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| Glasslands thoughts/critiques *SP* | |
| Posted By: Archilen | Date: 10/27/11 8:48 a.m. |
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Just finished reading it. All in all, it was pretty good, but very different than I expected in terms of both writing style and in-universe events,but it was refreshing in a way and it certainly kept me entertained throughout. It did feel a little unfamiliar, though it's probably the changed setting coupled with a different writing style. The Cole Protocol is closest I can think of in terms of overall feeling. I did take note that there's a distinct lack of science-fictiony stuff compared to Nylund's work, both in terms of technology and terminology, which is a shame. Guess all that is reserved for Bear's trilogy. I also noticed it lacks Nylund's precision with dates and places, though it's still better than TCP which didn't even mention the month or year each chapter took place in. The story worked pretty well, despite being told from the viewpoints of three separate parties, but it seems Traviss couldn't quite tie it up for a decent ending, instead pulling a Halo 2 on us and ending the book very abruptly in a massive cliffhanger (unless that was intentional). I actually thought it was going to end in the memorial scene. The ending is so abrupt it practically ended mid-chapter; I think they should've labeled this novel and the next one as two volumes of the same book. The GoO crew segments were much better than I feared - the transition might not have been as smooth as it was, based on Traviss' statements that she doesn't fully familiarize herself with the source material, lest she become a fan of the universe, a logic I don't fully understand. However, it's hard to imagine she wouldn't have read GoO, given the amount of ties and direct references to the book. It's also clear she's studied Halsey's journal, given some of the direct quotes from it - nice to see that piece of fiction receive some attention in-universe. I did feel that the whole Dyson sphere and Forerunner plotline should have been explored more, both literally and figuratively. There was simply so much potential, years of people speculating what might've been there, and in the end it was mostly handled as an afterthought. There's some mysterious buildings, then the GoO crew is rescued, ONI comes in and starts researching the place. That's it. It's like Traviss wanted to get them out of there as soon as possible. As for characters, character development seemed to be the main focus of the book. I think this is also its best aspect in comparison to the previous novels. It did seem like some of the characters were, as one might say, emotionally hypercharged, but that might be just me comparing them to the other books. The Spartans of Blue Team had very little screen time, and there wasn't a lot of character development going on with them, not that there's been much of that earlier on either. Previously, they've mostly been defined by their special attributes, but here, even their differences didn't really show. Lucy, on the other hand, got a lot of screen time and I thought she was handled surprisingly well. I do wonder where Naomi came from though - she wasn't with the Spartans on Reach, and Halsey had thought she was dead when they met near the end. And then there's Halsey. To me, there was something preachy about the way her character was handled, like Traviss was trying to constantly make a point to the audience how immoral and evil she was by making most of the characters hate her. The fact they told the members of Kilo-Five about what she'd done seemed almost like an excuse to have the characters wallow in how morally reprehensible it all was. Maybe it just bothered me because I'm accustomed to Nylund's more neutral narrator voice and the fact no one in-universe has had any problem with her actions until now. It also seemed ridiculous that Parangosky wouldn't know about the flash clones or would start lecturing Halsey about them - I doubt something like that could be done without authorization, not to mention it seems hypocritical for her to make such a big deal out of it. This is actually acknowledged in the novel, but I still feel like the ending interrogation scene was there just to explore why Halsey had the children cloned, not because it would serve a meaningful in-universe purpose. My favorite characters were probably the ODSTs, since they were the most "normal" of the bunch. As for fictional stuff and surprises, first, the post-war Sangheili were ridiculously inept, more so than I'd previously thought they'd be. I've never been particularly a fan of them, though, and it was refreshing to see an alternate view on their society other than the usual fan swooning. Was a little surprised to see Jiralhanae would still work for them, though it's understandable they would be even more fragmented than the Sangheili given their tribal ways. Also, Spartan-Four program? That's a big reveal. Seems like it could be of the things 343i told Traviss to introduce when bridging the gap to Halo 4. As for the nature of the program, it seems that by not having child abductions, they're taking a more family-friendly and accessible route than before. However, Halsey's journal did note that adult candidates were one of the reasons ORION failed, but I guess technology could've advanced far enough since then. Still, it seems like a huge investment to make another batch of Spartans with all the rebuilding going on. Despite the lack of exploration of the Onyx Dyson sphere, it was interesting to see how the tech in it appeared to be far more advanced than that in the Halo rings - obviously, building a structure of that size alone is a massive undertaking, but the composition was also nothing like in other Forerunner constructs; for instance, the base material could shift to allow ships to pass through, as could seemingly solid walls and structures inside the sphere. It could've just been hard light, but I was under the impression hard light couldn't mimic real matter that closely, not to mention it would be pretty risky to build an entire Dyson sphere out of something immaterial. It still left several unanswered questions about the structure. The sphere's entry into real space seemed to came out of nowhere - Halsey persuades some Engineers and then they just do it. It seems strange to me that a few Engineers would have the