- last post: 01.01.0001 12:00 AM PDT
Posted by: Terran Grunt
The Fall of Reach contains most of the technical data you'll need to hold your own in Halo speculation debates, the Flood is poorly written and covers no new ground but there are some cruicial facts in it, and First Strike is my personal favorite of all the Halo novels as it covers new ground and offers hints about Halo 2. In fact, I think some of the information in the Flood actually differs from the game stories - rather large errors, the largest one is when it says the Covenant have been on Halo for a while, whereas in the game we know that they only found the ring thanks to Cortana's directions.
Actually, if you read Fall of Reach, we get the coordinates of Halo from the Covenant as they are raiding that one planet (the one where the Hunter steps on the Jackal). So, the covies have it, and we just have data and no idea what it is. Cortana finds out what it is, and at the end of tFoR, she checks to make sure it follows the Cole Protocol, then sends the ship there rather than a random location like the said she did.
Basically, we didn't lead the covies to Halo, they led us there (by causing interest in the data). Keyes did NOT know that their jump wasn't blind, and I don't think Cortana's gonna say "Well, we're all going to be killed by Covenant, and it's my fault because I didn't randomize our escape route," at such an important time.