Do you recommend me any of the Halo novels to read?

[Schorl]

I've been thinking of getting 2 box sets with novels that take place in the Halo universe.
The first one includes Ghosts Of Onyx, Contact Harvest and The Cole Protocol. The second one includes First Strike, The Fall Of Reach and The Flood. Each box set costs 26 euros. Do you recommend me any of these or do you have me any other suggestions?

[WoodsBeatle]

All of them except the Forerunner trilogy -- I found those books to be too confusing. I'm selling some of my Halo books/comics on ebay if you'd like to purchase them.

[TheArbySauce]

Originally posted by WoodsBeatle:

All of them except the Forerunner trilogy -- I found those books to be too confusing. I'm selling some of my Halo books/comics on ebay if you'd like to purchase them.

can agree dont even remember what happened in them.

my recommendation is the original Fall Of Reach

[Priscylla]

Cole Protocol, Shadow of Intent, and Fall of Reach are my personal favourites. Hunters in the Dark and Contact Harvest are also really good and I'd recommend them heavily.

[Rashala]

I'd suggest all of them save the forerunner one....it is confusing and kinda dark.....though it does set up halo 4's enemy quite well

[Sp4rt4n1295]

My go to book recommendations are the Eric Nylund trilogy (Fall of Reach, First Strike, and Ghosts of Onyx (my personal favorite), Contact Harvest, and Halo Evolutions. If you can, I'd also recommend getting the Graphic Novel, if you want to find out how R'tas "Half-Jaw" Vadum lost his left mandibles and encountered the Flood before Halo 2, and how Johnson made it out of the Flood containment facility.

[Sp4rt4n1295]

Originally posted by WoodsBeatle:

All of them except the Forerunner trilogy -- I found those books to be too confusing. I'm selling some of my Halo books/comics on ebay if you'd like to purchase them.

I'm not a fan of how they heavily retconned the original ideas for the Foreunner lore, and made the Halo 3 terminals, as well as several lines from Guilty Spark and the Gravemind completely nonsensical within the context of the new Forerunner lore. It even retcons a line from Mendicant Bias from Contact Harvest that directly confirms the "humans are Forerunners" idea from the original trilogy.

[Blood]

new blood and bad blood are good halo books if you like halo 3 odst

[Revenant*]

I read The Flood and First Strike when I was younger. Seemed like both were great books.

[Korika]

Contact Harvest is great if you skip over that sex scene.

The Flood is great if you wanna get into the Chiefs head when Cortana says "This cave is not a natural formation..."

My money is on Cole Protocol tho

[Black Hole]

Pretty anything with the Chief, or humans in general, the forerunner series ignore, very boring read.

[Schorl]

Thanks for your recommendations everyone.
But I'm afraid of one thing: I've heard that a lot of people who read The Fall Of Reach hated Halo Reach afterwards (I haven't played Reach yet. I wait for it on the MCC. I only played Halo 1 and 2.)

[paxton]

Start with Fall of Reach. One of the best.

Games/Movies and Books are most of the time not equal.

[Jebus]

I highly recommend Halo: The Flood thats based on the events of CE.

It really expands the experience and gives you a greater understanding of that game.
And also kinda make me Enjoy SPV3 more than the actual vanilla game, since it features elements from that book.

Such as the Main human base(Alpha Base) on the ring, for example.

[Jebus]

Originally posted by JamesGki:

Thanks for your recommendations everyone.
But I'm afraid of one thing: I've heard that a lot of people who read The Fall Of Reach hated Halo Reach afterwards (I haven't played Reach yet. I wait for it on the MCC. I only played Halo 1 and 2.)

Eh, thats one way to look at it.
It retcons the book, It does.

But the way i see it, I'm glad it did.
I could tell you about the book in a quick summary, but that'd basically be spoiling it.
But honestly, theres No material in there for a game revolving around the planet Reach what so ever.

If it did not retcon the book, we'd either

A) Have no Halo: Reach Game.
B) Have a much worse game.

So im honestly glad it did.

[Sp4rt4n1295]

Originally posted by JamesGki:

Thanks for your recommendations everyone.
But I'm afraid of one thing: I've heard that a lot of people who read The Fall Of Reach hated Halo Reach afterwards (I haven't played Reach yet. I wait for it on the MCC. I only played Halo 1 and 2.)

Basically all it really retconned was the length of the Battle of Reach, the importance of a certain artifact that is found in the book (no spoilers), and the Pillar of Autumn landing on Reach at some point. Other than that, there really aren’t that many contradictions. I mean, yeah (spoilers for those who haven’t played Halo Reach) Cortana is supposed to be on the Autumn during the battle instead of with Halsey, but the Cortana with Halsey is a fragment instead of the actual Cortana, who is still on the Autumn.

Overall, I personally think the hate against Reach for “completely throwing away the lore of the books” is a bit exaggerated, though there are retcons that do exist, so I can see where they come from to an extent. I honestly think the retcons are for the better, imo because as Jebus pointed out above, if FoR wasn’t retconned, there would be no room for a story about the Battle of Reach since other than one ground engagement, the majority of the battle was in space. I don’t think a huge, rather one sided, space battle would be rather fun for a first person shooter, let alone a Halo game. So I’m fine they changed it. Besides, thematically, the battle remained the same even with the changes, so I don’t think much was lost in the end.