is yours, and which ending you get depends on how many points you have, which are acquired periodically at certain critical moments in the story. As a hint: risk-taking and boldness are rewarded. I mean, who takes part in an adventure story just so they can make the “safe” choice?

It’s a fun and surprisingly gripping experience, and I found myself chuckling as I eagerly hopped from page to page to see what the consequences of my decisions would be. It combines the interactivity of a video game with the added demands on the imagination required for reading. It wouldn’t be a bad choice as a gift for a kid in the 10-12 age range who doesn’t typically enjoy reading the books assigned in school. From what I’ve heard, there are a lot of them these days.