Dead Space introduced us to Unitology, a religion built around an alien artifact found on Earth. The religion, founded by Michael Altman, is based on the belief that the purpose of human existence is tied to this artifact called the Marker. While the game was focused on the discovery of a second Marker on a far off world, this book takes us back 200 years to the discovery of the first one.

Michael Altman is a geophysicist working in the Yucatan Peninsula because it keeps him with his girlfriend Ada, an anthropologist studying Yucatec Mayan folktales. While mapping the crater lake in Chicxulub, Altman’s lab discovers a gravitational anomaly deep in its center. At the same time, other scientists discover pulses from the same location and Ada tells him that the folktales are changing and a local boy has a disturbing story about a recent encounter with a monster.

These details draw the interest of DredgerCorp, a shady “resource retrieval” company known for its illegal operations. Their first attempt to uncover the source of the anomaly fails when their bathyscaphe goes missing. Attempt two involves bringing in a giant floating platform and hiring scientists like Altman, regardless of whether the scientists want to work for them.

If you’re a Dead Space fanatic, there’s a treasure trove of information here as well as smile-inducing name drops. You’ll have a huge prospective-shift on the world of Dead Space, ultimately leading to chills the next time you hear the words “Praise Altman.” But I found the book unsatisfying.

There’s a lot to love about the game, but the one thing I really appreciated was the excellent pacing. That’s not to be found here. You know at some point hell is going to break loose, but it doesn’t until page 329. Until then . . . well there’s a lot of people going insane, sneering villainy and pseudoscientific speculation. All of which would be more interesting if the characters had any weight behind them.

Michael Altman is a major character in the Dead Space mythos, but here there’s nothing compelling about him. Most of the characters are indistinguishable, either falling into well-intentioned scientist or malevolent company man camps. And this is only reinforced when Tim, Tom and Terry show up or characters struggle to remember each other’s names.

If you aren't a huge Dead Space fan, I'd pass this one up and re-read Sphere instead.