Microsoft and Tor Books have confirmed the next novel in Karen Traviss’ Kilo-Five trilogy, Halo: The Thursday War, will hit store shelves on October 2.
The novel – a sequel to Halo: Glasslands – is expected offer fans a glimpse of the the “events and circumstances that define the state of the Halo universe in Halo 4.”
According to Traviss, Thursday War focuses on “what it feels like to operate in a fragile ceasefire that’s turning into a mass of small, unpredictable wars” where the enemy is much harder to spot and define.
“This is a messy conflict seen at close quarters by real people with their own problems, whether those people are human, alien, or artificial intelligences,” she added.
Halo: The Thursday War picks up immediately where Halo: Glasslands left off, with forces on Earth and among the Covenant threatening a peace that is precarious at best. With a splinter group among the Sangheili pushing for war, some human colonies rebel against Earth authority; and as ONI policy continues to shift with the volatile situation in space, the discovery of a trove of Forerunner technology on Onyx provokes leaders on Earth to seek uses for it in the conflict.
Halo is currently a multi-billion dollar science fiction video game franchise (originally created by Bungie) managed by 343 Industries and owned by Microsoft Studios. The property has obviously expanded since the early days of Combat Evolved, and now includes Halo 2, Halo 3, Halo Wars (RTS), Halo Reach, Combat Evolved Anniversary (HD), and Halo 4, which is still in development.
There are also multiple bestselling novels and graphic novels which have sold quite well (the Halo Graphic Novel shipped more than 100,000 copies), with a number of them appearing on Publisher Weekly’s bestseller charts.
Tor’s first three novels sold more than one million copies by April 2000, while Ghosts of Onyx, Contact Harvest, The Cole Protocol and the first volume of Cryptum made the well-respected New York Times bestseller lists.
