Halo: Point of Light is a 2021 novel by Kelly Gay set in the Halo series, and is preceded by Halo: Renegades.
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...
Halo: Point of Light was released on March 2, 2021.
Halo: Point of Light contains examples of:
- Cool Starship: The Ace of Spades, of course.
- Demoted to Extra: Unlike in Halo: Smoke and Shadow and Halo: Renegades, Rion isn't the protagonist of Halo: Point of Light. That goes to Spark, with Rion quite literally being teleported out of the story for huge portion of it. Many of the chapters that feature Rion are spent by her listening to the Librarian's confessions. At the end of the story, Spark departs from the Ace of Spades, leaving Rion back to (hopefully) become the story's protagonist again in a potential sequel.
- Early-Bird Cameo: 117649 Despondent Pyre, the Monitor of Installation 07, is first named in this book before being given a small but noteworthy role in Halo Infinite.
- Fling a Light into the Future: The Librarian's longest scheme by far. The plants grown from the Precursor remains will one day allow new Precursors to be born in a form besides The Flood, giving their race a fresh start and righting the oldest wrong in Forerunner history.
- I Choose to Stay: When Eden departs on its mission, Spark stays behind on Bastion to become the facility's new caretaker.
- Mythology Gag: Rion spends a portion of the book on Erebus VII, a planet which was the setting of the Halo 4 multiplayer map "Abandon". The Anglers were also first hinted in that map, as the mysterious creatures trapped within containment tanks.
- The Reveal: A big one: As it turns out, the crew of Audacity wasn't telling the whole truth about their trip to Path Kethona. The Forerunners on Sedaaro had given shelter to two surviving Precursors. While this pair could have healed themselves, they chose to let nature take its course, and when they eventually died, their bodies gave birth to plants whose seeds took millions of years to germinate. The Librarian hid these plants on Bastion, intending to send them to a world outside the Milky Way to eventually allow the Precursor race to be born anew.
- Was Once a Man: While most of the ancillas on Bastion are just AI modeled after their originals, Keeper-Of-Tools underwent the same process to become a monitor as Chakas did.
