William C. Dietz (1945–2026)

Like the first book I think this book is good but not great, it is the novelization of the first halo video game and I would say that is where most of the faults begin.

I have to start with bad on this one, it is strange to say this but this book is TOO much like the video game. It doesn't just go through the story in the same way but describes the combat in an obnoxious manner. Imagine a friend talking you through a game they recently played but instead of giving you a broad description of show more story and basic points of action, they describe every single minion they kill and every single step they took, it would drive you mad... that's what this book does. In the first book I complimented the combat for being well written and it is the exact opposite here, I hated reading the Master Chief sections. The only thing worth while in these sections were the small bits of Master Chiefs thoughts and struggles during his scenes, but even they are not worth it, you can only describe killing a grunt, elite, or jackal so many times before it starts to bore you to madness.

Which brings me the good, pretty much every thing else. There are so many good background characters that I wish they could've dominated the novel more. All of the ODST section were amazing, especially Lieutenant McKay. The combat scenes with the ODST are drastically better than Master Chief's, the combat is interesting, creative, and exciting. You get to know some of the soldiers (but the character development is still bare minimum) and you get some really funny military banter with the occasional badass soldier doing something that completely changes the battle. Then you have Captain Keyes' story, where it starts out really good then ends very weird and sad. But I can't forget what should be a buddy cop movie in the Halo universe with the fearful and intelligent grunt named Yayap and the self righteous and ambitious Elite Zuka 'Zamamee, how much money do I need to send to someone to make that.

There are more really good characters in this novel and Master Chief's story drags the book down so much to the point where if you want to read this book I would advise you to skip his sections and just read the other character's stories. Play the game for Chief but read the book for the background. show less

While it’s nice to have a novelisation of the first Halo game, this action packed adventure translates poorly into the written format. It might be fun to shoot countless aliens and space parasites from behind a controller, but it isn’t fun to read about someone else doing it paragraph after paragraph.

That said, the novel provides some neat character insight and helps emphasis how creepy the Flood is. However, this could’ve been achieved better through a series of short stories.

I show more don’t recommend reading this unless you’re a massive Halo fan. Play the game instead. show less

"The countdown continues
in Earthrise, coming from
Ace Books in the fall of 2002!"

After investing 19 precious days reading a book that I thought had an ending, and I come to the above statement, I believe I have a right to be disappointed. I quadruple-checked Deathday's dust cover and located no notice that it was "number 1" in a series of books.

Deathday by William C. Dietz (another author who should go faceless)is a good old fashioned Earth versus alien invaders story. And while having show more one big strike against it being a 'Surprise! I'm book one in a series', it also deserves kudos for not having even one explicit sex scene in it.

Oh but Dietz's character's utter the most powerful word in the English language (sadly it is no longer 'freedom') and that is 'nigger'. And author Dietz will probably be hung with a noose from the nearest tree for using it too. (Oops, forgot we cannot use the word 'noose' either. Sorry.)

His concept is that the insect-invaders, the Zin's, being dark-brown, and many African-Americans also being dark-brown, the Zins make our human blacks overseers of the whites just as the Zin's are masters of their own lighter-skinned brethren, the Fon. Got that?

The ruling Zin race is able to leap thirty feet straight up and sometimes come squat down on an unwary human, and are as ruthless as ruthless can be and I loved it. Their religion, which causes them to conquer Earth in order to build their temples, has more fables and falsehoods than Scientology. (Knock! Knock! Who's that at my door but Cruise, Smith, Travolta and Phoenix, Arizona's own 'Wonderful Russ'?)

'White Separatists,' American-Blacks segregated out by the bugs for the higher slave positions, professional ex-soldier bodyguards for the black human 'president', 'Survivalists', a love triangle, and hidden unrest among their fellow-cockroaches-made-slaves, all add to the suspense, turmoil and action of Deathday.

The title of Deathday refers to another unique and interesting concept author Dietz dreamed up concerning the life-cycle of our alien-invaders.

Some of the metaphors are silly. One being that, since the Zins have pincers and not hands, several times an idea is rejected "... out of pincer." Har! Get it, ha, ha, ha, not.

I found more than one odd metaphor along the lines of, "... as the Suburban's huge mud and snow tires whispered down the street ..." I've heard mud and snow tires, but I've never heard them "whispering down" any of my streets. He also lards his sentences with so many adjectives that rather than drawing the reader deeper into the scene, he is distracted by having to chew up and then spit out so many unneeded descriptors.

