So how good are the books, Yea Forums?

First Strike explains what happened between 1 and 2

If you only read one read ghosts of onyx.

The forever war

this user is correct, everything after reach, first strike and flood is complete trash

the obvious is starship troopers, but some of the early warhammer 40k stuff is really good

Dune

The Nylund books are all great (Fall of Reach, First Strike, Ghosts of Onyx).

Of the first three, skip the second because it's just a retelling of the first game, and one that barely adds anything of note. After that they tend to be pretty good. is right in saying Ghosts of Onyx is GOAT, but be prepared for some major character whiplash with Dr. Halsey from that book onwards (the writer that took over hates the character and wrote her books to reflect that).

Also be sure to check out the Kilo-Five Trilogy, sets the stage for what happened between 3 and 4 and is just a damn good set of sci-fi books to boot

None of them, bar the Forerunner novels, which are actually really fucking excellent far future scifi/cosmic horror novels, are going to stand alongsaide to the actual classics or well regarded novels in their genres or anything, but most of them are pretty damn solid, solid enough that i'd say "for a videogame book" is giving them a bit of a disservice.

If you enjoy the Halo series, or really wanna get a broader context for the events in the games, then I'd say they are worth reading. Halo's lore itself is really well done and interesting, some of the most fleshed out of any video game franchise

I haven't read all of the ones in the past 3-4 years, but:

>God tier
SIlentium
Cryptum
Contact Harvest

>High Tier
Broken Circle
Last LIght
Ghosts of Onyx
Evolutions

>Good tier
Primordium
Fall of Reach
First Strike

>Flawed tier
The Flood
Cole Protocol
Glasslands
Thursday War

>Bad tier
Mortal Dictata

IMO. Note this is more based on enjoyability rather then necessarily writing quality: Primordium, as one of the forerunner novels, is really fucking well written, but it's also sort of a slog to get through and has a really slow burn.

As far as what books you need to read in what order, that depends on how in dpeth you wanna get. The absolute bare minumum is Fall of Reach > Skip The FLood since it's a book adaption of Halo 1 > First Strike > Ghosts of Onyx; which covers the events before Halo 1 (Halo Reach itself does this as well but they both follow different events during this period), between CE and Halo 2, and what the characters other then Master chief from these books are doing during the events of Halo 2; but I do think that the Flood, despite it's poorer writing quality, is worth reading for how it gives greater detail and fleshes out indivual specific parts and combat enoucnters in the game.

1/2

I'm reading this for the first time in 18 years or whatever and it's pretty ok. I remember what I liked most about it as a kid was the parts in the Flood from the Covenant POV and that guy who gets half-infected by the flood.

>I only read high literature for intellectuals such as myself
>plays video games
Just read them faggot. If you don't like them you can stop.

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The Eric Nylund books are great. Contrary to popular opinion, Reach is actually the worst of his. The Forerunner books are boring, but mandatory reading if you want to play 4.

I read them a few years ago and they were pretty good
I don't read much now
All I do is sleep and work and shitpost

Most of the Horus Heresy 40k books are pretty good, though I'd personally stick to anything written by Dan Abnet or Graham McNeil

Starship troopers wasn't that good though.

Blindsight
Superluminary
Echopraxia
The Ego and It's Own

How do you guys stomach the warhammer books? They're so fucking long, and its always about long battles I couldnt care about with boring characters.

>read all the time
>can't name the last book I read
weird feel

Please list which books were written after 343i took over the series.

Autism

Never read these but how are they supposed to go?
>Chapter 15
>And then Master Chief walked down another hallway and shot another few grunts and elites.
>Chapter 16
>And then Master Chief walked down another hallway and shot some more grunts and elites.
>Chapter 17
>And then something edgy and shocking happens so nerds can act like this is high art.
>Chapter 18
>And then Master Chief walked down yet another hallway and shot more grunts and elites.

I only read the first 4 and they were good. The second was literally just CE in book form though.

For the most part the books were alright starting out, but as Bungie wrapped up the saga with 3 and began considering/working on transitioning to Destiny, and ODST and then Reach were side projects working up to that, things got fucking weird. When 343 took over, you had that one book that laid bare the entire Forerunner society and the tribulations leading up to the Halos, but fans still liked that. Then things just went off the rails and spiraled into "read the books/comics to understand this part in 4/5", and a good portion of one of the books was literally an author tract about how the amoral leader of ONI was actually a good woman justified in her hatred against the next Dr. Mengele that is Halsey, and suddenly everyone hating Halsey as well.

I'm not joking.

Everything published after contact harvest.

Thank you.

