Book Review: Halo: First Strike SPOILERS!

Halo: First Strike is written by Eric Nylund, as is his second in the Halo novel series. First Strike picks up where Halo: Combat Evolved and Halo: The Flood ended. Well... somewhat. Halo has been destroyed, and the threat it posed to sentient life, neutralized. But victory has come at a terrible cost for the UNSC. Thousands of valiant soldiers fell in the battle to prevent the alien construct from falling into the enemy's clutches. Now, everything depends on the Spartan known as the "Master Chief." Yet even with the aid of the artificial intelligence Cortana, the Master Chief will be hard-pressed to rescue survivors and evade the Covenant ships patrolling the remains of Halo in debris-strewn space. Ahead lies a dangerous voyage home, through a gauntlet of Covenant forces. For the sake of all, the Master Chief and his war-torn squad must not only survive, but take the fight to the enemy with a decisive first strike.

The novel opens with the final moments of Reach. No, not the game, the events of The Fall of Reach. Fred, Kelly, William, and a few others not only fought, but survived to make it to a stronghold where Dr. Catherine Halsey is located. The Covenant glasses the planet and power is cut. Fast-forward to the end of The Flood, and the Master Chief, with Cortana, sit in the Longsword, scanning the debris field for survivors. The Covenant armada descends and Cortana identifies a low ping off a Pelican. They slingshot around Basis and Staff Sergeant A. J. Johnson comes aboard first. The Master Chief accuses Johnson of being a Flood victim and Johnson rebuffs this by saying the Flood passed him up. Cortana confirms this but John-117 wants to make sure, but is willing to wait until they get back to UNSC controlled space. The rest come aboard and the Chief tells them they're going to take the Covenant's flagship. They do so and plot a course for Reach, as it is no longer in UNSC hands. The ship is mostly full of Huragoks.

One of the Huragok repairs the MJOLNIR armor for the Master Chief and Lt. Elias Haverson kills it, believing that if given the choice, it'll turn on them and report back to the Covenant. They jump to slipspace and arrive at Reach to find what's left of the human fleet in debris fields with a couple of Covenant cruisers placed above the planet. John-117 overhears a rhythm being played on a com channel and makes preparations to land on the planet. In a meeting, it's almost revealed that Colonel Ackerson has a back up plan for the SPARTAN-IIs. What it is is any one's guess. Ackerson insults the Spartan-2s despite Lord Admiral Terrence Hood telling him to shut up and show them respect. Ackerson says sending a recon team to Reach is pointless as there can be no survivors.  Back on Reach, Halsey finds a file labeled "King Under The Mountain" with contents such as CPOFM and S-III. The ONI base continues to collapse.

Five days later, The Master Chief lands on Reach and stumbles across Admiral Danforth Whitcomb with a couple of Spartans. The Chief tells them everything he knows and Johnson and the others fill in the rest. They find and extract Halsey, Fred, Kelly and the rest and high-tail it off Reach. They rendezvous with Insurrectionist Jacob Jiles and borrow his ships to fight off the Covenant. Halsey says the reason Johnson couldn't be infected by the Flood is because of Boren's Syndrome (which is a cover for his time in the ORION Project, the Spartan-I program). She panics, drugs Kelly and flees for Ackerson's S-III base. Hood saves the day and John-117, Fred-081, Linda-058, and William-043, with several copies of Cortana take the fight to the Covenant aboard the Unyielding Hierophant. They succeed in delaying the Covenant from attacking Earth and the Inner Colonies. The Prophet of Truth summons Tartarus to bring him the one who failed.

All in all, Eric Nylund wrote one hell of a novel and in 2003, it made the New York Times Bestseller list. Well crafted, great characters, good plot, and a fantastic read for any Halo fan.

Book Review: Halo: The Cole Protocol SPOILERS

The novel Halo: The Cole Protocol by Tobias S. Buckell continues the fight between the humans and the multi-species Covenant.

In the first, desperate days of the Human-Covenant War, the UNSC has enacted the Cole Protocol to safeguard Earth and its inner colonies from discovery by a merciless alien foe. Many are called upon to rid the universe of lingering navigation data that would reveal the location of Earth. Among them is Navy Lieutenant Jacob Keyes. Thrust back into action after being sidelined, Keyes is saddled with a top secret mission by ONI. One that will take him deep behind enemy lines, to a corner of the universe where nothing is as it seems.

Out beyond the Outer Colonies lies the planet Hesiod, a gas giant surrounded by a vast asteroid belt. As the Covenant continues to glass the human-occupied planets near Hesiod, many of the survivors, helped by a stonghold of human Insurrectionists, are fleeing to the asteroid belt for refuge. They have transformed the tumbling satellites into a tenuous, yet ingenious, settlement known as the Rubble--and have come face-to-face with a Covenant settlement of Kig-Yar. . . yet somehow survived.

News of this unlikely threat has spread to the warring sides. Luckily for the UNSC, this uneasy alliance is in the path of the Spartan Gray Team, a three-man renegade squad whose simple task is to wreak havoc from behind enemy lines in any way they see fit. But the Prophets have also sent their best, an ambitious and ruthless Elite, whose quest for nobility and rank is matched only by his brutality. . . and who will do anything to secure his Ascendancy and walk the Path.

All in all, a good read on a nice spring day. Tobias has demonstrated an ability to clearly define the action and set the stage for further war stories.

Book Review: Halo: Glasslands SPOILERS!

I've recently read the novel Halo: Glasslands by bestselling novelist Karen Traviss. Set between the flight from the Ark at the end of Halo 3 and the memorial scene in Halo 3, Glasslands and Traviss draw you into a world dealing with the after effects of war.

On Earth, the Office of Naval Intelligence sends out a team lead by a failed SPARTAN II candidate with a mixed-bag team compromised of a Spartan II named Naomi, two ODSTs called Val and Maz, an AI named BB, and a Sangheili (Elite) linguistics expert to sell weapons back to the Elites hoping they'll start a war with The Arbiter Thel 'Vadam. They do this all while killing Brutes and Jackals and planting fake footage of them attacking Elite ships.

Meanwhile, in the Dyson Sphere that used to be Onyx, the remaining Spartan 2s and 3s with their trainer Franklin Mendez and Spartan creator Catherine Halsey explore the world they were trapped in during the events of Halo: Ghosts of Onyx by Eric Nylund. They're trying to find a way out as well as new Forerunner technology while thinking that the Flood have overrun the galaxy or that the Halos have all fired and wiped out all life. They find a way out eventually with help from three original Forerunner-made Engineers.

On Sanghelios, the homeworld of the Elites, a group of Elite terrorists have started making plans to fight the Arbiter for dismissing the Forerunners as gods and for promoting peace with the humans. The three plots come to a head when one of the Elites is kidnapped by the ONI group before they race off to arrest Halsey for stealing war assets.

Admiral Hood invites Vadam to attend the memorial where they agree that The Master Chief is dead (as of the trailer for Halo 4, we know that's not true, but the characters believe this). The novel comes to a close as Halsey is shipped off to work with others on the Spartan-4 project while the captured Elite helps human technicians with acquiring Forerunner technology from the now open Dyson Sphere. The linguistics expert goes to Sanghelios as a guest of the Arbriter and the Elite Terrorists strike, signaling the end of the book.

A good book that provides enough detail and character moments as well as recaps of the storyline from the other Halo works for the average reader to easily follow along.