Kaley CR's Reviews > Halo: The Cole Protocol

Preface: I’m doing the delightful task of listening to every single Halo audiobook because I want to

Of the first 6 books I’ve *experienced* (idk if I should say “read” or “listened to”), this one is weirdly the hardest one to rate. I guess let’s pretend I have it 3.5 stars instead of just 3.

I feel like Ingatio Delgado and Gray Team have a great storyline and are all excellent characters but the story of Keyes and the ODSTs kinda sucks?! All the best characters kinda die off early or just disappear and Keyes is sorta inconsistently portrayed.

The story of the Kig-Yar (Jackals) and The Rubble is neat and has some nice twists, I think overall it’s a strong storyline.

Thel ‘Vadamee is Thel ‘Vadam aka the Arbiter - it weirdly took me a while to figure that out.

I’m a big Arbiter fan from the games but in this book he’s kind of a bastard. But I think it’s supposed to show the culture of the Sangheili?? But like they become good guys in the video games by the end of Halo 2 which is hard to believe after what goes down in this book and the ones before it.

I mean I’m 6 books in now and the Sangheili are really kinda hard to defend at this point. They treat everyone like shit and only talk about whether someone is strong or weak. Talk about toxic masculinity 😡

Imagine my surprise when my actual new fav member of the covenant is the Unggoy. This book kinda treats the Unggoy like shit - which to be fair every halo book kinda does but they usually do it in a sympathetic way instead of just making them a mockery. It’s not the end of the world I just love the little guys.

I like the way this book explores the mindset of the Kig-Yar, however. Contact Harvest really blew me away by making the Jackals genuinely interesting characters and this book really builds on that. Reth is pretty well fleshed out for a relatively small role and the idea of the Kig-Yar working with Humanity is pretty neat.

All this to say that this book is fine. It hasn’t really stuck with me after reading it the way the other 5 books I’ve *experienced* did, although that could just be because I have listened to 6 Halo audiobooks in the past two or so weeks and they might be starting to blend together.

The next one is a collection of short stories so hopefully that will be a nice palette cleanser. On to #7, Halo: Evolutions!! I saw that Jen Taylor does some of the reading which is VERY exciting because I’m a big fan of hers and she KILLED IT reading the Sif storyline in Contact Harvest. Also apparently Steve Downes (John Halo himself) reads a chunk of it which will fun.