Halo: Contact Harvest

Halo: Contact Harvest is the title of a Halo book by Joseph Staten. Published by Tor, it was released on October 30th, 2007. It is the fifth official book in the Halo series, and the second of three that will be published by Tor.

The price of the novel in the US will be $14.95. The novel will also be available as an audio book CD. The price of the audio book CD in the US will be $29.95

As part of Bungie's contract with Tor, there will be at least one more Halo novel released after Contact Harvest.

It is possible that the novel may lead up to the upcoming Halo game: Halo Wars, which deals with the UNSC's first encounters with the Covenant.

Back of Book Description
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 The Insurrection. So the survival of Harvest 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.

Plot
Halo: Contact Harvest reveals the state of the Halo universe leading up to Humanity's first devastating contact with the Covenant. The experience will be the start of the Human-Covenant war through the eyes of the young Staff Sergeant Johnson. Master Chief, the Spartans, and the Arbiter will not be in the book. The book will tell how the war began from multiple points of view, both human and Covenant alike as the book will look at the Covenant's genocidal fury. The novel will also follow the Sergeant's adventures through the vicious civil war that threatened to destroy humanity's growing interstellar empire, even before the Covenant got their chance. In addition, the book will feature: "some major Covenant characters from Halo 2". These have been shown to be the Prophet of Truth, the Prophet of Mercy, the Prophet of Regret, and Tartarus.

Characters

 * Staff Sergeant Avery Johnson
 * Vice Admiral Preston Cole
 * Colonial Militia
 * Prophet of Truth, Prophet of Regret, Prophet of Mercy
 * Tartarus
 * Jenkins
 * Huragok Lighter Than Some
 * Unggoy Dadab

Trivia

 * Johnson is seen wielding a BR55 Battle Rifle on the cover of the book which according to Halo: First Strike wasn't created until 2552, meaning it won't exist until 27 years after the events in Contact Harvest. However, on Bungie Podcast Episode III, Joe Staten stated that there are specific reasons that Johnson has the battle rifle, hinting about what kind of soldier would be responsible for testing out weapons such as the Battle Rifle.


 * Johnson gets into a relationship with Lt. Commander Jilan al-Cygni. She was sent by ONI to use Johnson and Byrne in a covert operation to figure out who kept boarding freighters that would send out a distress signal. It wasn't until the second to last chapter of the book did anything of intimate nature occur.


 * In an excerpt found in OXM, it is revealed that the Hornet appears in Contact Harvest in the sense that they have been in service since 2524.