Halo Novels: The Comprehensive reading order of the entire book series
Written by Anthony Dennis for 9 To 5 Gamers
An Epic journey outside of the classic Halo video game series that dives into the lore and history of the Master Chief, Spartans, and the Covenant.
What is Halo?
Halo originally was a video game series set in the late 26th century and follows a human supersoldier (or Spartan) known as the Masterchief (or John, 117). Humanity is at war with an alien race called the Covenant and they are hell-bent on the destruction of the human race and any other species that gets in their way. Humanity and the Covenant stumbled upon ring-like structures called Halo’s that were built by a species called the Forerunners. These rings hold the capacity to destroy all life in the galaxy and would cause total devastation to all natural life. However, the Covenant believes that the firing of the rings will launch them and their followers on a great journey that will lead them into transcendence.
The games, books, movies, and Tv-series that make up the Halo universe detail the fight for humanity’s survival and the journeys and lore that makes up this epic series.
The Original Quadrilogy
The twenty-sixth century. Humanity has expanded beyond Earth’s system to hundreds of planets that colonists now call home. But the United Earth Government and the United Nations Space Command is struggling to control this vast empire. After exhausting all strategies to keep seething colonial insurrections from exploding into a full-blown interplanetary civil war, the UNSC has one last hope. At the Office of Naval Intelligence, Dr. Catherine Halsey has been hard at work on a top-secret program that could bring an end to the conflict…and it starts with seventy-five children, among them a six-year-old boy named John. And Halsey could never guess that this child will eventually become the final hope against an even greater peril engulfing the galaxy — the inexorable confrontation with a theocratic military alliance of alien races known as the Covenant.
This is the electrifying origin story of Spartan John-117 — the Master Chief — and of his legendary, unstoppable heroism in leading the resistance against humanity’s possible extinction.
It’s 2552. Having barely escaped the final battle for Reach against the vast alien alliance known as the Covenant, the crew of the Pillar of Autumn, including Spartan John-117 — the Master Chief — and his AI companion Cortana, is forced to make a desperate escape into slipspace. But their destination brings them to an ancient mystery and an even greater struggle. In this far-flung corner of the universe floats a magnificently massive, artificial ringworld. The crew’s only hope of survival is to crash-land on its surface and take the battle opposing the Covenant to the ground.
But they soon discover that this enigmatic ringworld is much more than it seems. Built 100,00 years ago by a long-lost civilization known as the Forerunners, this “Halo” is worshiped by the Covenant — a sacred artifact they hope will complete their religious quest for supposed transcendence, and they will stop at nothing to control it.
Engaging in fierce combat, Master Chief and Cortana will go deep into the Halo construct and uncover its dark secret and true purpose — even as a monstrous and far more vicious enemy than the Covenant emerges to threaten all sentient life on Halo and the galaxy beyond….
It’s 2552. The theocratic military alliance known as the Covenant is showing no mercy as it continues to assault every human world it encounters, but in the way lies humanity’s greatest champion, the supersoldier Spartan John-117 — the Master Chief. Together with his AI companion Cortana and the last remaining Spartans, the galaxy-spanning fight rages on two fronts following the destruction of the human military stronghold Reach by Covenant forces and the mysterious artificial ringworld known as “Halo” at the hands of the Master Chief.
One faction — a squad of Spartans lead by Blue Team’s Fred-104 and Kelly-087 — is trapped on the glassed surface of Reach, the only planet they’ve ever known as home. Beneath this ruined world, Dr. Catherine Halsey has discovered an ancient secret…one that could alter the course of the war. Meanwhile, the Master Chief and Cortana lead a second group toward a gathering of Covenant warships, as the United Nations Space Command’s worst nightmare has finally come true: The Covenant has discovered the location of Earth and is forming a massive fleet to utterly destroy it, as well as all who oppose the indomitable will of the Prophets….
