X-Men/Red Skull: The Chaos Engine

The Chaos Engine #3

by Steven A. Roman

First, it was Doctor Doom. Then, Magneto.Two men with a common to become absolute master of the Earth.Through the use of the Cosmic Cube, a device whose reality-bending powers allowits possessor to create their own version of a perfect world they were eachable to bring their dreams to life, if only for a short time. Fortunately,the group of mutant Super Heroes called the X-Men were able to shatterthose dreams before they destroyed the planet. But n ow the Cube has fallen into the hands of the infamous Red Skull, whosetwisted philosophies are a reflection of those once voiced by the madmanwho created him during the darkest days of World War II. And unlike hisvillainous predecessors, the Skull is in complete control of the Chaos energiesgenerated by the Cube, for the people of the world, there will be no awakeningfrom this living nightmare. With time running out, the X-Men must make onefinal, desperate attempt to destroy this "Chaos Engine" and restore Order tothe cosmos before their entire reality is wiped from existence by an all-powerfulalien race. But in order to save the world from Armageddon, one of the X-Menmust be willing to risk his, or her, life an action that will create lastingrepercussions not only for the team of uncanny mutants, but for the very fabricof reality itself. . . .

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, X Men, Comics, Superheroes, Alternate History, Fantasy

384 pages, Paperback

First published December 10, 2002

About the author

STEVEN A. ROMAN is the bestselling author of the novels Blood Feud: The Saga of Pandora Zwieback, Book 1, X-Men: The Chaos Engine Trilogy, and Final Destination: Dead Man’s Hand. His writing has garnered praise from such authors as World Fantasy Award–winner Charles de Lint, Bram Stoker Award–winner Elizabeth Massie, and fantasist and crime fiction novelist Neal Barrett Jr.

His short fiction has appeared in the anthologies The Best New Zombie Tales 2, The Dead Walk Again!, Doctor Who: Short Trips: Farewells, If I Were an Evil Overlord, Tales of the Shadowmen 4: Lords of Terror, The Ultimate Hulk, and Untold Tales of Spider-Man. He also wrote the graphic novels Lorelei: Building the Perfect Beast, Stan Lee’s Alexa, and Sunn, and co-wrote the direct-to-DVD animated short X-Men: Darktide.

In addition to writing Steve worked as a fiction editor, then later as Editor-in-Chief, for ibooks, inc., a New York–based publishing company. Among the many titles he edited during his tenure were: original licensed novels based on Terminator 2, The Transformers, Witchblade, Spider-Man, and Ghostbusters; the fantasies Dragonkin, Moebius’ Arzach, and The Orc’s Treasure; the science fiction series Isaac Asimov’s Robot Mysteries; and the Young Adult SF spoof Britney Spears is a Three-Headed Alien!

Steve’s current writing projects include the Saga of Pandora Zwieback novel series.

Reviews

[Easton Livingston · Rating 2 out of 5]

Though I gave this 2-stars, I don't want that to deter you from going and reading the series. It was okay which is what a 2-star rating is.

The series overall was the same. Not bad. Not horrible, but not great. To get my full review, hit the link below.

Xmen/Red Skull: The Chaos Engine (Book 3) by Steven A. Roman.

[Neil · Rating 4 out of 5]

This third novel was a relatively satisfying conclusion to the trilogy, I suppose. The ending of the novel itself could have been a bit stronger, I thought. The iterations of the characters in this novel were probably the most interesting out of the three (living in the twisted reality created by the Red Skull), as they were both the most “out-of-character” while still being “in-character” (as it were). The story moves at a decent pace; it has quite a bit to cover, as there are so many disparate storylines being told “at once.” While it did hold my interest throughout the entire story, there were times it really seemed to slow down and I did find myself wondering “how much longer?” while reading. It was ‘just funny’ to me how the deck kept seeming to get further and further stacked against the heroes, right up until ‘it all turns out’ in the end.

It was amusing and, I am sure, meant to be somehow ‘ironic’ that Doom was the one who entered the final round of mathematical computations to create the imperfect Cosmic Cube (76). He was the one who messed up on his calculations while in college that led to his current disfigured state (well, until Marvel retconned what happened and had Ben Grimm enter Doom’s room and mess with his experiment prior to Doom’s using it and it malfunctioning, blowing up like it did, as “revealed” by Ben Grimm in Fantastic Four vol. 4 issue 5AU), and he messed up on the calculations he input into the Cosmic Cube because he did not trust anyone else to do it correctly.

