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I should have been sleeping...
Posted By: AladelAngelDate: 10/28/11 4:53 a.m.

In Response To: Glasslands thoughts/critiques *SP* (Archilen)


...but I just finished myself and I'm having a little trouble sorting out how I feel about the book. I absolutely love the post war stuff. Spartan IVs, the Infinity, and Mark VII MJOLNIR. Yes, please. Include detailed schematics next time 343!

I enjoyed the hell out of the stuff on the shield world. The ONI team a little less to be honest. I found myself waiting for the action to return to Blue Team most of the time. That's not a critique of Traviss though. I'm just heavily invested in those characters. I've always been a fiction guy. Hell, I read The Fall of Reach before I even touched CE.

But, like you and others have mentioned, I had a real problem with the second half -- or more specifically the entirety of the 'Halsey = Stalin' theme. This is a problem I've had with every other Karen Traviss novel that I've touched and what I was most afraid of when I read that she was penning this trilogy.

She likes to take a moral position early on and beat you over the head with it. Absolutely no grey area. This guy is good and this guy is evil and even the evil guy recognizes that he is an terrible excuse for a human being and should be flushed out the airlock at the earliest opportunity.

I even agree that what Halsey did was ethically and morally wrong, but I don't need a conversation every chapter for the second half of the book reminding me of it.

Is there really any reason why three ODSTs need to be told that Halsey was the head of a program that abducted children? Not really. I can't help but feel that it was just an excuse to have more characters talking crap about Halsey. I was fully expecting them to tell the damn Elite by the end of the book, just so we can have some conversation with him and 'Phyllis' about how evil she is.

Then we have Halsey's co-conspirators: Mendez and Parangosky. Two people that participated in -- and in Parangosky's case signed off on -- almost every thing Halsey did. They even did it again with the SIII program. But, aside from a few throw away lines, they are spared the lashing she gets. It's pretty disappointing.

I dunno. Karen Traviss is a damn good storyteller sometimes. She just needs to step off the soapbox every once and a while.

Message Index



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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