Justin Halley (aka Solid Snake) is a member of the Snake Men, an elite section of the US Army. He's being sent to a jungle to rescue the top scientist Dr. Pettovich (their spelling) and a bunch of captured Snake Men from the evil Vernon CaTaffy's secret base, Outer Heaven. He also has the job of singlehandedly destroying Metal Gear, some kind of giant evil doomsday device.

Justin is given this special camouflage suit and a compass that supposedly transmits everything Solid Snake says and does. In truth, though, it's just a regular compass, and it's the suit that's really keeping track of Justin, who's actually being sent as a decoy for a full-scale invasion of Outer Heaven.

This book is extremely cool, mainly because Justin does all kinds of totally silly things. I don't want to give them away, but suffice to say that the author tried to follow the game a little too closely. As a result, the book is absolutely surreal at times. Also, Justin picks up huge amounts of weaponry (just like in the game) to the point where he is described as a "walking arsenal" - and he never uses it at all! He uses a handgun once to destroy a robot or something; that's it!

Plus, the end involves Justin having to deal with CaTaffy, Metal Gear counting down to blastoff or whatever and the US Army coming in all at the same time. It's totally amazing.

Rating: 9/10

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