Halo: The Rubicon Protocol

By: Kelly Gay

Narrated by: Scott Brick

Length: 10 hrs and 32 mins

Publisher's summary

USA TODAY BESTSELLER

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

A HALO INFINITE STORY

December 2559. Humanity has its back against the wall after the United Nations Space Command flagship Infinity drops out of slipspace into a devastating ambush launched by the Banished. As this fierce enemy alliance seeks to claim a mysterious object hidden within the ancient Forerunner construct known as Zeta Halo, the surviving UNSC corps finds itself compromised and its leadership out of reach—with remaining personnel forced to abandon ship and take their chances on the fractured, unpredictable surface of the Halo ring.

Now survival in this strange, alien environment—whether for Spartan super-soldiers or those who never thought they would see the battle up close—is measured day to day against a relentless and brutal adversary that always has the upper hand. Desperation grows, but the will to keep on fighting and enduring no matter the odds is never in doubt…even as the Banished seek to unleash a frightening new enemy that could doom them all…

©2021 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Microsoft, Halo, the Halo logo, Xbox, the Xbox logo, and 343 Industries are trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies (P)2022 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.

Great book

Kelly gay has done it again great read, filled in all that happened, from the banished attack on infinity leading up to the start of infinite

great story

kelly gay always does an amazing job writing these books. and Scott brick is a literally perfect narrator

Good prequel for halo infinite

I liked this one. It makes halo infinite feel more cohesive and is very well written

excellent book

I love this book it gets a bit dark but sets up the world wonderfully one of the best halo books in my opinion

down right amazing

this book was awesome. the story and the way it connect with the game. man such a great read.

One of the best Halo books yet

I've read or listened to all of the books and this one is top five!!

Godly Emotional

I loved every second of this book besides a few moments where the audio cut and skipped by like 2 seconds happened maybe 3 times so not too bad but I nearly cried listening.

Its an enticing story that really makes loss of a soilder friends and mentality feel like you are experiencing it yourself and I genuinely felt excited during every moment of even the smallest victory emotional of faction based and I felt pained at every loss

Good writing, but the story is lacking

Kelly Gay did a great job with the writing, as always. Though sadly her writing was wasted on what felt like a story being hamstrung by overall story direction from 343. It felt like every chapter had redacted information because 343 doesn't want to e.g. reveal the fate of certain characters. The end result was that not a lot happened in this book that was unique from the situations in the audio logs of Halo Infinite. This book probably should have been a tie in that released before the game, because it didn't tell us anything new other than that the team was able to send a message, and the last line of the book was written as if it was there to build hype for the game release.

That said, the author did a great job with what she was able to write about. The characters were all well written and no one had any obnoxious gimmicks — unlike most sci-fi characters these days. The events of the book are definitely more interesting than what happened in the campaign of Infinite. I kept thinking "wow this is so cool, I wish it had been in the game." Maybe she should be hired to write the campaign stories.

I'm glad she's moving back to the expanded universe with her next book because it feels like she was being stifled by 343's game writers and the overall dysfunction in Halo Infinite's story.

Strong start and middle, lackluster end?

Enjoyable overall, but it felt as if they didn't know how to end the story.

Could have been better

Very disappointed that this book pretty much Ed focused on a group that we already knew what happened (if you played halo infinite). I was expecting to hear about other characters.