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trike's review against another edition
3.0
This book is okay. I really enjoy tomes like this which detail an imaginary universe and history, all the cool worldbuilding stuff that goes into imaginary worlds.
I grew up reading things like [b:The Silmarillion|7332|The Silmarillion (Middle-Earth Universe)|J.R.R. Tolkien|https://d2arxad8u2l0g7.cloudfront.net/books/1336502583s/7332.jpg|4733799] but I really liked the ones where they combined art with text, such as The Terran Trade Authority books from the late '70s like [b:Spacecraft: 2000 To 2100 AD|1024512|Spacecraft 2000 To 2100 AD (Terran Trade Authority Handbook)|Stewart Cowley|https://d2arxad8u2l0g7.cloudfront.net/books/1394332890s/1024512.jpg|1548658] and [b:Great Space Battles|912230|Great Space Battles|Stewart Cowley|https://d2arxad8u2l0g7.cloudfront.net/books/1387714415s/912230.jpg|897332], as well as the [b:The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe|365477|The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe Volume 1|Jim Shooter|https://d2arxad8u2l0g7.cloudfront.net/books/1349003562s/365477.jpg|355507]. I still read RPG Sourcebooks because I enjoy the worldbuilding aspects. Also the cool art.
I was also a huge fan of the original Halo game. It's the closest I've ever come to experiencing addiction. Alcohol, gambling, drugs, food... none of these do anything for me. But man, Halo... I had to sell my copy to get my life back. So I was looking forward to this.
And there's a lot of cool info in here. The Halo universe has really grown since that first game. (I don't do consoles, so I've never played the other installments.) A ton of stuff happened after John stopped the Flood on the first Halo.
The downside is that the information is incomplete. Some bits are extensively illustrated (the section on weapons obsessively so), but in other cases they skip the art entirely. I'm all about spaceships, so it was disappointing to see so few of them in this book, despite the pages and pages of entries. The ones given the most attention are those from the first game. They get multiple entries each. But I wanted to also see the new ones, and the ones that played a pivotal role in the epic story. While reading I had to go online to see pictures, such as the Chiroptera-class Beatrice. That kind of defeats the purpose of a book like this. I didn't need four pages and ten angles of the Pelican dropship. That's the Millenium Falcon of the Halo universe; we all know it. Sometimes it's not clear which ship is being depicted. A little less artsy-fartsy book design and a little more "be an encyclopedia" would have made this book superb.
There are also a number of misspellings throughout the text. I get how a copy editor could miss "lose" when they meant "loose", but some words were simply spelled incorrectly.
If you like holding a giant book in your lap and looking at these sorts of things, get it from your library. If you're actually interested in the specific details of the characters and vehicles used in the Halo universe, go to the Halo Wiki page.
I grew up reading things like [b:The Silmarillion|7332|The Silmarillion (Middle-Earth Universe)|J.R.R. Tolkien|https://d2arxad8u2l0g7.cloudfront.net/books/1336502583s/7332.jpg|4733799] but I really liked the ones where they combined art with text, such as The Terran Trade Authority books from the late '70s like [b:Spacecraft: 2000 To 2100 AD|1024512|Spacecraft 2000 To 2100 AD (Terran Trade Authority Handbook)|Stewart Cowley|https://d2arxad8u2l0g7.cloudfront.net/books/1394332890s/1024512.jpg|1548658] and [b:Great Space Battles|912230|Great Space Battles|Stewart Cowley|https://d2arxad8u2l0g7.cloudfront.net/books/1387714415s/912230.jpg|897332], as well as the [b:The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe|365477|The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe Volume 1|Jim Shooter|https://d2arxad8u2l0g7.cloudfront.net/books/1349003562s/365477.jpg|355507]. I still read RPG Sourcebooks because I enjoy the worldbuilding aspects. Also the cool art.
I was also a huge fan of the original Halo game. It's the closest I've ever come to experiencing addiction. Alcohol, gambling, drugs, food... none of these do anything for me. But man, Halo... I had to sell my copy to get my life back. So I was looking forward to this.
And there's a lot of cool info in here. The Halo universe has really grown since that first game. (I don't do consoles, so I've never played the other installments.) A ton of stuff happened after John stopped the Flood on the first Halo.
The downside is that the information is incomplete. Some bits are extensively illustrated (the section on weapons obsessively so), but in other cases they skip the art entirely. I'm all about spaceships, so it was disappointing to see so few of them in this book, despite the pages and pages of entries. The ones given the most attention are those from the first game. They get multiple entries each. But I wanted to also see the new ones, and the ones that played a pivotal role in the epic story. While reading I had to go online to see pictures, such as the Chiroptera-class Beatrice. That kind of defeats the purpose of a book like this. I didn't need four pages and ten angles of the Pelican dropship. That's the Millenium Falcon of the Halo universe; we all know it. Sometimes it's not clear which ship is being depicted. A little less artsy-fartsy book design and a little more "be an encyclopedia" would have made this book superb.
There are also a number of misspellings throughout the text. I get how a copy editor could miss "lose" when they meant "loose", but some words were simply spelled incorrectly.
If you like holding a giant book in your lap and looking at these sorts of things, get it from your library. If you're actually interested in the specific details of the characters and vehicles used in the Halo universe, go to the Halo Wiki page.
adelaidemetzger_robotprophet's review
5.0
Halo + Story = AWESOMENESS IDEA EVER!! (Right next to Star Wars: Republic Commando novels).
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