Halo: The Fall of Reach Mass Market Paperback – June 28, 2011

The Fall of Reach tells the origin story of Master Chief Spartan 117. This version is a re-print which takes the original version, supposedly corrects some of the mistakes and adds new content.If, like me, you already have the original version and are wondering if it's worth buying this as well ... I am undecided.I have read the original about 5 or 6 times, have the rest of the books in the Halo series too, I've played all the games on X-Box and X-Box 360 and am a HUGE Halo fan. When I heard this was being re-released with corrections and new content, I was hoping it would be re-written so that it would fall in line with the story told by the game, Halo Reach. Sadly, it does not. There are some glaring discrepancies between the two story lines which could so easily have been corrected (I'll put them at the end of the review just in case you would/would not like to know what they are).Furthermore, the new version still contains errors (i.e. it seems like they have run a spell check but did not proof read the book so, while there are no spelling mistakes, you come across the odd word that is out of place ... but at least you can guess what the word is supposed to be).I am undecided about the new content. It is basically a series of random excerpts, letters, memos, etc stuck on at the end of the book. I have only read them once, and while some of them feel like they tie in with other parts of the Halo storyline, I cannot pinpoint how or where. There are also a few pictures dotted about the book too.If you are new to Halo, or have never read the books before, I cannot recommend the series enough. The Fall of Reach, together with Contact Harvest are my personal favourites. The Flood is also a good read as it closely follows the events from the first Halo game (Halo: Combat Evolved). If you have not read or do not own the original version of Fall of Reach, this is the version for you as, I guess, it is the most complete version. If you have already read or own the original version then hopefully what I have written above can help you decide whether or not to get this version too.****** SPOILER ALERT ******There are a few discrepancies I noticed between the book Fall of Reach and the game Halo Reach. They are as follows:* The Pillar of Autumn - In the book, The Pillar of Autumn is constructed in space dock and this is where Captain Keyes first enters it. In the game, the Autumn is planetside.* Cortana - In the book, Cortana is already on board the Autumn whereas in the game, Noble 6 brings Cortana to Captain Keyes, who then flies her to the Autumn.* The Spartans - In the book, all bar one of the remaining Spartans (it says in the book that one of them was unable to be recalled due to the mission they were on at the time ... I think this could either be Jorge, who is part of the Halo Reach storyline ... or Kurt as he is off on the Spartan 3 program ... read "Ghosts of Onyx") come aboard the Autumn before going off on their respective missions. In the game, there is no mention of these Spartans ... apart from...* Spartan in stasis??? - On one of the final cutscenes of the game (where Captain Keyes' pelican boards the Autumn), you can pan the screen to the right and you'll get a glimpse of a Spartan in a stasis chamber. Now, I guess this is supposed to be Master Chief. If it is, this does not appear to tie in with the book as, per the book, the Chief does not go into stasis until after his mission to detroy a NAV database, which takes place after the Autumn first launches.I have a thoery ... a very thin theory ... so thin it's anorexic ... but ... could it be that the Autumn does originally start off in space dock with all Spartans and they go off on their respective missions. Then, somehow, after picking up the Master Chief and Linda (which could mean the Spartan in stasis is Linda), the Autumn has to go planetside so that Cortana can be uploaded with some vital information that is too risky to be transmitted in case the Covenant intercept it. Cortana gets taken to Dr Halsey who uploads the information to her, gives her to Noble 6 who then returns Cortana to Captain Keyes. The Autumn then takes off and does a slipspace jump to Halo.The way the book was written, the above does not seem possible ... but at least it would help bring some continuity back.

The book is a wild ride from start to finish. I highly recommend the book to any halo fan from the bungie days

I bought this book as I'm just getting into Halo recently and have been devouring anything to do with it in the last few months. I was definitely surprised at the level of writing for this story given that it's based on a video game and I expected it to be pretty cheesy. I love the back story we get of the Spartan program and the crew of the Pillar of Autumn.My only couple of gripes were that the timeline/story in this book doesn't really match up with the story from Halo:Reach the game, which is definitely my favorite game in the series. I understand that this book was written before the game came out so I shouldn't blame it for the discrepancies, but it distracted me quite a bit while reading.My only other gripe was I think just genre-wise, I'm not normally a big fan of military/actiony type books so some scenes seem over-explained and overly long describing hit for hit battles and reloading of weapons, etc.Overall though I loved the story and couldn't put this book down. I loved seeing the Covenant from the eyes of Master chief, especially some of the instances where he's seeing a specific species for the first time (his first Hunter battle was awesome!).

HALO The Fall of Reach by Eric NylundGoodreads: 5Amazon: 5This was an incredible journey to start out the HALO series. I think this is the first thing I've read by Nylund, but I have to say it won't be the last. His pacing is great, the world building remarkable, but it's the story of Master Chief becoming Master Chief, and how the SPARTAN program began with Dr. Halsey that really captured me.John-117 and the original Spartans were not volunteers; they were scouted out and taken as children, told they were being drafted, and could never return home again. Essentially, they were propagandized and brainwashed to obey orders without question. Then came the really appalling medical treatments that ended up killing or maiming seventy of the original draftees.Up to this point UNSC was not engaged with the Covenant, but the Spartans were going to be created to battle insurgencies, uprisings, piracy, and the like. To me, this makes Dr. Halsey pretty immoral as the program was extreme and these were children they were putting through.That said, when the Covenant did show up and start glassing human worlds, the Spartan program would have been completely justified. From the first attack about twenty years pass and John-117 and the other Spartans have proven their worth and are already mythical.The Spartans were sent to Sigma Ocanus IV due to the build up of Covenant forces and the fact that they hadn't left. A large Marine contingent was sent to defend the planet, but were almost totally wiped out. John-117 sent them off with the Pelican as he and the others set out on their mission to nose around and find out what they were looking for.During their mission they record video of a new species which is standing orders, and discover that the Covenant is massed inside a Natural History Museum. In the sewers they find a way inside, tripping a motion sensor, and a squad of Jackals came in and the Spartans mopped them up. They follow some massive bloody footprints to another room, discovering another new species, Hunters. The Hunters were protecting a rock that was being scanned and sent to space. With a lot of effort they take out the Hunters collect the rock, and destroy the device sending the signal to space.As the other squads check in, they determine there's human presence left in the city, and following orders, they nuke it, destroying all of the Covenant forces. During an interrogation by ONI about the mission, they were peeved that he destroyed the city and what more the Covenant might have been interested in, thus more intelligence about the Covenant. John fired back that his orders were very specific and that they came out of ONI. That peeved them even more.The rock they collected contained lots of different symbols, none of which they understood. As Reach was falling, Cortana – who only recently met, and chose John – had those symbols running and John mentioned he'd seen similar images on a Covenant ship. She quickly deduces the symbols are constellations and she plotted a course though slipspace, bringing The Pillar of Autumn to HALO.If the quality of this series is as good as this book, then it will be a massively fun read. A read that I've decided to read it in chronological order rather than published order.