I had not known much about Karen Traviss prior to reading this book. In fact, the first I heard of her was from a Twitter update, whilst on vacation, from San Diego Comic-Con 2009 when it was first announced that she would write a post war trilogy. So I went into this with no previous bias' for or against the author which, now that I have read up a quite a bit on her after concluding this novel, seems to be quite polarized in various fan bases, Star Wars being the first example that pops to mind. The reasons I think will become apparent by the end of this article.
The novel is broken into 3 plot threads, which all eventually intersect near the end of the novel. The main one could be said to follow the gang trapped in the Dyson sphere at the core of what was once Onyx. The second follows a team of ONI handpicked personnel called Kilo-5 whose purpose is to destabilize the Elite's delicate power balance. The final one follows an Elite by the name of Jul `Mdama who believes that Humans are vermin and must be exterminated, and who's goal in this novel is to kill the Arbiter to make that possible.
The first two in my opinion were okay, but nothing incredible. In the Onyx parts, much of the mystery of the Forerunners and the Dyson sphere is completely sidelined by the Halsey-Mendez arguments that take place. (Mendez apparently has had this deep seated resentment towards Halsey and her actions in the Spartan-II Program that is just coming out now) The Spartans - both the IIs and the IIIs - are relegated to barely being supporting characters. They are sort of there-sort of not, especially the Spartan-IIIs. The only one who gets any sort of development is Lucy, the traumatized survivor of Operation: Torpedo. I found her development more annoying than anything else to be honest. I could not help but feel as if she was used as another means to attack Halsey. The situation in mind was that Halsey was annoying some Engineers to get them to contact the UNSC. The Engineers were refusing and given the stakes of the Human-Covenant war, and how the Dyson sphere could really help those stakes, Halsey was getting annoyed. Lucy however seems to forget the fact that the Human race is dangling by a thread out there and turns on Halsey, punching her to the floor in order to get her to stop antagonizing the Engineers. Lucy honestly felt like a hindrance at this point and sympathizing with her here was quite difficult. I get that this was perhaps supposed to draw to the readers attention that Humanity should take greater care in the way they treat other races now, and that the author is trying to get the readers to sympathize with them, but I honestly must admit that I found it difficult to give a damn about what any alien being thought when every single opportunity with the Elites was taken to give some striking, misanthropic diatribe on Humanity. Judging from what we have in this book, it does not look like it will ever matter how Humanity changes its attitude towards others anyway, they are still vermin to be wiped out, and probably always will be now after some rather new and unexpected reasons for continued prejudice, which I get at below. The arguments between Halsey and Mendez themselves are quite petty, no more ethically in depth than some of the forum debates that I have had on Bungie.net. Halsey appeared quite weak, not using her usual indomitable intellect and got kicked all up and down the Dyson sphere, figuratively speaking. When this concludes, we arguably know no more about that Dyson sphere than what we did when Nylund left us at the end of Ghosts of Onyx.
The Kilo-5 thread is slightly more interesting, but not by much. It consists of 6 members: A female Spartan-II washout named Osman, a civilian anthropologist named Phillips, a Spartan-II called Naomi, and 3 ODSTs called Vaz, Mal and Devereaux, the latter of which is also female. The sixth is a smart-AI called Black Box, or BB for short. If you have read Cryptum then you will understand the following comparison that Kilo-5 basically undertakes an adventure similar to Bornstellar's where they go to many different locations: Sanghelios, Venezia, Earth, a glassed colony called New Llenapi. We see little snippets of what the galaxy looks like in the wake of the battle of the Ark. I say little snippets because it is nowhere near as in depth as such a complex time period requires to do it justice. Post Halo 3 is a multi-faceted time period. You will have the UNSC and how it is rebuilding, you will have their feelings of the war, how they are reacting to the Forerunner legacy left to them and what the Insurrectionists are doing. Then you have the various Covenant races and their internal issues, and how they take to the idea that all they have done is a lie. We only really see the Elite's domestic issues, and little bits of how the UNSC is coping as a whole. We do not really get to see, even as a broad sort of overview, what the current state of the UNSC is, how they are handling their new found legacy and what the current state of the other Covenant races are. We do get to see the Elite's a bit in depth, but I do not think that the novel did them justice either in its own way and I will get there soon. We also see a little bit of Insurrectionist plot on the colony of Venezia, but it is at most only a chapter or so near the very end of the book, and their motivations and little inter-species society that they have set up there are not explored. A significant part of Kilo-5's viewpoint is torn away to Halsey hating instead.
