: Every character in the Kilo-5 seems convinced that Halsey somehow
: orchestrated the Spartan II program single handedly, that she was the evil
: brains behind it who tricked the UNSC into kidnapping children and
: brainwashing them into super soldiers. This narrative was asserted way
: back in Glasslands, to which all of us rightly responded that it's
: nonsense to ignore the fact that her actions were sanctioned, and in fact
: encouraged by the UNSC and she did not act alone. It's frustrating to see
: that no effort was really made to address this fact, with only Naomi
: acknowledging it briefly at the end.

Er, Steffan brings it up, repeatedly. And Black Box's donor expressly says it's not Halsey's sole responsibility. You might want to try rereading. As for the "narrative", you're right. It's a narrative Parangosky expressly said she was going to cook up in Glasslands. Why are people acting surprised two books later still?

: I'm really not a fan of how they've hijacked Halsey's character to be the
: boogie man of the UNSC, even going so far as to retcon her diary and
: recode her words of concern and sympathy for the SIIs as capricious and
: delusional. (I doubt i'm alone in this, so it's troubling to see 343i
: insist on heading in this direction).

Okay, now you're just using words incorrectly. They didn't "retcon" anything. Do you honestly think that everything you write, if given to another person and read, would be taken the exact way you meant and intended? They don't like Halsey, so they see her comments in the journal as trying to absolve a guilty conscience. They're bringing their own baggage, yes, but that's not rewriting events in the universe.

: Aside from this though, my problem with Mortal Dicta is that it's plot just
: seemed lacklustre. At the end of the day, Kilo-5's mission was to capture
: a single covenant ship, not even a big ship. The whole time I was reading
: it all I could think was that if this were a Nylund book, a task as simple
: as capturing a single covenant ship would've been handled in less than a
: chapter, with the team moving on to pursue a considerably more ambitious
: objective (e.g. destroying the Unyielding Hierophant, the battle of Onyx
: etc). It might seem shallow of me but I just expect something grander from
: a Halo story.

It's a smaller story. To take your logic to its stupid extreme, "I don't watch films like The King's Speech, because the main character's flaw took the whole movie to get through. I want things to explode and it's a bad story if things don't."

: The book didn't really do anything to push the universe forward, I assume
: this is because they didn't want to step on the toes of Halo 5, but with
: no real mention of the Chief, the Arbiter, Blue Team, Infinity, Requiem
: (aside from passing references), it's hard to feel like the book really
: meant anything.

Why does 'pushing the series forward' require returning to the same stories repeatedly? The Halo universe is vast—if your definition of "pushing things forward" is it has to involve Chief or progress story elements from the games, I guess the entire Forerunner trilogy, Halo Wars, and ODST have been massive wastes for you. Sorry, I guess.