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Re: I should have been sleeping...
Posted By: ArchilenDate: 10/28/11 7:36 a.m.

In Response To: I should have been sleeping... (AladelAngel)


: ...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.

Agreed 100%. In a panel, Traviss said she wanted to explore moral dilemmas or gray areas in the Halo story, but like you said, there's none of that here. Halsey is evil, period, and there are no opposing views from anyone aside her own justifications before she realizes just how evil she is. All of this is also completely detached from the in-universe reality; what she did was always completely sanctioned by the ONI, not to mention it's apparently of no consequence that the human race wouldn't probably exist without Halsey's project, or that Halsey actually led the survivors to the Dyson sphere and thus allowed ONI access to it.

And then there's ONI's sudden openness. I can understand the ODSTs, or any normal people for that matter, having a strong reaction to Halsey's actions, but was it really reasonable to tell them? Or Naomi? It just seemed like a thinly-veiled excuse for Traviss to channel her own views on Halsey through the characters, with no regard to whether it makes sense in-universe. Like you said, it was also bothersome that basically no one complained about the other people who were involved with the Spartan project, like Mendez or Parangosky. The fact Mendez actually started hating on Halsey also came completely out of the blue.

The more I think about it, the more I wish Nylund would've written the GoO follow-up instead. I'm not sure why he was dropped from the project (he was originally supposed to write the sequel, according to a post by Frankie a while back). His writing has its problems (introducing things like Elites as being "new" for dramatic effect, having too much focus on action scenes to name a couple) but I liked how he handled the sci-fi elements and how the overall atmosphere was far less cynical and decidedly more neutral. Though there was less focus on character development in Nylund's works, at no point did I feel like the characters were mouthpieces for his personal views. Most importantly, his style felt much more grounded in the universe, while Traviss' approach is clearly that of an outsider. She barges in and turns things around, instead of starting out slowly, and I'm not sure if that's the best approach to take.

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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