There's so much British in this trilogy that I'm sure Traviss tried her damnedest to form a Household Cavalry regiment of Spartans. STAHP!

: *Traviss actually flat out saying Halsey = Hitler. Halsey was not Hitler.
: Halsey did terrible things. She did not however lead a genocidal campaign
: against half her own species. Thank you.

Yeah. Yes. Yep. Mmmmmmmmmhhhhhhhhhhhhhmmmmmmm

: *That for some reason, I kept imaging Sometimes Sinks as an engineer
: version of GV

Sometimes Sinks was very interesting. Their attitude at the beginning made me wonder if they're Vergil.

: I don't recall that part in the book saying that Halsey said that to ALL the
: children, just that she said that SPECIFICALLY to Naomi. That's very
: important. Remember, she would NOT have said the same thing to Serin,
: because it did not apply to her.

My apologies, that was an assumption on my part.

: This is also covered a couple of times. Naomi even flat out says at one point
: that had they been abducted BECAUSE of the Covenant she would have
: volunteered.

I think if given the choice and all the facts, many in her situation would have dedicated themselves to safeguarding humanity. I can't imagine myself not willing to do the same.

: The question I kept asking myself almost 3 quarters into this book: Why are
: the characters (Mal, Vaz, Parangosky, Osman) and the author so focused on
: pointing all the blame to Halsey? ONE PERSON, CANNOT, do what she did,
: unchecked.

I wonder what they'd say to BB if they ever learn who he was in a past life...

: This area was FINALLY explored, by Sentzke of all people. He only gets to
: hear about Halsey a couple of times- just enough to piece together that
: she is the Brains of this freak show but he still remains and (thank god)
: asks "What about the people who let her do this?" Griz, you may
: think Halsey is a c***, but I feel the same way about Parangosky. THE
: BUCK, SHOULD HAVE STOPPED WITH HER. She was CINCONI.

I couldn't agree with you more.

: (Maggie making Osman her successor obviously an attempt to make up for past
: sins in the whole, "you are the mistake I made so hopefully you won't
: make it yourself")

I hope Osman can reform Naval Intelligence to its pre-war glory (like 2480's pre-war) as a fleet service, or at least as a military intelligence command alongside civilian agencies. The government gave them too much power and resources, so much so that legislative oversight doesn't even know, High Command sure as fuck doesn't know, and most of ONI barely knows.

Nah, that's too optimistic! :P

: I still don't know how I feel regarding the wrap up with BB. I saw something
: like that coming, about why he was so much the opposite of Halsey. I
: didn't expect it to be THAT close, but I'll roll with it.

I think it was a great and fitting route Traviss went with. I don't remember who I cried about, reluctant to turn the page, wondering if their brain would give life to BB the next day. Glad it wasn't them though.

: And Serin's reveal? That surprised me. It was another one of those catch 22
: moments where Halsey did good and bad. Another + for Traviss succeeding in
: making a situation not black and white, leaving it up to the reader to
: decide what if it was good or bad, right or wrong.

Definitely. Teared up here a bit too. I thought it was very sweet how this scene played out and I'm very glad it was revealed to us.

: [ ** The thing that bugs me with this logic train is that they are all wrong
: in my opinion. The Spartans weren't the reason that Humanity won. Humanity
: didn't even "win"! It was a TKO! The Covenant tore itself apart,
: essentially letting the UNSC win by default. The REAL threat in all this
: was the Flood. YES, the Master Chief obviously played a major part in
: stopping that threat(point for Halsey), but had the Flood not been a
: thing, and the Covenant not imploded, I have a very, very hard time
: believing that Humanity would have survived. The two outcomes would have
: been the Covenant successfully activating the Halo's and killing EVERYONE
: or the Covenant wiping out Humanity.]

Without the use of the Halo Array, if the Covenant had to defeat Earth and her colonies inch by inch, from one world to the next, I'm sure we'd get very brazen with our disruption. Red Flags would be thrown everywhere and the galaxy would bathe in Novas.