One thing that did not sit well with me was Doom’s presence in Roma’s Citadel. It is said that Doom is completely unfamiliar with the Citadel’s computer system and has to be shown how to work it by Stanton (79). That being said, did he ‘quickly master’ the advanced computer network with his “superior intellect”? Or, did he merely learn the basics of how to work it? He seems to go back and forth between understanding how things work and not being able to figure things out. It made me wonder, because nowhere does it mention that any alarms are tripped when he goes wandering around the Citadel and subsequently frees Opal Luna Sat-yr-nin from captivity, yet Betsy and Warren trip some kind of ‘silent alarm’ when they go traipsing around the Citadel looking for Roma (227). It makes zero sense whatsoever that these two would set off any alarms (especially when Betsy was a guest) and yet Doom sets off zero alarms when he goes tromping about.

It was “interesting” how people were affected by the changes in each book. In the first novel, the ones affected by Doom’s machinations of Earth’s reality and history had zero recollection of the missing X-Men. Then, in Magneto’s vision of reality, some of the X-Men started to remember things about their “prior lives,” about their “prior existence.” Sometimes there was a ‘trigger’ of sorts that helped influence the memories to return or surface. In the Red Skull’s ‘world,’ the X-Men keep having moments of “do we know each other from somewhere else?” throughout the book. No real ‘trigger’ of any kind; just a sense of ‘do we know each other?’ when they meet. I assume the switching of realities and implanting of parallel worlds upon the ‘Prime Reality’ in rapid, close conjunction is causing the spurts of familiarity to show through despite the Skull’s best attempts otherwise. On the other hand, it would make one think the other ‘affected heroes’ in the book should be having these kinds of moments, too (or, might have been having these moments). It was ‘just odd’ because Jean and Scott had zero recollections of their “other lives” whereas Storm and Nightcrawler seemed to remember meeting somewhere or being somehow familiar with each other. Magneto’s “restored memory” carried over from the first book all the way through to this novel, which seemed equally strange to me, for that matter (I assume because he had control of the Cosmic Cube, even for such a short period of time, that it helped make him somewhat immune to the Red Skull’s machinations?).

There was probably one part of the book that I really “hated”, that did not sit well with me at all. This is a bit of a ‘soap box’ for me, so read this spoiler at your own risk. It was at the end of the book, pages 353 – 356. Roma is about to pronounce judgment upon Doom for “the disruption of the space/time continuum, the near-destruction of three planetary systems, the loss of countless lives, across a dozen or more dimensional planes. You have expressed no remorse for your actions” and for being “a danger to all life” (354) when Charles Xavier interrupts her. This was the most incredibly stupid part of the whole book (and one of the reasons why I despise how DC handles its mass-murdering supervillains as well). He asks that Roma not execute the prisoner (354), claiming that such an enlightened being as Roma should be “above the need for revenge” (355). It’s not about revenge! It’s about justice! Doom killed numerous people in the citadel itself; he murdered them, including an older version of himself! And, yet, Xavier is going to claim that letting Doom live to wreak havoc and murder others is for some kind of “greater good,” that by letting Doom live Roma is allowing his admittedly evil acts to be somehow balanced out by heroic acts of “great good”? Xavier claims that Doom and his murderous acts and intentions are a “necessary evil”?!??!? (358) The man is whacked!!!! First of all, Roma was in a better position to judge Doom and his actions than Xavier ever will be. Second, Doom murdered people! Finally, he showed no remorse over killing those people and indicated a desire to continue killing people who opposed him! I sincerely doubt that if the people he murdered were resurrected, they would claim that their deaths were “somehow necessary” for any kind of “greater good” that Xavier perceives as acceptable. That is one of the reasons why I quit reading comics – they were becoming more and more depraved in how they portrayed the actions of the villains, and yet nothing “bad” ever happens to the villains for their actions. No judgement, no real punishment, nothing to try and deter them from behaving in the same way. There is no justice. There was no justice in “merely” removing Doom’s memory of the Star Citadel or how “his” Cosmic Cube was created; Doom should have been executed for his crimes and Roma should not have been swayed by Xavier’s “argument.” It is not about revenge; it is about justice. The people that Doom will kill, will murder, after the events in the story would claim, if they could, that their subsequent deaths served no ‘greater good’ (unless it could be shown that they would have gone on to become mass murderers and monsters, themselves, in every iteration of the multiverse/omniverse). The “just” action, the “merciful” action (merciful for his future victims, anyway), would have been for Doom to have been immediately executed, post haste, and Xavier put in his place. Xavier has zero room to talk about “enlightened beings” or going about casting aspersions and judgments like he does, looking down on others, when he has been just as ‘evil’ in his actions as those heroes whose actions he condemns or the villains (like Doom) for whom he pleads. I hate it when authors take this stupid stance that somehow it is ‘more enlightened’ to let an avowed mass murderer to continue living, to ‘go free’ so he can kill more people, than it would be to execute him when it is well-known and documented that he knowingly and willingly murdered people, including ‘helpless’ patients (such as the older version of himself) or those unable to defend themselves. It is not enlightened in any way; it is merely an attempt to present oneself as somehow ‘better’ when that is not the case. It gets really old that the victims have fewer rights than the criminals, that the rights of the victims are ignored, the crimes against the victims are ignored, just to make somebody ‘feel better about himself’ or ‘herself’ by writing such drivel. But, enough of my soap box.