The fact that a full third of the novel is already essentially devoted to Halsey and her actions with the Onyx sections is only a part of what went wrong here. This is the section of the book where the infamous Dr Mengele analogy is made by one of the ODSTs. Now, regardless of whether you think Halsey's actions were not just immoral in principle but plain monstrous as implied by that analogy, I cannot help but wonder if it is much too forced at this point. Think about it: The Spartan-II Program took place almost 40 years ago with respect to these characters; it affected 75 kids with whom these ODSTs had, as far as can be told, absolutely no relation to whatsoever. The act is then smothered in the blood of the Human-Covenant war. This is an act so far displaced from the ODSTs in terms of time, location and relation, as well as being so outclassed in terms of evil by the horrid genocide of the Covenant, but this ODST is getting apoplectic at Halsey at times to the point of wishing to be a part of a firing squad that executes her? It was a bit too much for my suspension of disbelief. I cannot see anyone realistically feeling so angry at Halsey after the atrocities of the Human-Covenant war. Decry it for moral principles sake yes, but feeling uncontrollable anger now after everything? Hmm.
The final thread is that which follows the Elite, Jul `Mdama. He is a Ship Master with no ship. This crops up a lot. Their society is essentially failing. Without the Prophets and Engineers, they cannot create, replace or repair advanced technology. The Prophets even supplied them with their food, which is in danger of failing too. Everything from farming to physics has to be reconsidered from scratch as all they have specialized in is warfare for thousands of years. We see that their society seems to be largely tending towards skepticism of the faith in the Forerunners, (The Great Journey is dead and buried, now the Forerunners are losing their favour) and a dissident faction, the one that Kilo-5 is attempting to arm to start a civil war within the Sangheili, is attempting to bring the Elite's back to the faith by eliminating the Arbiter, who is seen by them to be the figurehead of this new zeitgeist. Jul is not really religious, but he opposes the Arbiters ideas to try to co-operate with Humanity. Jul wishes to exterminate them, and he is not alone in this regard either. So he joins up with the dissident faction as they share a common goal; killing the Arbiter.
This is all we ever see. It myopically focuses on these Elites, with no other viewpoints being shown. No changes in opinion, no zeitgeist with respect to Humanity and no second guessing their actions in the war. No guilt or regret or anything. No characters with any sort of emotional depth or moral conscience on them. It is all "Humans are vermin and killing them is cool". It also appears that most of the Elites are only staying their blades from continuing the slaughter of Humanity because they no longer have the resources and ships to do so. Gone seems to be the idea placed by Halo 2, Halo 3, Conversations from the Universe booklet and later the Cole Protocol that gave us the idea that they doubted their war with Humanity, the faith they served and the Prophets teachings, and the idea that they had an admiration for Humanity's plight born from traditions that were said to be heavily ingrained into their cultural mindset; the respect for tenacity, fortitude and cunning. Now Humans are devious liars, cockroaches to be stepped on. In fact the devious liars part is over done to the point where it is not just some zealous quip, but a full blown stereotype that Humanity seems to have earned itself throughout the galaxy: Humans are the ultimate liars of the Milky Way Galaxy. This, much like Mendez's anti-Halsey sentiments, appears to have come from nowhere, and is the powerful and new force of prejudice (Out of the blue yet made to look as if it has always existed in the story) that I referred to above. The Prophet of Truth excommunicated and then tried to exterminate the Elites because he viewed them as too smart for their own good, and the idea of them questioning the war became a threat to the point where he was forced to purge them all. Yet the implications of this are glossed over.
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