Status Updates From Dead Space: Martyr (Dead Sp...

It's alright. Flashes of really good atmospheric storytelling, but mostly kind of shallow plotting and characterization. Altman is a non-personality dude-guy. There have been 2 named female characters appearances so far. One did not reappear after her one page, the other is the MC's love interest. With Evenson's credentials, it is like he either deliberately dumbing down his writing, or not putting in the effort.

It's been getting progressively better and I'm quite enjoying it now.
Characters are quick to perish, but for the most part, they get decent amount to shine and build up to their demise now. Tensions, mysteries and dread are being build up.

So far the novel seems promising, even for a reader who never played any of the Dead Space installments. A bit too simple in terms of the lexicon that is being used in the story, but still generally interesting.

It's doing a lot of classic sci-fi writing; barely any character building, semi-big ideas it wants to get to but not the means to tell the story to get there.
If you want to do psychological horror with people's minds being altered, we need a bit more groundwork to show who they are to see what they are turning into.
Same with the plot, it starts off running, sprinting. Prose is okay, sometimes quite good.

Not too convinced yet.
I like the Yucatan setting, that's cool, but there very little tension being build and zero foundation being made for any of it to make technical sense. I hope we're meant to feel this grasping for reason. I am sure we're not meant to feel like this stale.