The twenty-sixth century. Once considered clandestine, the Spartan-II program has now gone public. While the Master Chief defends a besieged Earth, and the myriad factions of the Covenant continue their crusade to eliminate humanity, an ultra-secret cell of the Office of Naval Intelligence known as “Section Three” devises a plan to buy the UNSC vital time. The planet Onyx is virtually abandoned and the perfect place to set this new plan in motion. But when the Master Chief destroys Halo, something is triggered deep within Onyx: Ancient Forerunner technology stirs, and fleets of UNSC and Covenant vessels race to claim it and change the course of the Human-Covenant War. But this reawakened and ancient force may have plans of its own…
Gray Team Series
It’s 2535. It is the first, desperate days of the Human-Covenant War, and the United Nations Space Command has enacted “the Cole Protocol” to safeguard Earth and its inner colonies from discovery by its merciless alien foe. Many are called upon to rid the galaxy of lingering navigation data that could potentially reveal the location of Earth and ensure the destruction of humanity. Among those tasked with eliminating any trace of such dangerous information is Navy Lieutenant Jacob Keyes — now saddled with a top-secret mission by the Office of Naval Intelligence…one that will take him to a corner of the galaxy where nothing is as it seems.
Out beyond the Outer Colonies lies the planet Hesiod, a gas giant surrounded by a vast asteroid belt. As the Covenant continues to glass the human-occupied planets near Hesiod, many of the survivors, aided by a stronghold of human insurrectionists, are fleeing to the asteroids for refuge. They have transformed the tumbling satellites into a tenuous yet ingenious settlement known as the Rubble — and have come face-to-face with a Covenant settlement of Kig-Yar…yet somehow survived. News of this unlikely treaty has spread to the warring factions.
Luckily for the UNSC, this uneasy alliance is in the path of the Spartan Gray Team, a three-person renegade squad whose simple task is to wreak havoc from behind enemy lines in any way they see fit. But the Prophets have also sent their very best — an ambitious and ruthless Elite whose quest for nobility and rank is matched only by his brutality….
6. Halo: Envoy
It has been six years since the end of the Covenant War…and yet on the planet Carrow, a world on the edge of the Joint Occupation Zone, a decisive new battle suddenly erupts. Human colonists and the alien Sangheili have already been living a tension-filled coexistence in this place, with Unified Earth Government envoy Melody Azikiwe attempting to broker a lasting peace between their two species. But as civil war now engulfs the Sangheili settlers, Melody must act on an additional covert assignment courtesy of the Office of Naval Intelligence: find a way to free the SPARTAN-IIs known as Gray Team, held in stasis since the end of the war by a cunning Elite fleetmaster consumed with vengeance. And none can anticipate the ongoing violence leading to the discovery of an even greater, unstoppable threat — one hidden for eons below the surface of the planet….
The Forerunner Saga
One hundred thousand years ago, the galaxy was populated by a great variety of beings. But one species — eons beyond all others in both technology and knowledge — achieved dominance.
They ruled in peace but met opposition with quick and brutal effectiveness. They were the Forerunners — the keepers of the Mantle of Responsibility, the next stage of life in the Universe’s Living Time.
And then they vanished.
This is their story.
One hundred thousand years ago. In the wake of the apparent self-destruction of the alien Forerunner empire, two humans — Chakas and Riser — are like flotsam washed up on very strange shores indeed. Captured by the Forerunner known as the Master Builder and then misplaced during a furious battle in space, Chakas and Riser now find themselves on an inverted world where horizons rise into the sky and humans of all kinds are trapped in a perilous cycle of horror and neglect. They have become both research animals and strategic pawns in a cosmic game whose madness knows no end — a game of ancient vengeance between the powers who seeded the galaxy with life and the Forerunners who expect to inherit their sacred Mantle of Responsibility to all living things.
In the company of a young girl and an old man, Chakas begins an epic journey across a lost and damaged Halo ringworld in search of a way home, an explanation for the warrior spirits rising up within, and the reason for the Forerunner Librarian’s tampering with human destiny. Their travels will take them into the domain of a powerful and monstrous intelligence — known as “the Captive” by Forerunners and “the Primordial” by ancient human warriors, this being may not only control the fate of Chakas, Riser, and the rest of humanity, but of all sentient life across the galaxy….
