Why You Should Give 'Halo: New Blood' a Shot

I believe I mentioned in my first ever blog post on this site that I finished the original Halo trilogy in December last year. This also included the other Bungie Halo games; Halo: Reach and Halo 3: ODST. Without a doubt ODST was one of my favourite games, maybe my favourite Halo game full stop. Because of this (well because of my constant squealing about how I loved ODST's tone, music, aesthetic, plot and characters), a friend of mine decided to gift me Matt Forbeck's Halo novel New Blood for my birthday.

We all know how this goes. My birthday was in January and after haphazardly starting the first chapter or two in March, it's taken me to August before I read it in earnest.

So on my way to view some potential flats for me and my fiancee to move into I killed the time on the long train journey by opening the novel up and having a read.

It essentially follows Buck and his team Alpha-Nine through a few missions that took place after Reach. In addition to the characters we know from ODST (That would be Mickey, Dutch, Romeo, Rookie and Dare), we're introduced to other ODSTs who were part of Alpha Nine before the group we're familiar with from the games even joined up. The focus however is on Edward Buck.

Like I said, what I loved about ODST was how much better that game was with characterisation than the mainline Halo trilogy. Even then there wasn't a lot of time to expand on the team fully. Dare and Buck especially; while their interactions in ODST made it pretty clear that these two have something going on, it's this book that pretty much encapsulates their relationship. Showing us their first encounters, first arguments and all of the things they love and hate about each other, it's a look into a relationship that's got ups and downs, but that the characters want to put effort into pursuing, rather than just an enigmatic backstory and a little bit of kissing like we saw in the game.

My biggest complaint, and it's not even a real complaint, more of a concern, is that if you haven't played ODST, Reach or even Halo 4,then you're a little out of the loop. There are a few elements in it that are building up from other expanded universe novels as well. Aside from the main characters being from Halo 3: ODST, there's also some secondary characters first introduced in Halo 4 and Halo: Reach. Specifically, SPARTAN IV Sarah Palmer, and SPARTAN III Jun-A266. And I'm not gonna lie, since the many, many, many deaths of Halo: Reach are still fresh in my memory, it's gratifying to see that Jun still lives on in the EU if not in the games proper.

Another issue I've got is that since Forbeck's writing the story in a stream-of-consciousness style, you can get a little lost. When I started, this was a pretty big issue for me getting through the book, but as you go on you get used to it. Hell, I'm writing this article in about four different places at once because I keep jumping from one section to the next rather than tackling it in any order! I did have an issue with how he was a little too keen on using interchangeable words without any explanation. Yes, like Forbeck, I've been a Halo fan for a while, so I know that "Huragok" and "Engineer" mean the same thing, as do "Sangheilli" and "Elite." But it's something a newer fan might not.

What's less forgivable is that in one of the flashbacks, we're introduced to a squad of brand new ODSTs by their real names, and throughout every piece of dialogue, they're only referred to by nicknames! Sure, it's great world-building, but conversely it takes me out of the world a bit if I'm having to scan the paragraph I just read three more times to try and figure out which one of these new characters is "Sister."

But even if you didn't know he'd seen a pre-alpha copy of Halo at Bungie studios before the game ever got released, it's pretty clear that Matt Forbeck is a big Halo fan. Not just because he knows all the names of the ships and aliens, brings in additional characters from other expanded universe stories into his own, and even shows off some references to the stranger bits of the game (There's a line that honestly made me chuckle where they talk about a line in the game "Not to shoot anything pink," referring to a creature that's basically blue and purple). But because he's very clearly got an idea of what the universe of Halo is about.

The book was released after Halo 5: Guardians, providing backstory on how Buck became a SPARTAN IV along with Romeo and Mickey (Don't worry Dutch and Rookie aren't left out of the story!). So with that in mind, I think my comment about the "Huragok"/"Engineer" problem falls a bit thin. It's clearly directed at the people who've got a greater interest in the lore and maybe want to pick up the newer games but need some extra background on how the world's changed since the finale of Halo 3. With a lot of Halo 5's publicity material revolving around the nature of the SPARTAN programme, the darker nature of ONI and the UNSC and working to both introduce fans unfamiliar with the lore, and fans very familiar with the lore just how messed up and scary even the humans are in this setting. New Blood is a neat comparison, showing a more human side of both the SPARTAN project and of the Office of Naval Intelligence. And while I loved how the Halo universe was full of darker tales and stories, New Blood is ultimately a story about moving away from the darkness and becoming a hero to yourself, rather than looking up to a legend.

(While we're on the note of Halo 5's publicity; go and listen to at least season one of HUNT the TRUTH.)---Halo: New Blood is written by Matt Forbeck, and published by Gallery Books. It has a sequel, Halo: Bad Blood, that maybe I'll get around to reading one day.