Van Lente, Fred
AVERAGE REVIEW SCORE:
4 out of 5
(1 book)
Halo: Blood Line
(Art by Francis Portela)
An undercover ONI ship carrying Spartan Team Black and a Covenant warship both crashland on an unknown world where members of their crews are kidnapped by Forerunner automatons. The remaining Spartans and the Covenant survivors are forced to enter into an uneasy alliance in an attempt to rescue their missing compatriots.
What I quite liked about this book is that it's set on a previously unknown world, features all-new characters and has no significant impact on the larger Halo franchise. Whilst sometimes all of that can leave a franchise story feeling a bit pointless, here it means that there's everything to play for, no-one is guaranteed to survive and nothing is off the table. It adds actual stakes to a book which would have none if the main characters were Master Chief, Cortana and Sergeant Johnson.
I also enjoyed seeing how the Covenant are portrayed here and we get to explore a bit more of the attitudes, beliefs and personal codes of both the Elites and, to a lesser extent, the Grunts. That and the alliance formed with the Spartans mean that the Covenant characters are more than just antagonists here. I particularly liked how the two groups are used in juxtaposition to explore concepts of duty, loyalty and brotherhood.
Overall, I enjoyed this quite a bit.
4 out of 5