Halo: Battle Born

By: Cassandra Rose Clarke

Narrated by: Ryan Do, Caitlin Kelly, Lee Osorio, Angel Pean

Length: 8 hrs and 49 mins

Publisher's summary

Discover the original novel set in the Halo universe, based on the New York Times bestselling video game series!

Saskia, Dorian, Evie, and Victor aren’t exactly friends at their small high school on the middle-of-nowhere colony world of Meridian. Each has their own problems, from absent parents to supporting their family, getting into a good college to making the next hit holo-film. But those problems were nothing next to the threat now facing their world: The alien alliance known as the Covenant is laying siege to Meridian, for reasons that aren’t so easily explained.

With their village in flames, the four teens find themselves stuck above ground, locked out of the town shelter where the rest of the survivors are gathered. Together, Saskia, Dorian, Evie, and Victor are thrust into battle with nothing but a few scavenged weapons and an injured Spartan, one of the UNSC’s super-soldiers. What’s forged from the destruction will determine the fate of Meridian and tilt the battle for humanity’s survival.

©2024 Cassandra Rose Clarke (P)2024 Simon & Schuster Audio

Story was great

Enjoyed the story. But too many people narrating. if you have women narrator but still have men doing women’s voices pulls you out of the story at times.

Everything

I like the story, it gave me what the civilian point of view is within the halo universe instead of a brass spartans and odsts.

Secondly, the story was amazing and that it gave me a RED DAWN vibe.

Voice Acting and Audio Quality were peak. Dorian's voice especially was good.

The story in itself was good. All five main characters were memorable and all five had good subplots save maybe Victor. But this story is very "Highschoolly" for Halo. Way too PG, way too light hearted. I'm not saying kill any of the main cast or traumatize them. I actually think that would be a mistake. But they have a lot of plot armor for a bunch of kids with a handful of useful skills. In the older books, authors casually killed off Spartans and whole platoons of marines to emphasize how brutal and unforgiving war is. Halo is not a light hearted universe or at all safe for normal people. It's very very jarring for these characters to do what they do in this universe. Otherwise, great read. I actually expect the follow up book to basically be better in every way because it won't have this book's problem hopefully!

Too "Highschool" for Ehat I Want in Halo

Overall the story felt like a fairly standard attempt at the "Alien Invasion" trope, flavored with Halo. I did feel like the Covenant threat did not feel like a huge "threat" for most of the story, even when the more interesting parts of the story (final 2.5 hours) occurred. We have a case where, although the protagonists are often described as just high school kids with some technical skills that I could reasonably accept, they manage to pull off several stealth and combat encounters without much loss or failure... against an apparently low-discipline, not very combat efficient Covenant occupation force. Had to dial up the suspension of disbelief beyond my preferred level for this book.

The narrators were all fine, though there was inconsistency in some of the pronunciation such as "Salomé" and some awkward splicing of Saskia's name later in the story where I guess some audio issues occurred and were patched. Nothing I'd really drop a star for; mainly I just feel like I'd have preferred a single narrator than four unique ones for this story. Just my personal take.