William C. Dietz, Halo: The Flood (Halo)

Not a very exciting foray into the Halo realm. A plethora of storyline inconsistencies interfere with what should be a pleasant intergalactic romp

I would recommend reading the very first Halo novel by Eric Nylund, it is excellent and will preface this book nicely.

It will also give you a leg up on those who have not read it, as they do not know about the development and recruitment process for the SPARTAN and SPARTAN II projects.

This book is almost an identical parallel of the video game, but does give the reader a few extra human characters as well as covenant characters to consider that the game had omitted.

There is nothing stellar about this book when compared to the other 4 novels that have been written.

If you are a fan of the game, the best thing that you can do is read the first novel, then the third.

The parallels between game and book are dead after this novel.

The Halo storyline is really quite different than that of the games from here on out.

I cannot tell if the author wrote this novel as a script for Halo, or if Halo was currently on the market when he decided to borrow the storyline from the game. Either way, he was licensed by microsoft to write this novel.

As I said, it is a rather, unremarkable read with several contradictory errors in the story. Number of pelican dropships retrieved versus what they actually describe on the planet. Scorpion tanks, too.

Also, a human fighter is described as being killed, only to make a comment in the very next paragraph?

These are just a few of the miserable storyline errors that the author left in the novel.

The book is a good read and introduces more characters to the reader than the game does. If you are a Halo fanatic and would like to know more about the Halo universe then this book should already be on your shelf (along with the other Halo books).