Book #40 - Contact Harvest

I was looking for another book and ran across Contact Harvest, a book that I’d gotten for Delaney on a trip. It’s in the Halo series, but doesn’t have the Master Chief, the mythical warrior that destroys everything in the games.

So I grabbed it and started reading it, and really enjoyed it. It’s a look at Harvest, the agricultural world of the future that feeds much of humanity on one system. It’s managed by two AIs that must work with each other to ensure that the crops are grown, harvested, loaded properly and then sent on their way to other worlds.

The book is interesting as it’s written from a number of perspectives. We see the AIs thoughts, which are surprisingly human and have emotional responses. We have Avery, the soldier that is trying to forget being a Marine and fighting other humans that rebelled against the central authority. However he takes his duty to heart, and when he realizes aliens might be coming to attack Harvest, he works hard to train his militia troops.  We have some overview scenes that look at the life and way in which the universe works in the future.

We also have a couple of different alien viewpoints, and learn some of how the Covenant culture works. I didn’t like these parts since the Covenant is largely a religious structure, but I’m sure it adds to the story. I could have done without these, especially as a few of them were long and drawn out.

It’s a story of the first contact with aliens, who subsequently attack Harvest, thinking that religious relics might be there. It portrays the aliens largely as savage, and it makes me wonder how they achieved such technology, but part of it appears to be one species that is inherently good with fixing things and lives to do that.

Not a great book, but likely one that is important for the Halo story.