HALO: First Strike: HALO, Book 3

I love Sci-Fi books and I have read them for over 60 years. I have read thousands of Sci-Fi books. This book, written by Eric Nylund, is one of my favorites of all time. Just as a note, I don't play the Halo game so my review is only about the quality of the book.This story is absolutely full of action, aliens, military combat and of course the superhuman feats of the Spartan II warriors. This is a team of warriors that know no fear and each one can fight like a thousand other soldiers combined. Trained since the age of 6, genetically mutated and enhanced they have become the strongest military force in the galaxy. Coupled with a super smart Artificial Intelligence, AI named Cortana, they are unbeatable. Put them into their Mjolnir Assault Armor and they are almost virtually invincible.This book cames after the story about The Flood. Eric Nylund is the best author to write any of the Halo books. His books are by far the best stories and they are just superb Sci-Fi. I won't ruin the plot of the book as to many other reviews have already done that but if you love Halo stories this is one of the books you must read. I liked the book so much I purchased the Kindle version, then the large paperback version for my library and then the audio CD version to listen to in my car. I have read or listened to the book 5 times already.If you love super heroes you will love the Master Chief and what he does in this book. Get it, you will love it.I really liked this story and I have read it twice and listened to it twice on Audio and I enjoyed it every time!I feel that this story is one of the best military Sci-Fi books ever written. Eric Nylund is in my opinion the best author in the Halo saga series of books.

Arrived in perfect condition and uplifted my spirits. This book fills my heart with joy and reunited me with my long lost passion: reading. Once I learn how to read this book will change my life.

Eric Nylund has proven himself as a stellar author helming Halo novels, including his first and perhaps best work, The Fall of Reach. I don't feel that First Strike quite lives up to the level of quality you'll find in Fall of Reach, but it is a good addition to the series. To date, First Strike is still the last book in the main story arc of the Halo universe, following Master Chief. Ghosts of Onyx is technically further on in the timeline, but it deals mostly with characters that do not appear in the games.First Strike Happens between the games Halo: Combat Evolved and Halo 2, from how Master Chief survived his encounter with Halo to how he gets to the beginning of Halo 2. There's a lot of adventure to be had along the way, from cramped hallway firefights to interstellar battles between multiple spaceships. You'll get lots of new information about the universe, such details on the operations of ONI and a glimpse into the secret lives of Covenant Engineers. Nylund continues to do stellar work, writing good characters and better action sequences.First Strike came dangerously close to falling off the rails with a few overly complicated plot points. Keeping spoilers to a minimum, part of the plot revolves around Master Chief and friends gaining posession of a crystal that alters time and space. During one space battle in particular, ships aren't where they appear to be and technology stops working in normal ways. This makes things very messy for the crew, and for the reader. Nylund is a really gifted writer when it comes to action sequences, but I don't think any author could fully accomplish juggling everything that's at play here. Things are just too jumbled, and the story suffers as a result.Aside from the bits where there's just too much going on at once, this is an overall very good book. I'd definitely recommend this book to fans of the game rather than fans of the novels. It's clear that Bungie wasn't settled about what they were doing for the second game by the time First Strike was going to press. Because of this, Nylund ties up all his loose ends. The ending of the book wraps everything up in such a neat package, that even if there are more books to come in the timeline, they can safely ignore the events of this book and pick up elsewhere. Things are just a little too neat when it's all said and done, which would make this a very forgettable read if you're not playing the game.This is also not the best entry point for the series. If you're new to the Halo universe, you should either play the original Xbox game, or read The Fall of Reach. Fall of Reach serves as a prequel to the first videogame, and is notable for being one of the better books in the line. Fall of Reach is good enough that I recommend it to readers regardless of whether they play videogames or not.If you want to continue on in the series, you would read First Strike before playing Halo 2 (or reading Ghosts of Onyx, which overlaps with Halo 2). It is not necessary to read First Strike to appreciate anything else in the Halo universe, and it doesn't even add much when read between playing Halo 1 and Halo 2. In this respect, First Strike ties The Flood for being one of the most expendable works in the series. Speaking of which, do not skip playing Halo: Combat Evolved in favor of reading The Flood, which is generally agreed to be one of the least well-written of the novels.Highly recommended to Halo series completionists, First Strike comes weakly recommended to general sci-fi readers who may or may not play the games.