One hundred thousand years ago, Chaos rules the final days of the Forerunner empire. The Flood — a horrifying, shape-changing, and unstoppable parasite — has arrived in force, aided by unexpected allies, and internal strife has desperately weakened Forerunner defenses.
Facing the imminent collapse of their civilization, the Forerunners known as the Ur-Didact and the Librarian reveal what they know about the relationship between the long-vanished race of the Precursors and the Flood. While the Precursors created many technological species, including those of the Forerunners and humanity itself, the roots of the Flood may be found in an act of enormous barbarity, carried out beyond our galaxy 10 million years before. Because of that savagery, a greater evil looms.
Only the Ur-Didact and the Librarian — husband and wife pushed into desperate conflict — hold the keys to a solution. As they face the consequences of a mythic tragedy, one of them must now commit the greatest atrocity of all time — a shocking act designed to prevent an insane abomination from dominating the entire galaxy….
Kilo-Five Trilogy
10. Halo: Grasslands
2553. The theocratic military alliance known as the Covenant has collapsed after a long, brutal war with humanity that saw billions slaughtered on Earth and its colonies. For the first time in thirty years, however, peace finally seems possible. But though the fighting has stopped, the war is far from over: it’s just gone underground. The United Nations Space Command’s feared and secretive Office of Naval Intelligence recruits Kilo-Five — a clandestine team of Orbital Drop Shock Troopers, a Spartan super-soldier, and a diabolical AI — to accelerate the insurrection within the Covenant’s warrior species, the Sangheili, even as their notable defector-turned-leader Thel ‘Vadam — the Arbiter — struggles to stave off civil war among his divided people.
Across the galaxy, a woman thought to have died in the Covenant attack on the planet Reach is actually very much alive. Chief scientist Dr. Catherine Halsey broke every law in the book to create the Spartan program, and now she’s broken some more rules to save them. Marooned with Senior Chief Petty Officer Franklin Mendez and a Spartan team in a Forerunner slipspace bubble hidden in the destroyed planet Onyx, Halsey finds that this place has been guarding an ancient secret — a treasure trove of Forerunner technology that will change everything for the UNSC and mankind. As Kilo-Five joins the hunt for Halsey, humanity’s violent past begins to catch up with all of them as the disgruntled colony Venezia has been biding its time to strike at Earth…and its most dangerous terrorist has an old, painful link with both Halsey and Kilo-Five that will test everyone’s loyalty to the limit.
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It’s 2553. Welcome to humanity’s new war: silent, high-stakes, and unseen. This is a life-or-death mission for the Office of Naval Intelligence’s black-ops team, Kilo-Five, which is tasked with preventing the ruthless Sangheili, once the military leaders of the alien alliance known as the Covenant, from regrouping and threatening humankind again. What began as a routine dirty-tricks operation — keeping the Sangheili occupied with their own insurrection — turns into a desperate bid to extract one member of Kilo-Five from the seething heart of a brutal civil war.
But troubles never come singly for Kilo-Five. Colonial terrorism is once again surfacing on one of the human worlds that survived the war against the Covenant, and the man behind it is much more than just a name to Spartan Naomi-010.
Meanwhile, the treasure trove of Forerunner technology recovered from the Forerunner shield world of Onyx is being put to work, even as a kidnapped Sangheili plots vengeance on the humans he fears will bring his people to the brink of destruction….
It’s 2553. With the 30-year-long Covenant War finally over, the Office of Naval Intelligence faces old grievances rising again to threaten Earth. Angry and bitter colonists — still wanting to settle scores from an insurrection put on hold for three decades — crave justice…as does a man whose life was torn apart by ONI when his young daughter was abducted for the SPARTAN-II program. Black-ops squad Kilo-Five now find its collective loyalty tested beyond the breaking point when the father of their Spartan comrade, still searching for the truth about her disappearance, prepares to glass Earth’s cities to get an answer.
How far will Kilo-Five go to stop him? And will he be able to live with the truth when he finds it?
The painful answer lies with someone long dead and a conscience that still survives in the most unlikely, undiscovered place….
