A good reading, but mostly for Halo fans

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	• Contact Harvest (Halo) Joseph Staten Tor Books, 2007 - 400 pages average customer review:based on 51 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

A good reading, but mostly for Halo fans

Contact Harvest is the fifth novel set in the Halo universe released so far and author's Joseph Staten's first crack at novel writing. The end result is quite good and I awarded it 4 stars for being a pleasant read.

I believe that Halo fans out there who have played the games and possibly read the other novels will enjoy this one, as they go through the chapters and find out why humanity is the target of the Covenant and where several of the characters from the games come from. In fact, knowledge of the Halo universe definitely enhances enjoyment of this novel.

It's going to be different for the casual reader who is not familiar with Halo. In this case, I feel the enjoyment of the novel may be limited and not much more than above the average SF novel.

Concerning the plot of Contact Harvest, it's not dealing with the Master Chief or other SPARTAN-IIs, rather Sargent Johnson is the main focus of the story. Also, as said above, the plot deals with what happens before the games. In this situation Joseph Staten does a good work with keeping a rather good balance between action, character development and a sort of "encyclopedic style" descriptions of artifacts and alien races you'd expect from someone who usually deals with videogames (like Staten) and thus in a novel has to compensate with descriptions what a player would see when playing the game.

To sum up: I'd recommend Contact Harvest mostly to Halo fans or those who have at least some familiarity with the Halo universe.

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Great for a Halo Book

Obviously not "great literature", but for a Halo book it's darned good. Considerably better than the Ghosts book before it. Give it a try.

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A book for all Halo fans.

This is a different type of Halo book, no SPARTANs, but still a good read for any true Halo fan. This book fleshes out Sergeant Johnson, the brutes (Tartarus in particular), A.I.s, and the first Human - Covenant contact.

Compared to other Halo books (like; Fall of Reach) this book is lacking in the heroic fight(s) category. It does have plenty of action but not on a huge scale. I would also add that the ending seemed somewhat lackluster or abrupt.

All-in-all I would say as a stand-alone book it would not have rated as high of marks, but as it is full of interesting Halo tidbits I highly recommend this book to all Halo fans.

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Enthrawling

This book is a very good addition to the Halo series. Building intrest in the characters all the way through, it climaxes to a touching ending that sets a somber view into the beginning of sorrows for mankind at the hands of the covenant. A must read for anyone intereted in the backstory of the world of Halo.

In the beginning...

So as the lovely Cortana dreadfully says at the conclusion and beginning of the Halo 2 & 3 saga, "It began not with a bang, but with a whimper". Who could have known she may have been referring to Contact Harvest. In fact I believe that's exactly what she may have been referring to.

Halo Contact Harvest describes to us in detail on to how this entire war with the Covenant all started. A blatant attack on a human vessel in space leads up to an eventual confrontation between man...and alien. Contact Harvest differs from the other four novels in that there is hardly any action except for a few encounters with the Covenant towards the end of the story. It does a decent job in painting the picture of what humans are to expect and what kind of technology they are up against. However, my only problem with this book is the timeline. It leaves a huge gap I think in between itself and The Fall of Reach. By Reach's timeline, it seems already that civilization is already doomed. So, as a fan of the series, I am only hopeful that another book may come out to bridge the gap. Perhaps more character development on Dr. Halsey and on the Covenant side, the Prophets and Tartarus. Since this story pretty much entirely takes place on Harvest, I'd love to see another prequel that will go into detail on the first Spartan project and how that came about.

Besides the book painting a clear picture on the entire back story of Halo, my biggest gripe with the Halo series is the overall language and vocabulary that is being used. I'm in my late 20's and a college graduate, but I can't help but realize that many kids younger than me are Halo fans as well. I can't possibly imagine how they can understand these stories with all the technical jargon that gets thrown around. I just hope these guys put there Thesarus's down the next time around and try to make an otherwise great story, easier to read! Thanks!

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reviews: 1, 2, page 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11

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