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Also haven’t read, I’m sure the narrative of the books would be pretty different from the gameplay of the games

The flood is the only book that follows a game. The rest are expanded universe stories.

Fall of Reach
First Strike
Contact Harvest
Ghosts of Onyx

these are the only good ones

I read to Onyx and they all read the same. They are fucking great when they line up with the game (Halo: CE) set pieces.

I did not play anything past 3 and I don't know if the other books stay good or directly match the games. The books were good because they provided critical world building lore that the game couldn't fit.

I imagine that 343 based stories are not good but that's an assumption

The Flood is genuinely one of the worst books I've ever read. It's poorly written and just boring. You could tell the author was trying to pad the book to 300 pages and couldn't get enough material from the game.

First Strike and Reach are okay.

First 6 or so are good

How did you so accurately quote The Flood without actually reading it?

cont:

If you want a more in depth run, but one that's still really only covering the more essential stuff to give the context to the games, then I'd say do the same list, but with the Flood between Fall of Reach and First Strike; Contact Harvest (which isn't bridging any of the games, but is instead telling how the whoile human covenant war starts, and is written by the lead writer of Halo 2 and provides a lot of context for the stuff seen in 2) and then also reading the Forerunner trilogy, and the first Kilo 5 book (Glasslands). The Kilo 5 books have issues, but you need to at least read the firrst one to continue onto later Halo EU stuff and to get some further context for 4 and 5, so you should read it and it's not totally devoid of good stuff anyways. The second kilo 5 book, thursday war, also bgives more context to 4, but it's not nesscarily as nessscary since you can connect the dots between what happens in Glasslands and 4 without reading it and it's not as nessscarry for setting stuff up elsewhere, but if you wanna see where that storyline goes, feel free. The third one, Mortal Dictata, should really only be read if you really wajnna see how those set of characters end up.

I didn't mention Cole Protocole, or Evolutions here despite being released during the games in MCC came out, since they aren't as directly contextual to the main narrative thread in the games, but honestly i'd say if you are going to bother wiith the above you might as well. Cole protocole i'm not a huge fan of, but it's got a lot of fun human-covenant interactions that's not just murdering each other, and Evolutrions is a really solid anthology set. However, Evolutions also has adaptions of a few of it's stories as motion comics, and those are the preffered method of experiencing those stories

2/3, actually need one more post

>enjoying the forerunner saga
>when it completely fagged up the Flood
You're pure zoomer and its showing

>Superluminary
>Being assassinated once may be an accident. Being assassinated twice is enemy action.

That's a great opening line. Consider me intrigued.

Read Eisenhorn, it's about an Inquisitor and focuses more on intrigue and investigations instead of Bolter porn

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Nigga the Flood is good enough to carry the game and book by itself

It was one of the best "twists" I've encountered in fiction.

Imagine having a brain this small.

The Foundation Series
Dune

Ghosts of Onyx is good too. After that is there is kinda dips into random side stories or complex bullshit.

Favorite part from the OG three was that marine who was cut off (I think) from his pals so he took a sniper rifle and packets of gum, sat in a crevasse and just sniped Covenant until they came and killed him.

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well they are devoid of the horrid gameplay, so they're automatically better than the games

The Dragon Never Sleeps.

It's not entirely military but it's so fucking good.

>imagine
Hello redddit!

the Halo 1 book gives a much-needed look at some of the behind the scenes shit. I didn't give a fuck about Keys or his daughter until i read it and I loved all the Jenkins stuff.

>other Spartans get established in the books as surviving, despite the games only ever focusing on Master Chief as his shared storyline with the Arbiter
>Blue Team finally comes back for Halo 5
>they're paper cutouts that basically exist to pad out a co-op design philosophy and Chief doesn't even get any moments that establishes his long-running yet professional friendship with them

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>Your destruction is the will of the gods... and we are their instruments
Chills every time I get to that part.

cont:

Lat Light and Broken Circle I really like, but came out after the last game in MCC, and I haven't read all the other novels from that "era" of EU material yet, so i'm hesistant to give them a specific recommendation for book order, and they will give you minimal context for MCC, so eh?

One last note about the Forerunner novels, is while they are great, is that everything in them sounds stupid out of context, so don't spoil yourself, and that they really sort of take the cat out of the bag on a lot of the underlying mystery. There's an arguement to be had that you should perhaps save them for as long as possible before reading them, even reading stuff that came out after them first, but the further you go the less viable this is probably gonna be due to increasing interweaviing of stuff be5tween media that 343 does.

You what, the kilo 5 boosk ARE the books that people say fucks with halsey. I don't even really agree with that criticism, but the books do have issues.

