The Fall of Reach: A review by Chris Preiman

Halo: the Fall of Reach, (Halo #1) by Eric S. Nylund

               The merciless Covenant is waging a war of annihilation on mankind, and they are winning. The United Nations Space Command once held hundreds of planets, but now is reduced to a hand full of worlds and that number is growing fewer day by day. Into this desperate situation comes the Spartans, Soldiers picked as children and made into something more than human. John 117, known to outsiders as simply Master Chief will lead his Spartans on a mission to capture one of the leaders of the Covenant in the hopes of negotiating an end to the war. Will it be enough to save humanity.

In a system on Earth’s doorstep, on a planet called Reach, humanity will fight a desperate battle  Against the Covenant, but not one to save the world, for that possibility was lost the moment the Covenant fleet came out of slip space. Instead, the fight to preserve a secret, one that the fate of humanity depends on, they fight to keep the covenant from learning the location of Earth.

    Okay, I feel like I need to get this out of the way early, I never really played Halo back when it came out on the Xbox. I may have played a few hours of it when they put it out on PC a few years later, but between awkward vehicle controls when using a keyboard and mouse, and my general ineptitude when it comes to first person shooters, I never really got very far before I went back to my PlayStation. I was aware of it though, I knew so many people who gushed about it more or less nonstop for several years before they moved onto Gears or Half-Life 2 or whatever. So when very nearly twenty years later I came across Halo the Fall of Reach, well I was curious and figured it was about time I jumped on this Halo train. Halo is still cool right?     

              Honestly, this book reminds me of an action movie, and that action movie is Starship Troopers. Yes, yes, yes, I know Starship Troopers was also a fantastic novel, but that novel is a completely different beast. What I mean is, the Plot is thin, the characters are mostly cutouts, and everything exists mostly to service the action, but somehow you don’t care, because it is just so much fun. Serving as a prequal to the original Halo game, Fall of reach gives us a chance to see the Master Chief as an actual person, rather than a faceless voiceless killing machine, and that might be my favorite part. Most of the action in this book concerns Master Chief leading his Spartans on various missions, some when they were just children, just learning to be the Spartans they would eventually become, some as adults fighting against rebelling colonies and the like and a couple against the Covenant, which is a massive technologically advanced coalition of races, who have decided that their gods willed the destruction of humanity. I liked going on these missions, I liked seeing the Spartans working as a group, filling their originally intended role as a surgical strike force, one meant to strike behind enemy lines, and then get back out, For me this is far more interesting than the one man army the games made them.

              I don’t want to give you the impression that the book is all running and gunning though. We do actually spend a lot of time with the children who become Spartans, watching them grow up and train, and honestly the training is really brutal, so much so that it was a little uncomfortable to read, and this is where my comparison to the film version of Starship Troopers becomes even more apt. Both fall of reach and Starship Troopers present military stories that sort of criticize the military while at the same time sort of glorifying it. It is hard to come away from Halo Fall of Reach not thinking that they had gone to far with what they did with the children who became Spartans, and yet it is the Spartans who are exactly what humanity needs to protect itself, and so their creation is sort of justified retroactively. I honestly Don’t know if this was intentional on the novel’s part or not, I suspect not, but it’s there and it makes for an interesting thought or two, before we get back to watching them just kick all the ass.

              Normally this is the part where I start talking about characters, but honestly they are all fairly flat, which is fine, no one ever looked to Halo for deep character studies. Instead, I’m going to talk about the weapons, three of them actually. The First is a sort of guided plasma the Covenant uses that burns through, and sort of quickly eats away at everything it touches. This stuff is terrifying and really cool, the first time we see it in use, it eats through the entire lower section of a battleship before they can stop it by venting the atmosphere, I guess to rob it of fuel. Which, yes I know, it’s not good science, but who cares, it is really cool, and from that point on, you know the score, that plasma means game over. The second weapon I want to talk about is the needler. This is a gun that fires, well needles, well according to the Halopedia , crystalline  needles, that home in on their target, and after burying themselves in a target, explode. Again, this is very cool, and really menacing when you see it in action in the book, which actually took me aback, because, yeah, I may have played Halo for a total of three hours in my entire life, but I do remember this weapon as sort of being terrible, so it was a surprise to see it make such an impact here. The third should surprise no one who knows Halo, the third is the Mjolnir powered assault armor. I’m not going to dance around it, this thing is awesome. By responding to the thoughts of the user rather than actual physical movement the Mjolnir power armor can increase a humans response speed, while upping their strength, providing high levels of defense, and a bevy of other combat enhancements, but so far this is just any other power armor, and you’re right it is, but when we first see this stuff, it is in a human trial, and the armor is so quick, so powerful that a normal human wearing it will actually shatter their own bones. Fortunately the Spartans  have extra strong thick bones that can handle it, which is super convenient. It is also capable of running an AI, and when doing this, it pushes the Spartans abilities to levels nearly unimaginable, granting them the strength and speed to deflect an incoming missile and then tank the resulting explosion.

              I don’t know if Halo: The Fall of Reach is overly representative of what the series eventually became, I don’t even know if the story is still considered canon, I do know as a non-fan of the series, I enjoyed it quite a bit. I can recommend Halo: The Fall of Reach to any fan of the video game series, anyone who enjoys military science fiction that leans more on the action than the military accuracy, and anyone who like me, just wants to finally be able to say they know Halo too.

      4 out of 5 stars.

If you’d like to get a copy of Halo: The Fall of Reach, you can do that here, https://www.amazon.com/Halo-Fall-Reach-Eric-Nylund/dp/0765367297

Or audio here, https://www.audible.com/pd/HALO-The-Fall-of-Reach-Audiobook/B07LH81343

You can visit Eric Nylond’s website here, https://ericnylund.com/

And if you want to buy our book, the amaranth Chronicles: Deviant Rising, you can do that on Amazon, https://www.amazon.com/Amaranth-Chronicles-Deviant-Rising-ebook/dp/B077B1G4YH

From Barnes and Noble https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-amaranth-chronicles-alexander-barnes/1127152038

From Inkshares, https://www.inkshares.com/books/the-amaranth-chronicles

or audio from Audible, https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Amaranth-Chronicles-Deviant-Rising-Audiobook/B07L18NC9G

If you want to give any feedback or suggest a book for me to review, you can reach us at https://theamaranthchronicles.com/contact

Thank you and happy reading.