A favorite for my 14 year old grandson.

She liked it

Absolutely amazing, this is Nylund’s follow up book to the fall of reach. it takes place just after the events of that book and Dietz’s entry into the series titled The Flood. The book mostly revolves around the chief and a ragtag band of survivors making their way back to earth aboard a captured covenant ship. This team of characters are all very interesting, unique, and a joy to experience. Infact I think character development is a real strong point of this book compared to Nylund’s first book. The fall of reach jumped around between alot of different characters and was stretched over quite a large time period. First strike focuses on only the few survivors of reach and halo and covers only a small portion of time allowing us those important moments of down time where we get to see these characters interact. The only real gripe I have with the book is Nylund wastes multiple chapters introducing more spartans only for them to get killed off soon after. I think such insignificant characters don’t really need any real backstory aside from their first name. Thats only a minor complaint however and honestly its me nitpicking more than anything, which is why this book gets 5 stars from me.

It was incredibly satisfying knowing what happened to Red team on reach, the unanswered question of how Sargeant Johnson got off Halo, and what happened to Master Chief after Halo. I'd love to see this story eventually become a part of the game series. (343 pls)The story is full of action and suspense, with tense situations and brilliant writing that sets the mood perfectly. I can't recommend this more for anyone who loves the Halo series or sci-fi in general (make sure to read the first two in the series beforehand though)

Bought for my son who loved it.

Meu namorado amou o livro, ficou muito feliz com a qualidade e chegou bem rápido

Fue para regalo y a quien lo recibió le gustó mucho.

This is the third novel in the Halo series and it overlaps with the previous volumes, Halo: The Fall of Reach and Halo: The Flood. This volume is written by Eric Nyland, who wrote the first novel in the series so can be counted on to get the continuity right in terms of plot and character.Like the previous volumes, this novel is firmly focused on rapid, violent action with little in the way of character development or background information. However, we do get some background. For example, we have a chapter set on Earth with some of the army and navy top brass debriefing an intelligence officer. We see the cracks in the high command and we’re introduced to the sinister Colonel Ackerson, who clearly has a hidden agenda going on. Presumably we will hear more of him in future volumes because we don’t hear any more about him here. He is dead against sending anyone back to Reach to see if there are any survivors. He insists that the planet has been “glassed”, the Covenant’s normal method for dealing with captured planets within Earth’s empire. Why is that? It’s very suspicious. And we learn that he is wrong. There are indeed survivors on Reach, including the brilliant Dr Catherine Halsey, a team of Spartans, some assorted marines and navy personnel and the courageous Admiral Whitcomb.We also get another reference to the original mission of the Spartans, before the war with the Covenant, which was to root out rebellion within Earth’s empire. In fact, we meet an enclave of rebels and pirates living on an asteroid in some remote system. However, as with the admirals and generals, the encounter serves as a plot device and there isn’t much character development going on.Like Halo: The Flood, this novel was written in 2005 and you can’t help thinking that the author was influenced by was happening at the time in Iraq and Afghanistan. I still have an uneasy feeling that the Covenant are an amalgam of the Taliban, Al Qaida, China and other indeterminate enemies of the “West”. The religious bedrock of the Covenant civilisation is made clearer in this volume, though we still don’t know much about them except for their caste system with Grunts at the bottom and Prophets at the top.I am also still slightly mystified by the technology of the series. We have starships that can jump through space faster than the speed of light. We have AI beings that can process information millions of times faster than a human being. But we also have twentieth-century style guns that fire bullets and vehicles that sound like tanks and armoured cars. In theory, the technology is there to run this war as a proxy war with AI directing drones and robots against the Covenant while the human beings hide out in a bunker somewhere. But that would mean the humans wouldn’t be able to display their guts and determination and the action scenes would all be fairly sterile with no human lives at stake. Hence we have Spartans and marines and navy pilots and admirals who all sound like they’ve come straight out of World War II.I will continue reading the Halo series for escapist reasons, but so far it is not in the same league as other scifi series, such as The Expanse, and I do hope it gets better.

This books tells how Master Chief managed to get to Earth and if you really like the Halo lore, it will fill in the gap between Halo Combat evolved (or the novel Halo: The Flood) and Halo 2 and will anwser many of your questions.