- Sandtrap
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I just finished Cryptum, and I can say I solidly enjoyed it. The first half was fairly slow paced, but near the end things picked up. You get a better view of the Forerunners, but at the same time all the things that made them mysterious in the first place have managed to stay intact.
As for Glasslands, overall I enjoyed it, but there are a few things in it that bothered me.
Also, Spoiler Warning for Glasslands below.
1. The Halsey/Mendez plot in the Sphere, was quite frankly, boring. I liked the portrayal, as so far in the series we'd only really seen the view of Halsey and Mendez from a Spartan point of view.
2. Lucy's "retaliation" to Halsey. That one will be obvious once you've read it.
3. Elite mentality. Granted, there likely would be issues with Arby once he got back to his homeworld, but this is ridiculous. In short, the Elites believe Humanity should be wiped out for being sneaky lying buggers, but casually cast aside The Great Schism.
Now, in our time with Arby throughout games or novels, you kind of get the feeling that he was a bit less, "zealous" than his other fellows. But in a statement from Halo 3, this made me think.
"The Grunts newfound courage is but fear. When we are finished, all who serve the prophets will be punished."
I thought, if Arby was thinking along those lines, than what would his more religious fellows think about the Great Schism? They follow their codes of honour and belief more strictly than Arbiter, so it's likely they'd come down on the remaining Covenant harder.
Nope. They just go, "Oh, suprise genocide of our people, it's k bro. You do your thing, we've got to get those sneaky humans over there!"
Another thing too, what happened to, Humans are Reclaimers? The whole reason Truth, Regret and Mercy hid this knowledge was because it would destroy the Covenant. This knowledge seems to have just been left out of the picture. Arbiter was present for many interactions with Spark, so don't you think he would have passed this on to his people?
The only thing I was ever really interested in was the end of the novel. That was when things really started to progress. I was always interested in what happened after the H/C war, and for a novel that was supposed to be centered around this, it didn't do that very much. It only picked up near the end. And the worst part was, the ending was a bloody cliffhanger.
But anywho, I'd go for Glasslands first. It only seemed right to me to read it first because Cryptum is an entirely different series in itself.