Alpha-Nine Series
13. Halo: New Blood
While Spartans get all the glory, no soldier―not even the legendary Master Chief―wins a war on his own. Gunnery Sergeant Edward Buck and his team of Orbital Drop Shock Troopers (ODSTs) played a major role in saving Earth from all-out invasion at the end of the Covenant War―acts of bravery and ingenuity that did not go unnoticed by the United Nations Space Command.
Now, after many Spartans have been killed in battle and the Master Chief is listed as MIA, the UNSC decides to create a new generation of Spartans to defend humanity from threats both outside―and within. When they come to Buck with an extraordinary proposition, he is forced to make a life-altering decision. With the Covenant War finally over, is it time for him to retire to the sidelines for a life he could only dream about…or is he prepared to step up and become part of the military’s new blood?
14. Halo: Bad Blood
Just hours following their climactic battle on the Forerunner planet Genesis, the Spartans of Blue Team and Fireteam Osiris find themselves running for their lives from the malevolent machinations of the now-renegade artificial intelligence Cortana. But even as they attempt to stay one step ahead, trouble seems to find Spartan Edward Buck no matter where he turns.
A secret mission enacted by the Office of Naval Intelligence could possibly help turn the tide, and has Buck reluctantly agreeing to reform his old team, Alpha-Nine. Because if the band is really getting back together for this one, that means everybody — including the Spartan who Buck never wants to see again, the one who committed the ultimate betrayal of trust….
Ferrets Series
15. Halo: Last Light
It is 2553, and the three-decade long Covenant War that defined a generation has suddenly drawn to a close. Yet in the remotest parts of human space, tensions remain that threaten to overflow into another full-scale conflict. Beneath the surface of the planet Gao lies a vast cavern system renowned for its therapeutic effects and rumored miraculous cures. But now Gao natives are turning up brutally murdered down there — violent acts that happen to coincide with the recent arrival of a UNSC research battalion. And when Gao is revealed to harbor ancient Forerunner technology that could solidify the UNSC’s military supremacy for centuries to come, Insurrection loyalists within the planetary government will do anything — even align with a vicious faction of what remains of the Covenant — to ensure that never happens.
December 2553. Less than a year after the end of the Covenant War, a string of violent incidents continues to threaten the tenuous peace in human-held space, culminating in the assassination of UNSC fleet admiral Graselyn Tuwa and the abduction of her family. It is a provocation so outrageous that the Office of Naval Intelligence must retaliate swiftly and ferociously — but only after its operatives identify her killer and rescue the hostages. This mission will be the first for homicide-detective-turned-ONI-operative Veta Lopis and her young team of Spartan-IIIs. They soon realize that the truth is much more insidious than they could ever have imagined, and along with Fred-104, Kelly-087, and Linda-058 of Blue Team for combat support, must stop a plan hatched in the bowels of the secret research station Argent Moon — a plan so sinister it could destroy all those still reeling from thirty years of intergalactic conflict….
October 2559. With the galaxy in the suffocating grip of a renegade artificial intelligence, another perilous threat has quietly emerged in the shadows: the Keepers of the One Freedom, a fanatical and merciless Covenant splinter group, has made its way beyond the borders of the galaxy to an ancient Forerunner installation known as the Ark. Led by an infamous Brute named Castor, the Keepers intend to achieve what the Covenant, in all its might, failed to: activate Halo and take the last steps on the path of the Great Journey into transcendence.
Rion Series
Find. Claim. Profit. In a post-war galaxy littered with scrap, it’s the salvager’s motto. And with a fast ship and a lust for adventure, Rion Forge has certainly made her mark on the trade. When the discovery of a wrecked UNSC cruiser brings Rion’s past back to haunt her, stirring fresh hope into a decades-old wound, she’s hell-bent on finding answers: What really happened to her father and his ship, the Spirit of Fire?
