Teaser

In the wake of the Covenant War, a team of human scientists continue to explore the mysterious Halo arrays. But when a countdown is triggered, humans and Covenant alike must return to the fabled Ark . . .

Review

Considering how much the man has written, it’s surprising that I haven’t read all that much Peter David. Off the top of my head, all I’ve read of his is one entry in the Star Trek: The Captain’s Table series. He’s written a whole bunch of Trek novels, including the elusive Before Dishonor, which is high up on the list of books I want to read. Outside of Trek, he’s written everything from original humorous fantasy books to this tie-in to the Halo games. And it is very much a tie-in, because while it’s a complete standalone, it does rely more on having played the games than most others I’ve read recently.

Despite introducing a largely new cast of characters (at least so far as humans are concerned) Hunters in the Dark feels like an epilogue to Halo 3. The events of that game figure heavily into the plot of this book, and the majority of the action in both takes place on the same Forerunner structure known as the Ark. As a result, this book feels a lot closer in tone to the trilogy of games than any of the other books I’ve read in the past few months. This feeling is helped by the starring role for the Elite Covenant soldier known previously as the Arbiter, who gets a fair bit of development here.

In terms of the actual story, the threat of galactic annihilation. the squabbling between humans and aliens, and the presence of Forerunner constructs of dubious sanity all work wonderfully. As I say, it feels like a direct continuation of Halo 3, and everything feels like a natural evolution of what happened in that game, with the added benefit of having more dialogue and internal conflict, leaving everything that much richer than a first-person shooter could realistically be.

However, I’m slightly less impressed with David’s actual writing. It’s perfectly functional, but rarely rises to be more than that. I can’t put my finger on any particular issue, but the whole books feels a little flat, even lifeless. A lot of this is likely down to the time constraints that come with writing tie-in fiction. Couple that with an assumed level of familiarity with all the species and technologies flying around, and things start to make sense. This is a book for the die-hard fans more than it is a reader like myself. I enjoyed it, but I was never obsessed with it. This is par for the course for tie-in fiction in my recent reading, so if you’re a Halo fan, I still recommend Hunters in the Dark. Even more so if you’ve recently played Halo 3.

Book Stats

• A Standalone Novel
• Published by Titan
• First published in 2015
• Military SF
• 356 pages