Before first contact with the Covenant, humanity was in an absolutely destructive and ruthless war with a group of other humans known as the Insurrectionists or Innies as the Marines affectionately call them. Staff Sergeant Avery Johnson is part of an elite platoon, two squads of UNSC (United Nation Space Command) Marines tasked with stopping Innies from making and using homemade bombs. When one job goes wrong and most of one team is wiped out and Johnson’s to blame, he’s put on shore leave. After finding out his aunt, and last family member, has passed while he was on his last tour of duty, he’s completely torn and ends up waiting out the rest of his leave drunk and disorderly. When he reports back to the Corps, it turns out hes been transferred to a far off colonial world to train a militia there. Once there he finds a battle-hardened solider as his commanding officer, Ponder, a Corpsman(combat medic) that doesn’t care much for the rules, Healy, the leader of the squad that was wiped out on his account, Bryne, and this rag-tag group of misfits that’ll be his militia and just with what’s at hand he’ll have to defend and evacuate a planet from an unknown foe. With the help of Ponder and Bryne the militia becomes a group that can even rival the mighty Marines but when put to the test a lot is lost.

Author Jospeh Staten takes this book to new heights.  I loved every single moment of this book. This book had a lot of questions to answer since its based on as a prequel to the award winning game series Halo and it answers just about every question it can with details that are right and make complete sense shedding light on questions even the most hardcore Halo fans want to know.  Learning about the origins of one of Halo’s biggest franchise characters,  Sergeant Avery Johnson, was spectacular. The book perfectly captures the feelings and thoughts of a Marine of the battle field making you almost feel like you’re right there with them. It’s really hard to capture the essences of combat in words and even harder to make it flow right into the rest of the book and this book does that. Also throwing  in the point of view changes hearing the action through the eyes of Johnson, an A.I. on the planet, and a Covenant grunt, it really makes the reader fully understand the action but it’s also very easy to follow and impossible to get lost on the story line. The setting is explained in great detail down to how many civilians live on the planet and how they live.

This book is a must read for any Marine Corp fan and even more so for any Halo fan. It’s also a great sci-fi book and should be read if you like the genre.