HALO (BOOK 3): FIRST STRIKE

If you are mad about Halo like I am, you must read this book. It's the third in the series after the Fall Of Reach and The Flood. I am not the kind of person who likes to read, I am a typical teenager who plays Xbox and watches TV all day, and the last book I read all the way through was years ago, which took me months to get through.However when I picked up the first Halo book, I couldnt put it down. So far in the second month of reading these I am almost on the fourth book, which is fast for a slow reader like me.The first book was the prequel to the orginal Halo: CE Xbox game, and the second is actually based on the first game, however the first book is not like the new Halo game "Reach", it shows how the first spartans came to be, and the second book has a larger story than the game with extra content which you didn't see, and then the third book is based between the first and second Halo games.Anyone who loves Halo should love these books so you must buy it. :)

I imagine that it is tremendously difficult to write a spin-off novel of a film or game without it becoming an extremely superficial read. That said, Nylund has managed by his second Halo book to take over the reigns from Bungie Studios and steer the Halo universe into a densely structured, character-centric, cyberpunk tinged tour-de-force.There are parallel plot lines throughout this book, overlapping and interconnecting that kept the overall story unpredictable whilst never letting my attention off the boil. The science-driven plot devices are superb too, and in particular, his technical understanding of artificial intelligence is used to his advantage in writing Cortana's part of the story (the ai character).Having played through both games twice and now on to Nylund's next book "Ghosts of Onyx", I feel so enthralled that it is difficult to compare the experience to that of any other media based entertainment I've had so far.

Really enjoyed this book. It’s an intriguing read, allowing you to read more into the Spartan 3s and also some Spartan 2s. The book also touches a bit on the great schism and offers an further insight to the Forunners.

This tells the tale of several lesser-known Spartan IIs as well as the creation and development on the Spartan III programme. It's not essential reading in the grand scheme of things but it is a VERY, VERY good read and I'd highly recomend it to anyone interested in the Halo Universe or even anyone who likes a good read.

I never got round to reading all other earlier Halo novels, but if you have played the games you will not need to do much guesswork and patching up between the author and bungies takes on the Spartan III project. This is overall a blistering brilliant and I would recommend it to any Halo fan. It follows the conceiving of S III and follows up to an attack on the Spartan training ground by a mysterious ancient force. The only problems I do have with this book is that it doesn't account for all of the Spartan III s on Halo: Reach and that energy shields don't seem to protect against gunfire as a single shot to the side side from a covenant plasma rifle can down a Spartan. But overall I found this to be a great book.