Posted by: chubbz
Posted by: switch 104 sv
Posted by: chubbz
Posted by: switch 104 sv
Traviss ignored previously established canonic information in writing this book. For example, Lucy punching Halsey. WTF? That should have crushed her skull! Instead Traviss turned the Spartan IIIs into very un-super super-soldiers, glorified angsty teens with guns. She essentially disregarded all previous info on the IIIs. ONI apparently urgently needs engineers, but what happened to Vergil and all the other engineers from Ascendant Justice?
Aside from this she put so much focus into the (irrational) "I hate Halsey for saving our asses" plot that everything of real interest took a back seat. Forerunner Shield World in a Dyson Sphere; Interesting but ultimately ignored. ONI found a Halo; ignored, Spartan IVs; ignored, Infinity; ignored. Now I know that there's more books to come and these may be expanded on, however, after waiting 5 years for the story's next chapter we should have gotten something a bit more substantial than a passing mention.
Some other general thoughts are that I don't like her colloquial writing style. For a military novel I would have expected more details, what guns were being used, what extra features does Mk VII have etc. It is just all too vague for my liking.
One thing she did get right, thankfully, was Lucy's character. I was happy with how that panned out.
It sounds as if you think this is a standalone book. I mean, I'm pretty sure that it was said this book is going to shed light on some things we'll be seeing in Halo 4. These little things that were briefly touched on in Glasslands could be major players in H4, or they could be explained in upcoming books. I don't see the point of bashing on the book for things that are normal in any multi-part series.
I acknowledged in my post that there would be more novels. My point is that although it was expository it still should have been more detailed.
But why? If we're going to see more of these things in future books/games, why do you want to know more? The point of the book was to set up future installments of this story, and it did that perfectly. Not revealing too much about a new concept is one thing, giving next to no information is another. Seriously. How do they have Mark VIIs? Where did they get the forerunner upgrades for the Infinity? How the hell did they find Installation 03? What are the insurrectionists planning? I don't expect them to detail each and everything however I expect more than a couple of sentences. Karen barely gave us enough info that we could start speculating about those things.