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 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
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 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". The novel will tell the story of how Vice Admiral Preston Cole assembled the one of largest human fleets ever to retake the Harvest system, and about the battles of this four year campaign between human and Covenant forces.

Characters

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

Trivia

 * Johnson is seen wielding a BR55 Battle Rifle on the cover of the book which according to Halo: First Strike wasn't created till 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.