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| Re: Halo - The Flood *long* *spoilers" | |
| Posted By: Ciarán <halo@blackice.ie> | Date: 4/11/03 7:16 a.m. |
In Response To: Re: Halo - The Flood *long* *spoilers" (mnemesis) Having read the book and given it a little time to "settle", overall I think I am disappointed with it. I don't think it's unfair to have reasonable, if not high, expectations for the book. After all, we all have high expectations of anything that is related to Bungie, be it Halo 2, the action figures, Halo GURPS - if I'm allowed even mention that :-), or any book that portrays the Halo universe. I did appreciate the new perspectives, and the extra information the book gives on the Covenant, the other Marines, and some clarification on a few things related to 343GS. There could have been more of these, but that's fine, it leaves room for speculation, and for clarification later, either in Halo 2 or in future novels. What I missed was the emotional engagement with the characters. This may have been down to the fact that we know they are doomed, but this is something that could have been used by the author. There's a phrase for it that I can't remember, to do with shared knowledge between the audience and the author/narrator about things that the characters don't know. Perhaps the author didn't care enough about them to try and build the characters up to the extent that we would feel some sense of loss when they die. This was done to some extent with McKay and Jenkins, but in the end, did we really care? I don't think so, and I think this is the fault of the author. What else is missing is emotional engagement by the MC. He doesn't seem to particularly care what happens to anyone else, unlike what we see in FoR. There's little depth to the character that is portrayed in HtF. Perhaps this is because there is hardly anything in the book that tells us the MC's thoughts, it's mostly narrative about what he's doing, or how he feels physically. There's no real idea conveyed about how he feels emotionally about what's happening. I suppose in the end of the day it boils down to this - it's hard to identify with the MC, or indeed anyone in the book (with the possible exception of Yayap!). This contrasts with FoR, where the author built up emotional links between the reader and most, if not all, of the characters in the book. We don't really care that Silva, McKay and the others die, while we are all hoping that Dr. Halsey has somehow survived on Reach. Ciarán.
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