I bought this book on my only trip to the Friends of the Rogersville Library book sale in 2016, and something funny about it: Although I read the Spiderman novel Spiderman: The Octopus Agenda in 2017, the only two other books I bought at that book sale were this book and an omnibus edition of Thoreau’s works which I’ve been reading science fiction paperbacks because, yeeks–although I read Walden and counted it for the 2025 Winter Reading Challenge, I’m bogged down in The Maine Woods and hope I’ll finish it and Cape Cod to count that thick volume as one book. This particular paperback weighs in at almost 400 pages, and I read it faster than I’ve read the last couple of days of Thoreau’s final trip into Maine.
At any rate, I pregress. This book is the prequel to the video game Halo: Combat Evolved, the first game in the franchise, and it talks a bit about how John/Master Chief/Spartan-117 became the chief, some early encounters with the Covenant including a couple of space battles that culminate in the fall of the human’s major base at Reach and then the humans finding and decoding, with Cortana’s help, the location of the Halo–so they go there, and the book ends.
I mean, I’ve oversimplified the plot quite a bit. Early, we get a lot of training insight into what the Spartans did, a couple of missions including one to a planet with artifacts that identify the location of Halo, and whatnot. The Spartans take some losses, and John, the Master Chief, has to do little soul-searching about it.
As you might know, gentle reader, military science fiction is not my genre of choice generally (what is? whatcha got?). But this book moved along really well. I did not feel like I was left in the dark because I did not play the games or because I did not serve in the military (unlike some hard science fiction which I don’t like because I’m not an academic scientist–Greg Bear, I’m looking at you). Plus, as I mentioned in the previous review (didn’t I?), I was a technical writer circa 2000, and I cannot imagine how awesome it would have been to have my employer ask me, and pay me to write a science fiction novel. Well, mine kinda did, as I wrote about how technology might work someday. Oh, but no, and so I still toil at my trades today instead of cashing in on stock option wealth.
At any rate, I repeat myself, this book is alright (in the northern sense of alright, meaning good). It made me want to try to play the video game again (on brief attempt to play a later Halo game with my son ended in humiliation). The controller has a lot of triggers, buttons, and mini-joysticks, though, so most likely I will just continue with my twenty-something-year-old Civilization game. Or not: I am putting together my next computer, and I’m not sure I’ll put Steam on it. Sometimes, I’ve done that to some good effect. But there are always blogs and job boards to waste my time on, so it will remain to be seen how long that might last.
Oh, and two more things:
One: I mentioned to my son that this franchise, or at least the early bits of it, are heavily influenced by Ringworld by Larry Niven. He didn’t know or care who that was or why.
Two: The franchise features Spartans wearing MJOLNIR armor. So let the people who post this meme say no more:
As a reminder, this is one of those memes that hits close to home: Sparta is over in Christian County. I’ve been to archery competitions in one of the schools there, and I’ve been to and will likely again attend a book sale at the Sparta branch of the Christian County Library this year.