Halo: Empty Throne released in February 2025. It is the debut novel of Jeremy Patenaude, a former writer at Halo Studios. Patenaude started writing for the fan blog Ascendant Justice before joining the nascent 343 Industries and working on projects including Halo Mythos and short fiction. Thanks to Patenaude for answering these questions via email.
FUD: Can you describe Halo: Empty Throne’s story and describe why you choose the particular time frame and setting for the tale?
Patenaude: Halo: Empty Throne begins in the lead up to UNSC Infinity‘s strike against Cortana on Zeta Halo and overlaps with that event during the course of the novel. Its main focus, however, is a parallel operation seeking to gain access to the very seat of power that Cortana ruled from. The novel tracks the paths of four pivotal characters as they navigate this effort from distinct angles and with very different motivations. This framing seemed best for the book’s goal, which was to onboard new players to the broader Halo universe by gathering up some of its major threads and weaving them together in a way that could launch future Halo stories. In some ways, Empty Throne is the passing of the baton between the old generation of Halo stories and the new.
Were there any particular sources of inspiration?
There were many points of inspiration, but I was probably most heavily influenced by the earliest Halo novels—their scope and scale, their bombastic space battles, and the rich world- and character-building that, by necessity, had to occur in those early days. When I started plotting out Empty Throne, I felt like we needed to capture that initial spark of magic that fans fell in love with in the franchise’s first decade. If this was going to bring new players up to speed and set the stage for future Halo stories, I wanted it to recall the drama and spirit of those early years.
What were your personal challenges in writing Halo: Empty Throne and how did you tackle them? There were a lot of complexities we navigated in order to tell this story, but I think the biggest challenge for me personally was probably what every writer has to face when working on a longer form narrative: Getting past the finish line. Novels demand steady, forward-making progress every day you’re working on them. When you’re writing something a bit shorter or something that can be broken up into bite-sized chunks, it’s far easier to compartmentalize and complete the project in piece-meal. But when you’re trying to bring four very distinct story threads across 30,000+ words, it’s really a test of endurance and commitment at that point, in addition to all the other things you’re trying to track along the way.
Having been involved in Halo for over a decade, and contributing to many other published works, can you describe why you decided to put yourself forward to pen your own Halo novel? And why now and not before?
Well, first off, it must be said that I really enjoyed working with Halo’s existing authors and developing their stories collaboratively. Folks like Kelly Gay and Troy Denning are so extraordinarily talented at their craft that it made working with them an absolute pleasure every time. For me, I think that method is ideal under normal circumstances: Giving a part of the universe to a talented external author and seeing what cool ideas they come up with while they create in that sandbox.
Empty Throne, however, was a bit different as a project. The original idea behind the novel was essentially setting the table for the next era of Halo stories by pulling together major threads from the previous one. This involved a lot of data mining and needle threading that isn’t typical for most of the stories we tell. Many of those are localized to a set of characters and events taking place in a very specific corner of the universe. The more I considered it, the more I felt like it made sense for us to write this particular story in-house.
As I pulled together the outline for Empty Throne and talked it over with others on the team, I think it became clear to me that this was the right pathway forward. I wouldn’t have felt good about placing the demands of drawing together and balancing so many extraneous elements from Halo’s past on another writer. We also had a lot going on at the studio at that time and this felt like something I could personally take on, so I just took a stab at it. I’m super thankful that the folks at Halo let me finish work on this project even after I transitioned off the team.
What were the similarities and differences in writing for Halo from within the core team compared to writing it as a now outsider?
I’d say that almost everything was basically the same, though I probably had a bit more time that I could dedicate to Empty Throne while on the outside of the team, since my job there entailed a variety of projects and meetings unrelated to the novels. I had a few months of free time before I landed where I am now, and that gave me enough space to finish it. During the process, there were certainly a few moments where I didn’t quite have the same resources I had compiled while on the team and had to do a bit more digging for very specific lore details, but, overall, the experience was very similar.
What do you think you learned from writing your first Halo novel and how did your past involvement with the franchise prepare you?
As a full-length novel, there was a ton for me to learn generally speaking—from the right pacing of action and exposition over the course of the novel to being flexible with the original outline material as the story progressed on its own. I think the biggest benefit to me having come from the Halo team was that I was already familiar with the material. It had been a profound part of my life for almost 14 years at that point, about 20 if you consider my time in the community before officially joining Microsoft. When you spend that long with something, it starts to get into your DNA. And after having spent years working alongside authors as they wrote in our universe, in many ways, writing Empty Throne just felt like an extension of that same work.
What are your own personal favourite published Halo stories and why?
There are a lot of Halo stories that I love, but I’m particularly fond of Contact Harvest by Joseph Staten. In large part, I feel that way because of all the foundation-laying done in the novel for the rest of the universe. There’s so much world-building going on in that story across the board and we get such a rich glimpse into the traditions and cultures of the Covenant. That was something that most novels up to that point (and even after) had never really explored. At least not in that particular way. We also got a behind-the-curtain look at ONI and the inner workings of a far flung human colony at the dawn of the war. All of those things are fascinating elements of the Halo universe, and I think for a lot of fans it came across as a novel written by someone who had clearly breathed the air of Halo for a very long time. It was a critical benchmark point for me as a fan of the franchise and I’m hoping Empty Throne echoes (even if faintly) some of that book’s same qualities.
You’ve come a long way from writing a Halo fan blog, to helming the mothership and now creating your very own slice of the Halo universe. Is there anything else you would want to contribute to this universe, from in or outside, in the future?
Empty Throne pulls the mask off of a few enigmatic characters we have had in the universe only as codenames since the franchise’s earliest days, one with deep ties to a certain secret military program that existed before the 26th century. That’d be an exciting rabbit trail to explore since there’s very little on that topic in the way of existing lore. I also think that some of the Banished and Covenant threads of Empty Throne have a lot of really intriguing story possibilities. I’m excited to see what the Halo team does with them.
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