Halo: Contact Harvest

Halo: Contact Harvest is the title of an upcoming Halo book by Joseph Staten. Published by Tor, it will be released on October 2, 2007.

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.

Oddly enough, it depicts Johnson weilding a BR-55 Battle Rifle, a weapon that was theoreticly unavaliable at the time. (Although the Pillar of Autumn's crew was equiped with weapons made specificly for their mission, making it a possiblity that the BR-55 existed before Halo Combat Evolved.)

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 agressive alien empire known as the Covenant. What begins as a chance encounter between an alien privateer and a human frieghter catapults mankind into a struggle for its very existance.

But humanity is also locked in a bitter civil war known as 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
Spoiler warning: Plot and ending details follow.

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 throught the eyes of the young Staff Sergeant Johnson. Master Chief, any of the Spartans, nor the Arbiter will be in the book. The book will tell how the war began from multiple points of view- human and Covenant alike: the book will look at the Covenant's genocidal fury. The novel will 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. The book will also feature: "some major Covenant characters from Halo 2". This book also will tell the story of how Vice Admiral Preston Cole assembled the largest human fleet ever to retake the Harvest system. Also about the battles of this 4 year long campaign between human and covenant alike.

Since part of the book is also about the civil war within humanity, it may have something to do with Operation: KALEIDOSCOPE: which took place on Harvest, and also involved Johnson.

Characters

 * Staff Sergeant Avery Johnson
 * Vice Admiral Preston Cole
 * Colonial Miltia Trainees
 * Major Covenant Character from Halo 2, possibly the Prophet of Truth or Rtas 'Vadumee.