You are full of shit and clearly haven't read them, fuck off. And as a broader point, in reply to , etc, is that tyhe Nylund books are overrated. They are still good, Ghosts of Oynx especially, but there's way better ones that have come out since.

I wouldn't call them boring aside from maybe Primordium, but they are pretty dense reads, and are a lot "subtler" in terms of what happens in them. And they aren't really ":nessscarry", for 4, 4 actually explains a lot about what it introduces in it';s terminals and spartan ops, moreso then the buingie gamesa do, but it does really provide a LOT of context and gives the content a much better service since 4';s writing sort of sucks

343's game plots are shit, but most of their novels are really solid. Don't avoid them just because 343

3/3

They didn't "fag up" the flood, the Flood are the most fucking terrifying and utterly horrific they have ever been in the forerunner novels by a fucking mile

You should actually read them instead of reading Yea Forums shitposts about them that cherrypicks stuff out of context.

>Everyone forgets first strike has literal fucking time travel and/or parallel universes as a plot point
Literally the only good stuff in the flood is the bits about the rest of the autumn's crew.

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Do any of you faggots want me to upload this somewhere?

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Standard pulp sci fi. No better or worse than a book like Starship Troopers.

anyone know where I can read this stuff without paying money?

>>Everyone forgets first strike has literal fucking time travel and/or parallel universes as a plot point
wasn't it implied that the Forerunner crystal was basically bending time somehow, which never comes up again in the series besides 343's EU stuff implying this is how the Forerunners power their slipspace stuff

Fuck yes man that would be killer

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Oh also, Fall of Reach, The Flood, First Strike, and Evolutions got reprints, with the first 3 having new covers and evolutions being split into 2 volumes; which added some bonus chapters, if you can find the reprints, try to get them instead.

There's also some smaller/less noticable minor reprints that fix some minor errors but getting themost recent version to that degree isn';t nesscarry or worth worrying about unless you wanna go full lorefag

Sure user

see
I have a bunch I could upl,oad too but he has more then me, so let's see if he uploads first

Someone remind me, what did the reach game retcon from the book? I barely remember what happened in either.

First Strike was 18 years ago, fuck me, dude.

Uploading now, please excuse my shitty upload speed.

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the orbital MACs are basically irrelevant in-game. It extended the fall of reach from a 12 hour battle to taking several days/weeks. Pillar of Autumn was docked on the ground at all during the battle.

Basically the entire invasion of Reach happened completely differently in the game than in the book, there was no mention of Forerunner excavations or research going on at Reach, the Pillar of Autumn was well off-planet with a complete Cortana, and other such things. Bungie/343 essentially wrangled the whole Reach battles part of the storyline into being a Spartan-III oriented ragtag solemn adventure that only loosely reflected what canon had previously established.

Too late.

Art Books:
>Art of Halo 3
imgur.com/a/OOF1r

>Art of Halo 5
imgur.com/a/6FqzO

>Art of Halo (Original)
drive.google.com/open?id=0BzxNZWWqyX42ZUJSdjgxUXctZ2s

>Art of Halo (CE to Wars/Reach)
imgur.com/a/Pb9Vq

>Art Compilation from CE to 4
drive.google.com/open?id=0BzxNZWWqyX42ckt0ZDdWaG1WSkk

Lore:
>Warfleet
drive.google.com/open?id=0BzxNZWWqyX42Sk9iamNQaW81V3c

>Halo Books
drive.google.com/open?id=0BzxNZWWqyX42aUIwbUZxWHJ0V1E

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Starship Troopers
The Forever War
Guns of the South
Old Man's War

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Oh that's the Google drive I originally downloaded them all from anyway, it's good someone has the link since I lost it. Looks like he's uploaded some new stuff too so thanks user.

Read Contact Harvest, Fall of Reach, Flood, and First Strike first to get the basic lore down. They continue off of each other.

Ghosts of Onyx, then Cole Protocol after

Evolutions (Personal favorite) have horror themed side stories. Mona Lisa and The Return are god tier.

Forerunner Trilogy, then Travissty trilogy

The rest don't need a particular order. Legacy of Onyx continues from Ghosts, but 343i stagnated with the writing between 4-5.

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"the first heretic" is pretty interesting, i have a tonne of 40k books and it's definitely one of the better ones.

I was the one that uploaded all of these. I purchased a good number, too. Escalation is pointless, and there's a site you can read them from.

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youtube.com/watch?v=Yx_U98h_5ok

does this include the comics

Not the most recent ones, since you can just view them on comic reader sites.

Oh shit, nice.
Thanks a lot user, I had no idea the original uploader was from here.

Just don't pass this around too much.