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Assuming you haven’t been living under a rock for the past couple weeks, you’re probably well aware of the fact that J.K. Rowling unleashed the sixth book in the Harry Potter series, titled Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

I received this as a birthday gift (pre-ordered from Amazon), it arrived with my regular USPS mail on Saturday. Amazon made up a special box to ship this book - something I suppose is worth doing when you’ve pre-sold 1.3 million copies of the thing. Due to what some would call poor planning on my part, I didn’t actually get to start reading the book until Sunday afternoon… it was a long wait indeed :)

I thought this read much quicker than the prior books - it is 652 pages long but still possible to sit down and read the whole thing. I’m not a particularly fast reader, but I’d guess that it only took me about 5 or 6 hours to read this book. Compare that to the prior book Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix which was 870 pages and took me a couple days to read.

After reading this book and thinking about it for a while, I believe Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is still my favorite in the series. Many interesting things happen in the Half-Blood Prince, but I was just disappointed with the ending.

Warning: Spoilers Ahead

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The last book in the currently-released Halo series, First Strike was my favorite of the three. The action scenes are exciting and you learn a whole lot more about the Halo world. Eric Nylund had the reigns back and proved that he was the one who deserved them.

There seemed to be a pretty large disconnect between this book and where Halo 2 begins. Not just at what point in time/space things begin at in Halo 2, but even some of the story line seems off. For instance, playing through Halo and Halo 2, one would not know if there were other SPARTANS. That seems odd, considering how that is one of the main driving forces for Master Chief in First Strike. It just doesn’t seem like there was much collaboration between Bungie and Mr Nylund for this book — exactly the opposite feeling I had after reading the first two books.

All-in-all though, it was a great read. I look forward to any any future books in this series and would gladly recommend them to anybody who enjoys science fiction.

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I’ve just finished reading The Flood, which is the second book in the Halo series. I had previously read and written up a small blurb about The Fall of Reach — the prequel to this book.

I’ve got to say that I wasn’t nearly as impressed with this book. I thought the pace throughout was just way too slow. I suppose it is probably difficult for a writer to take what you do in an exciting first person shooter game and adapt it to a novel, but I thought this effort was lacking. Sometimes I just couldn’t wait for a gun battle to be over because of how much unnecessary detail there was. For some reason, Bungie jumped authors and let William C. Dietz have a crack at this book instead of having Eric Nylund pick up where he left off after The Fall of Reach. Nylund did however write the third book in the series titled First Strike, which I haven’t yet begun to read.

This book was based entirely on what happens in the game. You begin and end in the same spot as you do in the game. I really enjoyed the plot of the game, perhaps I would have liked the book more had I not already been spoiled by being in the middle of the story when playing the game.

After all that, I’d say that this book really is still worth reading. There are many things happening simultaneously and the author jumps between what the Chief is doing, what missions the Marines are accomplishing, and you even get a glimpse into the Covenant mind. The missions the Marines went on and the battle strategies they employed were interesting.

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A buddy of mine passed along a book he just finished last week: The Fall of Reach. It is the prequel to the great Xbox game Halo: Combat Evolved.

I’ve just finished reading it and I’ve got to say that I was surprised by how good it was. Normally how I play these first person shooters is by bypassing all the cutscenes and just getting in there and kicking some ass. Half-Life and Halo were the exceptions to this… and watching the story unfold further in Halo 2 was very exciting (part of why the ending is like a kick to the head).

This book reveals the history of John, aka SPARTAN 117, aka Master Chief. It details the first contact with the Covenenant, the alien race that is hell-bent on destroying the human race. It is more than the perfect setup to the first Halo game - it in itself is a great work of science fiction.

I look forward to reading the second and third books in this series.

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So I just finished reading The Last Jihad by Joel C. Rosenberg, and I’ve got to say I was pleasantly surprised. I had almost written it off as one of the many books that were written hoping to cash in on the 2004 election frenzy. Turns out, it is a worth-while read. The action picks up quickly with an attack on the future POTUS and the chain of events that follow. It slows down a little in the middle of the book, but then picks up again with the climax on the last page. I really enjoyed the author’s style, though he’s not quite a Tom Clancy yet. Some of the technology described in the book isn’t accurate, but I don’t believe that it detracts from the book too much. Also, this is being touted as a good politically conservative book by people such as Rush Limbaugh. While I did get that sense from the book, it almost feels as if the conservative spin was an afterthought because of how the main points of political discussion in the book didn’t quite seem to fit into place. For example, there is one point where the Vice President is ordering a cabinet member to get on the phone with a foreign leader; while dictating what to say, the VP mentions Jimmy Carter’s and Bill Clinton’s failures. It just seemed out of place at the time, given the crisis they were dealing with. That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy the jabs at the failures, however ;)

I’d suggest this book to anybody looking for a good, fast-paced thriller. I wouldn’t bother mentioning the political aspects of the book, as it isn’t designed to change anybody’s politics.

At the end of the book, things were really left hanging, so now I’ve picked up the sequel, The Last Days. I’ll probably write something up about it next week.

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