Out of the three ‘realities’ that were created, Magneto’s probably surprised me the most, considering how much peace there was between mutants and non-mutants. He had truly created a veritable paradise (or, he tried to, considering the Cube merely tried to transpose the Earth of another dimension that closely approximated Magneto’s dream upon Earth-616), which was surprising to me. I did find it a shame that his ‘vision of the world’ had to be dispensed with, because of how it was still adversely affecting different dimensional realities. I know this would have been more for the second book than this one, but Xavier’s extreme jealousy over Magneto’s “dream/vision” being realized and not Xavier’s was hilarious in the extreme. It made me wonder what would have happened if the Cube had not been faulty, if it had not been adversely affecting other realities. Would Xavier have been so insistent upon restoring reality to what it once was? Or, would he have swallowed his bitterness, his resentment, his pride, and accepted Magneto’s vision of how the world could be if humans and mutants learned to live and co-exist peacefully?

One other thing that stood out to me was how Scott was able to ‘hide’ his abilities for so long. I really do not care if he paid others off to ignore his mutant gifts and talents. I sincerely doubt he had enough money to have paid that many people off in order to have risen as high as he did in the Red Skull’s ranks! He would have had to pay off all sorts of medical assistants, including lab techs and people who ran tests on or studied any kind of diagnostics of his body or tissue. It would have “just” been doctors or even nurses who would need to be paid off. There was a large number of people who would have to be paid off to prevent his ‘secret’ from getting out. Not only that, but it is not like the Red Skull should have forgotten or not known that Scott was a mutant. I mean, he knew what Scott was before he created his version of reality and “repaired” the imperfect Cosmic Cube; when he recreated Scott, he should have been able to make Scott either without any mutant powers/gifts or known what Scott was and ensured it would not stand in the way of Scott’s prominence in the Red Skull’s reality. But, that is my opinion – that that part of the book made absolutely zero sense in terms of Scott and his being a mutant.

Overall, it was a bit of a brutal book and hard to read in places. It was pretty dark, but the X-Men were able to save the day. Considering how many times it was described that the Red Skull had a Cosmic Cube in his control/grasp and still lost, it does make one wonder if he has some kind of self-defeating mindset, similar to Thanos, and wants to be defeated despite having a ‘device’ that gives him godlike powers and abilities; one would think he should be incapable of losing, but that is clearly not the case, as he (the Red Skull) has lost his ‘battles’ numerous times despite having godlike powers and abilities. I still enjoyed reading it; it definitely made for a story that was quite unlike most X-Men stories/comics I have read (considering how the X-Men were cast in non-heroic molds that still retained parts of their character, their essence, that makes them heroes; however, some of those essences were twisted about so that they seemed “out-of-character” while still being “in-character” over the course of the story). Obviously, because everything is “fixed” at the end (i.e. – reality is restored, or will be restored), the author could do whatever he wanted and kill any characters off, as they would ‘reappear’ when the correct version of reality was restored. While one would always assume this would be the case, it did make for interesting reading as the reader never really knew if any given character was going to live or die before the end of each novel. I enjoyed reading the series all the way through, this time (not having read the 2nd volume in the series before now). I am glad that I decided to read it all the way through, this time. it was a ‘fun’ read, and I liked it enough (overall) to leave it as a four-star review.

[Alex · Rating 5 out of 5]

This has to be up there with some of the most well done endings I've read in a while. There was a chapter or two of recap (which I needed because I took my sweet time getting to this one) but it wasn't overwrought, boring, or annoying. It was well written and I was engaged the entire way through. I really like the way things turned out, though I kinda feel like Nightcrawler and Shadowcat got the short end of the stick quite a few times (I'm not mad about it though because it made sense with the plot).

[Jon · Rating 3 out of 5]

This story had so much potential, as an American I'm just not very familure with the British superheroes.

[Indra · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have to say I wasn't expecting that much from this, but was happily surprised.

This is not going a great novel, but it's written well too. The characters are well formed and the storyline is straight out if the comics.

I feel like I know more about the characters and their universe much better now and my love of Psylocke is even greater!

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a good ending to the story, but I feel it could have been like 50 pages shorter. They kept adding in recaps of the first two books that you really didn't need to read yet again. Storm showed up a bit more too so I wax happy!

[Hillery Earl · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perfect conclusion to the trilogy!