Deathday is a good 'Mankind versus the Aliens' book. And if you don't mind reading several books to get to the conclusion, it'd be a fun series to read. However, I continue to be upset by being tricked into buying a book that does not end when I have a good-sized unread library of books that do have endings and are waiting to be read. show less

I actually read 300 pages of this book, quite an investment in time, before giving up in disgust. The story itself wasn’t that bad. Humanity in a war against evil bugs, losing even, trying to get allies, both of them, playing political games, trying to gain technological edges. Human Confederacy troops are sent to an occupied planet where the Ramanthians are rumored to have some advanced technology the humans covets. The mission is to destroy the enemy and grab the technology. Murphy hits show more from the very beginning. Everything goes wrong.

But that’s not my complaint. Back on the base, there was a gunnery sergeant named Kuga-Ka who’s been a bully and a bastard who has everyone scared of him and who actually tortures his men. And he has his captain addicted to life threatening drugs, so he has him in his pocket. Meanwhile, the good guy of the novel, First Lieutenant Santana is brought in to lead his platoon in their company and let’s just say, the two don’t get along. Santana sees early what’s going on and confronts the man and threatens him with severe disciplinary action if things don’t change. To make matters worse, though, the Confederacy fights with warbots, cyborgs that are huge, seven foot fighting machines made from dead warriors and recorded personalities/souls/digitized recordings/etc with individualized “brain boxes” containing that “former” person’s personality in it, to be linked only and solely with its individualized cyborg body. And for reasons I either don’t recall or never really made totally clear to me, Kuga-Ka HATES one of these cyborgs with a passion, a female, and determines to steal her brain box. Why? What exactly does he plan on doing with it? Throwing it away? That might make some sense. But, no, he hangs on to it while traveling to other worlds through jungles and deserts, for months. He carries this brain box while wounded, hacking his way through jungles with a machete for what? Why does he hate this cyborg this much? For another thing, why does he hate ANYONE so much? Because he goes on a murdering spree, with some cronies of his. They’re captured, or at least he is, but upon getting to the next planet, he’s helped to escape and they’re off. A tracking team is sent after them, but they’re ambushed, tortured, and slaughtered, so that everyone can see them hanging there dead with their entrails hanging out of them. Nice. This asshole, while just a gunny, seems to know a little bit about everything. It’s amazing how much he knows. He knows about airships, about all sorts of weaponry, about close quarters combat, about sniping, about cybernetics, although he admits he’s no cybernetics tech, about negotiating with aliens, about tactics and strategy. My God, he’s the smartest man the military has ever produced! Too bad he’s the biggest psycho too, because for the life of me – and this is why I gave up – he has utterly NO motive whatsoever for being a hate filled nutjob on a murdering spree who hates Santana, who he’s known a couple of days, so much he wants to butcher him, and who hates this one cyborg, out of dozens – why her? Why any? –so much, that he turns traitor and gives himself in to the bugs and offers to help them track down his human ex-colleagues for the purpose of slaughtering them. And he wants to be paid and paid well for this. Nice.

OK, is this remotely believable? Isn’t this carrying things a bit too far, Dietz? I can understand resentments. I can understand people having issues. I can understand being pissed off. I can’t understand people being so psychotic that they go on two world killing sprees, torture, main, ambush, slaughter, turn themselves into the enemy and offer to help them kill your former colleagues, ALL FOR NO MOTIVE WHATSOEVER!!! Usually when people act this way, there’s some type of motive. A spouse or lover has been unfairly killed, or child or parent. Someone has lost their career. They’ve lost their life’s savings. Something HUGE has happened to someone to turn them into a killing monster and traitor. I don’t recall that happening to Kuga-Ka in this novel at all. He’s just a generic bastard to begin with. Someone who needs the shit beaten out of him from day one to begin with, but not someone who you would expect would go insane or who you would even think is intelligent enough to pull all of this stuff off. It just doesn’t make sense. Dietz takes a mediocre character from a minor situation and turns him into a super villain with super powers and it’s irritating and not believable. It’s just damned annoying after awhile. In fact, Kuga-Ka is so relentless in his hatred and murderous desires that it becomes almost comical and nearly ruins the dramatic elements of an otherwise decent military sci fi novel. If Dietz had dialed down this character A LOT, this book might have been fairly enjoyable. As it was, I got too pissed off after 300 pages to finish it and, as I said, I gave up. I don’t care enough to find out what happens. I just want the gunny to die a horrible death and I don’t care enough about the other characters to read on and see what happens to everyone in the meantime.

I’ve read other books by this writer and in fact, have two more waiting in my stacks to be read. They tend to be hit or miss. This was somewhat of a miss with hit potential. I would give this three stars, but I’m downgrading it to two stars because of the Kuga-Ka character and the overkill associated with him. It really brought down my enjoyment of the novel. Nonetheless, cautiously, cautiously recommended for military sci fi fans. show less