19. Halo: Renegades
All Rion Forge wanted was to grow her business and continue the search for her long-lost father, but her recent discovery of a Forerunner debris field at the edge of human-occupied space has now put her squarely in the crosshairs of the Office of Naval Intelligence and the violent remains of the Covenant. Each faction has a desire to lay claim to the spoils of ancient technology, whatever the cost, sending Rion and the crew of the Ace of Spades on a perilous venture — one that unexpectedly leads them straight into danger far greater than anything they’ve ever encountered…
August 2558. Rion Forge was once defined by her relentless quest for hope amidst the refuse and wreckage of a post-Covenant War galaxy years spent searching for family as much as fortune. But that was before Rion and the crew of her salvager ship Ace of Spades encountered a powerful yet tragic being who forever altered their lives. This remnant from eons past, when the Forerunners once thrived, brought with it a revelation of ancient machinations and a shocking, brutal history. Unfortunately, the Ace crew also made dire enemies of the Office of Naval Intelligence in the process, with the constant threat of capture and incarceration a very real possibility. Now with tensions mounting and ONI forces closing in, Rion and her companions commit to this being’s very personal mission, unlocking untold secrets and even deadlier threats that have been hidden away for centuries from an unsuspecting universe….
A Masterchief Story
2526. It has been a year since humanity engaged in its destructive first contact with a theocratic military alliance of alien races known as the Covenant. Now the hostilities have led to open war, and the United Nations Space Command understands virtually nothing about its new enemy. The UNSC’s only hope lies with the Spartans: enhanced supersoldiers raised and trained from childhood via a clandestine black ops project to be living weapons. Their designated commander, Petty Officer John-117, has been assigned to lead the Spartans on a desperate counterattack designed to rock the Covenant back on its heels, and to buy humanity the time it needs to gather intelligence and prepare its defenses.
22. Halo: Oblivion
2526. It has been more than a year since humanity first encountered the hostile military alliance of alien races known as the Covenant, and several weeks after the United Nations Space Command’s devastating counterattack of Operation: SILENT STORM was deemed an overwhelming success. But the Covenant is not taking its recent defeat lightly, and is now fully determined to eradicate humanity from existence. If the UNSC has any chance of stemming the tide of the war, the Master Chief and Blue Team must drop onto an empty, hellish world in order to capture a disabled Covenant frigate filled with valuable technology. It has all the makings of a trap, but the bait is far too tempting to ignore — and this tantalizing prize is being offered by a disgraced and vengeful Covenant fleetmaster, whose sole opportunity for redemption lies in extinguishing humanity’s only hope of survival…
October 2559. It has been a year since the renegade artificial intelligence Cortana issued a galaxy-wide ultimatum, subjecting many worlds to martial law under the indomitable grip of her Forerunner weapons. Outside her view, the members of Blue Team — John-117, the Master Chief; Fred-104; Kelly-087; and Linda-058 — are assigned from the UNSC Infinity to make a covert insertion onto the ravaged planet Reach. Their former home and training ground — and the site of humanity’s most cataclysmic military defeat near the end of the Covenant War — Reach still hides myriad secrets after all these years. Blue Team’s mission is to penetrate the rubble-filled depths of CASTLE Base and recover top-secret assets locked away in Dr. Catherine Halsey’s abandoned laboratory — assets which may prove to be humanity’s last hope against Cortana.
Battle Born: A Halo Young Adult Novel Series
Saskia, Dorian, Evie, and Victor aren’t exactly friends at their small high school on the middle-of-nowhere colony world of Meridian. Each has their own problems, but those problems were nothing next to the threat now facing their world: The alien alliance known as the Covenant is laying siege to Meridian, for reasons that aren’t so easily explained. With their village in flames, the four teens find themselves stuck aboveground, locked out of the town shelter where the rest of the survivors are gathered. Together, Saskia, Dorian, Evie, and Victor are thrust into battle with nothing but a few scavenged weapons and an injured Spartan, one of the UNSC’s super-soldiers. What’s forged from the destruction will determine the fate of Meridian, and tilt the battle for humanity’s survival.