authority to do something as major as that, and especially that there was no monitor or custodian/overseer AI of any kind, even though every smaller installation so far has had one. The characters also wonder what will happen to the star Zeta Doradus when the sphere expands, but no explanation is offered after it happens. Still, perhaps the most pressing question is, what happened to the billions of Sentinels that used to be Onyx? Did they just disappear? If they abandoned their task of guarding the sphere, then at least an explanation would've been nice. I hope we'll hear more about the mysteries surrounding the Dyson sphere later, if not in Traviss' novels, then Bear's Forerunner series. Finally, ONI at Installation 03? When did that happen? To me, there were also a few nitpicks. These were more or less direct, but bothered me all the same, though most of it didn't really affect my reading experience that much. Also, though the book stayed true to canon surprisingly well, I did notice some direct canonical discrepancies. There were luckily very few of them though. • I didn't like how the Sangheili constantly quoted human proverbs and sayings; there was a point I started cringing every time one of them went "as the humans would say..." which was every so often. First, how would they know so many human sayings, and second, why would they use them as opposed to their own ones, especially when the ones who used them were the ones who still hated humans? • This one is admittedly a common problem in stories set in the future, but it happens too often IMO; There are a lot of historical references in the book and nearly all of them are based on stuff that happened before present day, usually WWII. Didn't anything remarkable happen or wasn't anything noteworthy said in the next 500 years? • It also seems odd how the Elites refer to Hood as "Shipmaster of Shipmasters" - apparently, they can't just say "Admiral", and anyways, wouldn't their equivalent be Fleet Master? • The story also creates an apparent discrepancy with the ending of Halo 3, namely Rtas' ignorance about the state of their homeworld, and the Arbiter's "Fear not. We have made it so" comment when in the novel, there's an ongoing civil war tearing their people apart. • Was also kind of disappointed that the destruction of one of the Sangheili fortress worlds and a sizable portion of their fleet by the Nova bomb in Ghosts of Onyx wasn't mentioned at all; it would've served as a good reason for some of the Elites to dislike humans, but in the novel, they just hate them out of prejudice (the fact they were revealed to be the inheritors of their gods doesn't seem to have had much of an effect on even the religious ones). • Some of the new technologies seemed to have been developed unrealistically quickly - this is only a couple of months after the games, and yet the UNSC already has slipspace drives enhanced by Forerunner tech that serve as a plot excuse for slipspace jumps dozens of times faster than before. • So the next-generation MJOLNIR suit (Mark VII) is introduced only about three months after the last one. That's a ridiculously short time to field a piece of equipment that expensive, "new supplier" or not. Also, it states that the armor has servos to move its joints, while it's been established that one of the MJOLNIR's major differences over previous exoskeletons is that it has no mechanical joints and instead uses a liquid nanocrystal layer to enhance movement. That is, unless they decided to devolve the tech for Mark Seven. • As a strange and unnecessary change in in-universe nomenclature, apparently Prowlers aren't called prowlers anymore; now they're just "corvettes" or "stealth corvettes". "Mjolnir" is not written in all caps anymore either. • It was said at one point that Halsey didn't have an AI to help her translate the Forerunner glyphs in the Dyson sphere. Where did Jerrod go? She had him on her when she entered the sphere and actually helped her in the translations just before that. • There's also a point when Parangosky says John and Cortana have been missing for five months. Since the events at the Ark happened on December 11th, and that part of Glasslands is at some point during March, wouldn't it be more like a little over three months? • I'm pretty sure it was claimed that the UNSC had only captured a single Huragok a couple of years earlier. What happened to all of those aboard the Gettysburg and the one the ODSTs captured from Mombasa? Both of those were brought to Earth in fall 2552.
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| Replies: |
| Glasslands thoughts/critiques *SP* | Archilen | 10/27/11 8:48 a.m. |
| In regards to Halsey... | davidfuchs | 10/27/11 9:56 a.m. |
| Re: In regards to Halsey... | GrimBrother One | 10/27/11 10:31 a.m. |
| Re: In regards to Halsey... | Archilen | 10/27/11 10:52 a.m. |
| Couple of things... | GrimBrother One | 10/27/11 10:27 a.m. |
| Re: Couple of things... | davidfuchs | 10/27/11 10:35 a.m. |
| Re: Couple of things... | Archilen | 10/27/11 11:09 a.m. |
| Re: Couple of things... | Postmortem | 10/27/11 1:10 p.m. |
| Re: Couple of things... | Archilen | 10/27/11 2:07 p.m. |
| Re: Couple of things... | elrolio | 10/27/11 2:29 p.m. |
| Re: Couple of things... | scarab | 10/27/11 4:49 p.m. |
| Re: Couple of things... | Archilen | 10/28/11 1:06 a.m. |
| Re: Glasslands thoughts/critiques *SP* | elrolio | 10/27/11 2:14 p.m. |
| Re: Glasslands thoughts/critiques *SP* | Postmortem | 10/27/11 2:47 p.m. |
| Re: Glasslands thoughts/critiques *SP* | Archilen | 10/28/11 3:25 a.m. |
| Re: Glasslands thoughts/critiques *SP* | Postmortem | 10/28/11 7:44 a.m. |
| I should have been sleeping... | AladelAngel | 10/28/11 4:53 a.m. |
| Re: I should have been sleeping... | Archilen | 10/28/11 7:36 a.m. |
| Re: I should have been sleeping... | AladelAngel | 10/28/11 1:08 p.m. |
| This. (+ [mean] comments) | Arithmomaniac | 10/28/11 9:11 a.m. |
| Re: This. (+ [mean] comments) | IESUproductions | 10/28/11 10:04 a.m. |
| Re: This. (+ [mean] comments) | Arithmomaniac | 10/28/11 10:34 a.m. |
| Re: This. (+ [mean] comments) | davidfuchs | 10/28/11 11:19 a.m. |
| Re: This. (+ [mean] comments) | AladelAngel | 10/28/11 1:13 p.m. |
| Re: This. (+ [mean] comments) | Postmortem | 10/28/11 4:44 p.m. |
| Re: This. (+ [mean] comments) | davidfuchs | 10/28/11 5:14 p.m. |
| Re: This. (+ [mean] comments) | Quirel | 10/30/11 2:49 p.m. |
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