Reviews

Sergeant Johnson’s origin story! What can be more exciting than that? If you’re like me and you want to read the Halo books in chronological order, there’s a couple ways you could do it at this point in the timeline. You can either read The Fall of Reach up through chapter 14, then read Contact Harvest, The Cole Protocol, the Battle Born duology, and then finish The Fall of Reach. Or you could do my preferred method: Contact Harvest first, then The Cole Protocol, the Battle Born duology, and then The Fall of Reach especially because a certain Forerunner relic makes an appearance that was first mentioned in the previous chronological book: Broken Circle, and other appearances in The Fall of Reach after their first mention in Contact Harvest. You could also just read all of The Fall of Reach first and then read the others. It doesn’t really matter. The Fall of Reach mentions what happens at Harvest and Admiral Preston Cole in passing, whom the protocol is named after, so you could just read The Fall of Reach and then those two books and the duology for backstory. It’s up to you.

Anyway, besides Staff Sergeant Avery Johnson’s origin story, this is also the story of Humanity’s first contact with the menagerie of alien religious zealots called the Covenant. So you also gain some new insight into the Covenant’s religion and culture and their side of first contact (which is hardly noble, of course), as well as a couple surprising origin stories. Like most of the early Halo books, there’s a lot of grammatical errors, misprinting, and missing words, but I rate the book based on the merits of the narrative rather than the incompetence of the editors. Otherwise, it’s a really good further look into Sergeant Johnson’s character as well as that of a few others we know from the games.

thebadishradish's review against another edition

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emotional mysterious sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

Sergeant Johnson is overshadowed by a love story between an Unggoy and a Huragok.

thebookslayer's review against another edition

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adventurous mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

Showing how the Human - Covenant war comes in to being, and also Sgt. Johnsons story line; Contact Harvest is a great book. It is the very beginning of the story of halo in terms of the games, and is a great place to start the books.

galaxy87's review against another edition

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dark emotional tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.75

itisnotrick's review against another edition

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4.0

Exciting story about humanity's first contact with the Covenant, and the deadly first battles of the war. There's also a great b-plot about a Grunt and an Engineer that humanizes the aliens of the Covenant, reminding us that there's actual characters on the other side outside of the Prophets and everyone's favorite Arbiter. And it's by Joe Staten, one of the lead writers on the Bungie-era Halo games, so you know there's some great lore in here. Check it out, even if you're not a mega-fan of the games.

thoresu's review against another edition

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5.0

A neet pre Halobstory of Sergeant Avery Johnson. As a fan of the games I enjoyed this story a lot. Sone Halo books fail to deliver. This one doesnt

absurtiddy's review against another edition

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adventurous slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.0

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