Ghosts of Onyx (Halo) Mass Market Paperback – Black & White, April 3, 2007

This is a good book that does a nice job fleshing out and humanizing the Spartans, and expanding the Halo lore. For some reason, this book is rife with typos, but once you get around that. It’s pretty good.

I am a geek for Sci-Fi and Halo is one of my favorite series of stories. I have purchase the paperback version, the Kindle Version and the Audible version of this book and I have read it and listened to it multiple times. Eric Nylund is my favorite author in the series of Halo books. I like the storylines that he writes and the action is something I really enjoy. Military Sci-Fi is my favorite genre.Eric's books are creative and I like the strategies that he writes into the space battles and the ground battles. This is one of the best Halo books and I found it to be entertaining. You get action that involves Spartan II warriors, Spartan III’s, Dr Halsey and CPO Mendez. The book focuses on the continued development of the Spartan III program and the second generation of the Spartan III’s creation and training.Meanwhile the Covenant is still winning the war but several factions are developing that are causing trouble within the Covenant alliance. Onyx is found to have a secret Forerunner base while it is also the secret training ground for the Spartan III’s. Fighting breaks out between the Spartan III’s and Forerunner Sentinels guarding the ancient alien base. A full war breaks out between the UNSC and the Covenant force over the space above Onyx. They are all trying to survive or capture and use secret advanced Forerunner alien technology to help their side win the war….This is a great story with a lot of action. I liked it a lot. I don't play the Halo game but I have read all of the books in the Halo series. This is a good book and if you are a Halo fan it is a must read.I like the Halo books and this is one of my favorites.This is an excellent story and it is a good book to have in your Halo Sci-Fi library.

"Ghosts of Onyx" is a solid addition to the Halo Universe! This is the third Eric Nylund Halo book (following  The Fall of Reach (Halo, Bk. 1)  and  First Strike (Halo #3) , the first and third books in the Halo series, respectively), and I enjoy his writing style very much.No spoilers from me; unlike the other Halo books I have read, this one diverges from the games and does not focus on the Spartan II "John", the Master Chief, although he is mentioned quite a bit. This story follows a few of the other Spartan II soldiers (including following up on a plot hook left at the end of "First Strike") and a new group of super enhanced fighters, the Spartan IIIs. As before, we also get a look into the mindset of the Covenant leadership and start to gain a little insight into the "Forerunners" as well (although not really enough to satisfy me).The action is not a constant as it was in the earlier books, with more time being spent on character and background development, but there are still plenty of hand to hand combat scenes as well as large scale ground and space battles.Recommended for fans of the series since this really isn't a standalone story as it heavily references the events and characters in the Halo games and the earlier books.Fans of military SciFi might also want to check out  Old Man's War  and  The Forever War .CFH

Read the whole thing in like 4 days. Just couldn't put it down. Loved learning the lore behind how the SPARTAN program continued despite not appearing in the first 3 games.

Eric Nylund in my opinion should be the only Halo (novels) author. He brings the reader into the Haloverse and I love it. Ghost of Onyx is the first Halo novel to not inculde the Spartan 117 in a central role. As a result the book is intresting because we are introduced to a new Spartan as a central character, but don't worry plenty of characters of the perivious novels return.Ghosts features pleantly of what any Halo fan wants. In the dirt, gritty ground combat between Spartans and Covenant, ship battles, plot twists, new reveleration, loose ends dealt with, new ones created. My real big complaint about this book is that it WILL NOT keep you satisfied till the relase of Halo 3! It made me wanting more, more, more!I read the whole thing in three days so its a fast read because it is highly addicative. You'll want to keep reading each chapter. This is also because some of the chapters are really short, which threw me for a bit of a loop. Another minor nitpick is some of the tech that appears at times seems to advance for what we've seen established in other Halo media. But unless your a serious Halo-fan it won't bug ya.So go pick up this book! Its well worth your money.

Another book that lives up to what we've come to expect from Nyland (it must suck to always have to live up to your own reputation, but hey, I'm not complaining!).This fourth installment in the Halo series is mostly backstory, i.e. it doesn't feature Master Chief or directly relate to the events in Halo 2, although it does continue some of the story threads in the first three books.Yet it's a fantastic story in its own right, and provides loads of insight into the history and legend of Halo. There are lots more Spartans, lots of Covenant, lots of action, character development for some important characters and lots of insight into the Forerunners and what they were up to.You'll miss MC and Cortana and might wonder what happens next with them after the end of Halo 2, but you won't regret finding out what happens in this book. I hope Nyland writes lots more books in the Halo genre, he really lets you keep the story alive once you've played the game to death. I also hope they get Dietz to write the Halo 2 book - it should be better since there's loads more story to work with than in Halo 1.If you liked Nyland's other Halo novels you should like this one just as much. If you haven't read any yet, give it a go, it's great SF while maintaining the 'feel' of the game that Bungie has put so much work into developing.

If you are mad about Halo like I am, you must read this book. It's the third in the series after the Fall Of Reach and The Flood. I am not the kind of person who likes to read, I am a typical teenager who plays Xbox and watches TV all day, and the last book I read all the way through was years ago, which took me months to get through.However when I picked up the first Halo book, I couldnt put it down. So far in the second month of reading these I am almost on the fourth book, which is fast for a slow reader like me.The first book was the prequel to the orginal Halo: CE Xbox game, and the second is actually based on the first game, however the first book is not like the new Halo game "Reach", it shows how the first spartans came to be, and the second book has a larger story than the game with extra content which you didn't see, and then the third book is based between the first and second Halo games.Anyone who loves Halo should love these books so you must buy it. :)

I imagine that it is tremendously difficult to write a spin-off novel of a film or game without it becoming an extremely superficial read. That said, Nylund has managed by his second Halo book to take over the reigns from Bungie Studios and steer the Halo universe into a densely structured, character-centric, cyberpunk tinged tour-de-force.There are parallel plot lines throughout this book, overlapping and interconnecting that kept the overall story unpredictable whilst never letting my attention off the boil. The science-driven plot devices are superb too, and in particular, his technical understanding of artificial intelligence is used to his advantage in writing Cortana's part of the story (the ai character).Having played through both games twice and now on to Nylund's next book "Ghosts of Onyx", I feel so enthralled that it is difficult to compare the experience to that of any other media based entertainment I've had so far.

Really enjoyed this book. It’s an intriguing read, allowing you to read more into the Spartan 3s and also some Spartan 2s. The book also touches a bit on the great schism and offers an further insight to the Forunners.

This tells the tale of several lesser-known Spartan IIs as well as the creation and development on the Spartan III programme. It's not essential reading in the grand scheme of things but it is a VERY, VERY good read and I'd highly recomend it to anyone interested in the Halo Universe or even anyone who likes a good read.

I never got round to reading all other earlier Halo novels, but if you have played the games you will not need to do much guesswork and patching up between the author and bungies takes on the Spartan III project. This is overall a blistering brilliant and I would recommend it to any Halo fan. It follows the conceiving of S III and follows up to an attack on the Spartan training ground by a mysterious ancient force. The only problems I do have with this book is that it doesn't account for all of the Spartan III s on Halo: Reach and that energy shields don't seem to protect against gunfire as a single shot to the side side from a covenant plasma rifle can down a Spartan. But overall I found this to be a great book.