Halo: The Fall of Reach (Kyle Lagasse)

Halo: The Fall of Reach
By Eric Nylund
Del Rey
352 pages
I decided to read this book because I had heard from a few people that it was very engaging and suspenseful.
Halo: The Fall of Reach is a brilliantly written futuristic wartime novel that depicts a scientifically augmented super-soldier and his team striving to save the remnants of Humanity. When the story begins, our protagonist, John, is abducted from his home planet at the young age of six along with about 70 other children his age. After being brought aboard an intergalactic warship, the children are told that they have been selected for something called the Spartan II program and will never see their families again. Each child was carefully selected for their superior skills among others, chiefly leadership. The following chapters are about John and his new friends training at the Reach facility and things seem pretty good for everyone. Then an unexpected turn in events happens when a strange shaped spacecraft is discovered by a cruiser on its routine patrol. A distress signal is sent and almost instantly after, the cruiser explodes in a bubbling mass of molten metal. The news is out about this alien threat and John and his fellow Spartans are sent into surgery to be augmented and made genetically superior. Only half of them survive the process, but with his newfound abilities, it is up to John and his remaining teammates to stop this inevitable threat who call themselves The Covenant.
I believe that the intended audience for this book is either hardcore fans of the Halo video game series or anyone who enjoys a novel filled with suspense and thrills.
Eric Nylund incorporates many elements of a suspenseful novel into his writing as well as thorough explanations. An example sentence would be, “He cocked his head as the symbols and numbers scrolled across the NAV console. The representations of Slipspace vectors and velocity curves twisted across the screen-tantalizingly familiar. He'd seen them somewhere before-but he could not make the connection,” (Nylund 331).
1. “You want to die in the mud marine "No Sir".Col. privite Fisher grab those jackhammer launchers and take down those ghosts.” This passage struck me because the commanders tone while talking to his team was very engaging and made the scenario more realistic.
After finishing this novel and thinking back, I realized a sort of connection that I could make with the main character, John. Throughout the story, he is faced with the responsibilities and hardships of leadership as he has to lead whole teams of Spartans on deadly missions. Although I have never been put in grave danger due to leadership responsibilities, I have my fair share of experiences. The moment that sticks out the most to me was this past summer when I was in charge of about 20 kids in the pouring rain at night in the middle of the woods. Not such an easy task.