The fantasy genre is a wild card in the book world, the themes and plots of each can vary from far in the future of our world or a complete other medieval world.
This variation makes it difficult to judge after reading only about ten of them I can only really begin to skim the surface.
The structure of these books always consists of something extraordinary coming to be, then a hero rises and through some marvel of science or magic or something along the lines prevails either widely or barely making it through.
In examples that I read, such as
Glasslands the series that associates itself with that book are Halo books and they have humanity far in the future, 2552 to be exact, we have perfected Trans-Light travel and have colonized other worlds and were finally becoming peaceful after an insurrection, another sentient empire made up of many aliens had made contact with us and made it clear.
We were to be exterminated like vermin.
We had a military that was no match for superior “Covenant” technology, everything they had was better, but they were adaptive not innovative or inventive like us, we had a group of 75 genetically and chemically engineered super soldiers, called Spartans, which at first were no better than other humans until they captured armor from the aliens and we innovated it to fit our needs.
Now having Nuclear Fusion meant there was almost unlimited energy for Starships and for Spartans armor which came complete with energy shielding just like the Covenant’s only ours could withstand more and recharge faster.
We had a means to drive away the alien threat, but they discovered something important, we had been trying not to lead them to our planets to save them but they found our military stronghold, Reach, The Spartan team was sent in divided to fight in Space and on the ground, the Captain of the Spartans Vessel had to destroy a navigation database that had the coordinates of Sol, the name of our home star Earth, so the Master Chief who headed the Spartans took that mission and sent the rest to fight on the ground, they destroyed the data but at a huge cost, the overwhelming numbers of covenant killed of the rest of his Space operation team, and worse still the Covenant was “Glassing” or burning the planet with Plasma weapons, The Captain of
Pillar of Autumn had to pull out and bail on the failing battle fast, which meant leaving Spartans to die on the ground.
Being the only surviving Spartan, Master Chief had to continue on with is mission, as the
Autumn jumped out system, they had done so randomly to go away from human colonies, found something, Called “Halo” this weapon of destruction even more deadly than anything we could ever think of had killed the ones who fostered our survival, The Forerunners, who sacrificed themselves using Halo to destroy the Flood.
This disease feeds only on sentient life and could not be allowed to spread soothe chief destroyed Halo with the flood on it, after it had infected and killed everyone on it but him, the Halo saga continues with The Master Chief Spartan 117 or John, going back to Earth for a bit of rest that he didn’t want.
He got his wish, on a random Trans light jump the Covenant found earth but thankfully only in light numbers because they were surprised they found it.
The Chief fights them back with the help of his Artificial Intelligence named Cortana who was smarter than anything ever, and some marines, the covenant jumped out system but not before the chief boarded a ship and they followed them through the wormhole and found another Halo after fighting through a large amount of the covenant he was hit with a high powered airstrike which knocked him unconscious and flung him into the water where he was picked up by a “Gravemind” or brain of the Flood.
The Gravemind sent him and a Covenant Suicide soldier to places where they might find something of use for him, the chief was sent right to the Covenant Flagship above Halo and the Arbiter to the human one, ironic right?.
This book was written by Karen Traviss and was superb, Sci Fi fans will enjoy it very much so.
