HALO: First Strike

HALO, Book 3

By: Eric Nylund

Narrated by: Todd McLaren

Length: 11 hrs and 46 mins

Publisher's summary

The New York Times best-selling aftermath of Halo: Combat Evolved featuring the Master Chief - part of the expanded universe based on the award-winning video game series!

It's 2552. The theocratic military alliance known as the Covenant is showing no mercy as it continues to assault every human world it encounters, but in the way lies humanity’s greatest champion, the supersoldier Spartan John-117 - the Master Chief. Together with his AI companion Cortana and the last remaining Spartans, the galaxy-spanning fight rages on two fronts following the destruction of the human military stronghold Reach by Covenant forces and the mysterious artificial ringworld known as “Halo” at the hands of the Master Chief.

One faction - a squad of Spartans lead by Blue Team’s Fred-104 and Kelly-087 - is trapped on the glassed surface of Reach, the only planet they’ve ever known as home. Beneath this ruined world, Dr. Catherine Halsey has discovered an ancient secret...one that could alter the course of the war. Meanwhile, the Master Chief and Cortana lead a second group toward a gathering of Covenant warships, as the United Nations Space Command’s worst nightmare has finally come true: The Covenant has discovered the location of Earth and is forming a massive fleet to utterly destroy it, as well as all who oppose the indomitable will of the Prophets....

©2004 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. (P)2019 Simon & Schuster

Another great adventure

Loved it. This author's story writing is excellent and the narrator was also great.

Annunciation

I can't stand how he mispronunciates Mjolnir (As in Thor's Hammer the mighty weapon of a God just like the Spartans)

The best of Eric Nylund

A perfect bridge to the gap between Halo: CE and Halo 2. Amazing story and, in my opinion, the best one written by this author.

WOOOOOO!!!

loved it and now I know what happened between H1 and H2 even though I'm late. So many feels! and mad at the Cpl from ODST Still.

Amazing!

I've always wanted to know what happened between the first and second Halo games and this book delivered!

Wonderful book

I am a big Halo fan and loved this book like all the other ones I have read in the past. if you are to read this one, please start with Halo: Fall of Reach and then Halo: The Flood before reading this one. it will help with the story and they are both great books as well.

This Review

Great story. Narration needs work. Throughout the whole story the narrator seemed to have trouble maintaining the different voices for each character and often the same voice world bleed over to another character. "A" for effort

Still liking the series

Story:

Ever wonder how Master Chief and Johnson made it back from Halo? Well, here is your answer. It was surprisingly more complicated than I would have guessed, but also answers the question of how some others survived their situations and made it back. I was pretty happy with the book overall. Though oddly I am not feeling the Cortana/MC connection we get in the games.

Narrator:
Same guy as the first two books and he is still fine. Though there is a LOT of mentioning the armor in this book. He cannot pronounce that name so it may annoy some people. He does seem to straightened out how to say sword though, so that's good.

Summary
If you like Halo and want some backstory I recommend this book. If you never played the games but liked the first two books then I also recommend you pick this up. If you know nothing about Halo then why are you reading a review on the third or eleventh book of the series? Oh and for those that want to read the books in the right order this is the third book in the original release series before all the backstory books, that's why it shows as book 3 and book 11. If you want to read in chronological order, you need to start long before Master Chief ever existed, which actually is a bit spoiler-y for the games.

It was a good and exciting hall experience.

The sacrifice and heroism was great. I can't wait to listen to another halo novel!

Awesome!!! it was a great story and I was enthrall

I sat listening to ever word. I was not a big fan of Halo untill I started listening to the books. Love it.