25. Halo: Battle Born — Meridian Divide
It’s been three months since the colony world of Meridian was invaded by the alien alliance known as the Covenant. Under the close watch of the military, Evie, Dorian, Saskia, and Victor have been put into an accelerated training program with ONI, the Office of Naval Intelligence. And to the teens’ surprise, ONI has a mission for them: Return to their hometown on Meridian and monitor the Covenant’s efforts to retrieve an ancient Forerunner artifact of untold power.
Stand-alone novels
It’s 2524. Harvest is a peaceful, prosperous farming colony on the very edge of human-controlled space. But humanity has unknowingly trespassed on holy ground — straying into the path of the aggressive, theocratic empire known as the Covenant. What begins as a chance encounter between an alien privateer and a human freighter soon catapults all of mankind into a struggle for
Centuries before the Human-Covenant War would rage across the galaxy, a similar conflict erupted between the Prophets and the Elites — two alien races at odds over the sacred artifacts left by the powerful Forerunners, who disappeared eons ago. Although they would eventually form a stable alliance called the Covenant, there are those on both sides who question this fateful union. From an Elite splinter group rebelling against the Covenant during the time of its founding…to a brave Prophet caught in the machinations of the new leadership…to the root of the betrayal that would ultimately shatter the Covenant many years later, this is the untold chapter of the most unexpected heroes emerging from a realm filled with shocking treachery and ceaseless wonder.
It is 2555, more than two years after the Master Chief went missing-in-action following a decisive conflict on Installation 00 as part of the final chapter in humanity’s bloody thirty-year struggle against the overwhelming forces of the Covenant. Now, as a tenuous peace exists between the humans and the Elites, a startling scientific discovery is made…and the riddle behind its Forerunner origins could very well seal the fate of the entire galaxy within a matter of weeks.
Random Halo Novels & Novellas
Molly Patel was only seven-years-old when the alien alliance known as the Covenant destroyed her homeworld and killed her family. As one of the few to escape the glassing of Paris IV, and despite the United Nations Space Command winning the war on behalf of humanity, Molly never forgot how much she had lost. Nine years later, when her adoptive parents are called to the mysterious and wondrous place known as Onyx, Molly vehemently objects. And when the Servants of the Abiding Truth — a violent ex-Covenant sect under the guidance of the notorious Pale Blade — somehow makes its way inside this supposedly impregnable sphere, Molly is now forced to consider if she and her new parents have made a terrible and fatal mistake in coming here….
Coming Later in 2022
The military-grade artificial intelligence known as Iona has only one week to live. After that the UNSC will legally terminate her seven-year existence in order to stave off the threat of the data corruption phenomenon known as “rampancy”, a condition that will eventually take hold of her functionality and persona, endangering all those around her. In a last-ditch effort to save herself, Iona has successfully launched an unprecedented legal appeal against her own death sentence — a case being watched very closely not only at the highest levels of human government but by others with a very different agenda…
After decades of grim combat against the humans and then the traitorous Covenant Prophets, the Sangheili warrior Rtas ‘Vadum — the Half-Jaw — has earned a long rest. But not all of the Prophets perished in their holy city, High Charity, and now one of their fearsome Prelates has sworn his vengeance. This powerful threat has set a cataclysmic plan in motion — a plan to lure the Half-Jaw into a trap that will herald the utter destruction of the entire Sangheili race.
33. Halo: Essential Tales of the Halo Universe
When humanity expanded beyond the safety of Earth to new stars and horizons, it never dreamed what dangers would be encounter there. When the theocratic alien juggernaut known as the Covenant declared war upon the fragile human empire, millions of lives were lost — but millions of heroes also rose to the challenge. In such a far-reaching conflict, not many tales of the brave have a chance to become legend. This collection of 11 stories dives into the depths of the vast Halo universe, not only from the perspective of those who fought and died to save humanity, but also from those who vowed to wipe it out of existence.
34. Halo: Fractures
Launch once more into galaxy-spanning conflict and legendary heroism, shards of an ever-expanding journey where human and alien alike find their finest hours in facing their greatest challenges. These scattered stories span untold millennia, from the age of the ancient custodial race known as the Forerunners to the aftermath of the Covenant’s bloody war against humanity and even the shocking events surrounding the resurrection of the mysterious Guardians.