A good reading, but mostly for Halo fans

books:


	• Contact Harvest (Halo) Joseph Staten Tor Books, 2007 - 400 pages average customer review:based on 45 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Where it all started

All halo fans know the story, but do they know where it started? That is one thing curiously left out in the Halo games and in most of the books. This book, Contact Harvest, gives you the story of first contact with the covenant, and the beginning of a deadly war.

Avery Johnson, a popular character in the Halo games, makes his first appearance in the war on Harvest, a lowly planet on the edge of UNSC controlled space. Harvest is the UNSC's foremost supplier of food for all of its colonies, but is a distant trek away from any of the core planets. Although the UNSC does not know it, Harvest also falls close to the edge of Covenant controlled space, a terrifyingly powerful race, so far unknown to the UNSC. It all starts with a lone unarmed UNSC freighter that has trouble with its slipdrive and drops out of its travels in the middle of open space, right in the path of a covenant destroyer.

Why would anyone want to read this book? First, if you are a hardcore Halo fan, this is a must read for you. Anyone who has played the Halo games and enjoyed the story like me, should know where it all began. Yet another reason to read this is, even though you may not be a Halo fan like me, it is still an excelent read as a standalone Sci-Fi story. Lastly, It is a great look into a possible future over the next 200 years for our planet. It looks deep into the technologies that may inhabit our lives in the near future.

To close this up, Halo: Contact Harvest is an excelent read for anyone that is even remotly interested in Sci-Fi stories. As well, for any Halo fans out there, it is definently a good insight on the beginning of the Halo story. With my regards, i hope you have a good read.

Myles Shollenberger
Mrs. Bains 3rd block english class.

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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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First time writer? No way...

The only thing that's hard to believe about this book is that it's Joseph Staten's first published novel. Yes, that's the same Joe Staten who helped develop the story for the mega-successful Halo series on which this book is based. This book shows all of the quality of a more seasoned writer, and is a fine addition for collectors and fans as well as Sci-Fi readers in general.

A short summary is that this is a prequel following the story of Sergeant Avery Johnson, the same cigar-chomping Marine who later aids Master Chief in the Halo series. It's also the story of mankind's first contact with the aggressive Covenant, fanatical space aliens who are hellbent on humanity's destruction when we encounter them in Halo. This book lets you see how the war started, as well as giving you a lot of excellent character background for the "Sarge" that players and fans have come to know and love.

The writing is excellent, with tons of great character detail and plenty of good action, although things are on a much smaller and more personal scale here compared to the massive space battles of later books and games. Staten's writing is excellent, and is certainly praiseworthy for any author, let alone as his debut title. Fans generally either place this entry as their very favorite Halo novel to date, or like me, as perhaps somewhere in-between Nylund's "Fall of Reach" and "Ghosts of Onyx", but certainly far ahead of William C. Dietz's generally weaker "The Flood".

You don't have to be a Halo fan to appreciate this book. If you've never touched one of the games, this is currently the best novel to introduce yourself to the universe, as it is a prequel to all the other works. If you are a Halo fan, you simply cannot live another day without this book, or you're living a day less rich than it could have been. This is an excellent title, and I hope we see many more from Joseph Staten.

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Solid first novel.

It answered a lot of questions, some I'd never even thought to ask, but were nice to know anyway. For his first novel, it's pretty good. IMO not on the same level as Ghosts of Onyx, but a fun read for a Halo fan. If you're not a Halo fan, this might not be the book for you... but if you're not a Halo fan, why are you reading this?

Not the average Sci. Fi. novel

Contact Harvest steps away from the super soldier genre that Halo is so well known for and takes the point of view of a group of ordinary marines. A good read.

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

This is how it began... It is the year 2524. Harvest is a peaceful, prosperous farming colony on the very edge of human-controlled space. But we have trespassed on holy ground--strayed into the path of an aggressive alien empire known as the Covenant. What begins as a chance encounter between an alien privateer and a human freighter catapults mankind into a struggle for its very existence. But humanity is also locked in a bitter civil war known as the Insurrection. So the survival of Harvest's citizens falls to a squad of battle-weary UNSC Marines and their inexperienced colonial militia trainees. In this unlikely group of heroes, one stands above the rest...a young Marine staff sergeant named Avery Johnson.

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