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Probably more like 3.5 stars.

I wanted to love this book! Don't get me wrong, it was a good story and the premise was set up to be a great one and in the end I felt that it fell a little short. An unknown force on the Ark has triggered the Halo rings to fire and annihilate all life in the galaxy in a few weeks. Desperate for survival the humans and Elites (recently in an uneasy alliance) send a joint team to travel to the Ark and save the galaxy. There are Elites, Spartans, Forerunner constructs, spaceship battles and battles on the Ark with deadly creatures. But for all the build-up and possiblities it seem it was lacking the more the story unfolded. The Spartans didn't shine as much as the should have. I didn't understand why some characters were included (because they didn't seem to contribute much to the story) and I don't understand the purposes being hinted at with some of the characters' relationships (what was with Holt and Vale?).

(Spoiler) In the end I understood the monitor's demented goal and reasoning but for such an intelligent entity with powerful resources at its disposal it was pretty lame at effective planning and contingency planning (I guess we can blame that on its malfunctioning). If it intended to destroy most of the party it sure took its sweet time doing it and was pretty inept.

I would still recommend this book to Halo fans.