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Edited by Haruspis:
3/24/2013 7:17:49 PM
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You know what really pisses me off? The Forerunner Saga will forever be passed off as a video game tie-in series, Silentium in-particular will not receive the [b]world-class[/b] praise it deserves as standing with the works of some of the other greats of science fiction literature, it will never have its quality truly recognised because of the prejudice today’s society has against video games and the [insert derogatory word here] members of the Halo community who just want to see action and huge battles.
The Forerunner Saga has had those moments, especially in Cryptum and Silentium - for example, the battle of the Capitol being one of the largest battles in the Halo series, and then the battle of the Greater Ark where Faber redeems himself by going down with his own creations and helping the IsoDidact escape the Flood. But the Forerunner Saga is primarily about world and character building, illustrating 10 million years of history through the various perceptions of characters - humans, Forerunners and AIs. It's absolutely masterful, yes Primordium suffered from having too little going on in the first half of the novel, but anyone who doesn't recognise the Forerunner Saga for what it is (hard sci-fi at its very best) is a fool. Silentium is proper Lovecraftian cosmic horror filled with tragedy of epic proportions, especially for characters like the Ur-Didact who is tortured into [i]complete[/i] insanity by the Gravemind as we learn about this race of transsentient beings who predate the known universe itself. It captures a sense of scale that [i]none[/i] of the other novels from Nylund, Buckell, Traviss (etc) could ever even come close to matching.
English
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I remember saying this on another forum. It is a real shame that people wouldn't pick up the Forerunner trilogy simply because it has 'Halo' on the front, and so is associated with a video game. Saying that, I do remember reading some Cryptum reviews on Amazon around the time of release and they were full of praise because the book was just an amazing piece of science fiction. They didn't particularly care for the Halo series, but they found Greg Bear's novel to be sophisticated and compelling stuff. The trilogy definitely felt removed from what we've read or imagined before from the series; and it was awesome.
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I've read a few reviews that have praised the Forerunner Saga for its visionary sci-fi assets as well, it really pleases me to see that because (as we've said) they're [i]definitely[/i] worthy of that kind of recognition. I look forward to a day where the strength of a piece of fiction is not undermined by its connections to things like video games...
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Thats one hell of a necro bump there.
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I know, but I couldn't help it. I said pretty much the same thing and had to reply. Maybe I should have just liked the post... Or does that bump the topic as well?
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There were so many amazing moments. For example, I can't even describe the sense of surreality I felt during the part where the Librarian checks visits path kethona. And also when the old lady bites the Librarian..
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I loved the bit where she just completely loses her shit after the Ur-Didact composes the humans on Omega Halo and screams that all he does is kill her children. Such a powerfully written scene, Bear went all-out on making this a more emotionally charged narrative.
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Couldn't have said it better myself. I'm also glad I'm not the only one who got the Lovecraftian feel from Silentium.
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Bro, Traviss shouldn't even be there. She's a terrible writer that -blam!-s beloved canon of franchises and muddles everything.
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Edited by HMBravo: 3/24/2013 8:47:56 PMI feel I loved these books because each one always had revelatory moments that made me go "OH...DAMN!". Not to downplay the other books, I liked them each in their own respective rights, but there was only one other moment in other other of the "contemprary era" Halo novels that "wow'ed" me, and that was in Ghosts of Onyx. That whole scene with William ripping a Hunter in half and Kurt going down detonating a nuke was glorious. But there were so many of those kinds of moments in this series.
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And when I look at it, it just seems, so out of place in the Halo universe. Too big, too, far out from it's roots. Still great novels though.
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Cryptum and Primordium, yes, but Silentium does a fantastic job of bringing the story of the Forerunner Saga back to the story in Halo CE.
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Cryptum and Primordium sit comfortably and feel right at home in the Halo universe actually. It's Silentium that's the "ugly duckling" of the lot and doesn't seem to fit in. As Sandtrap said about the other books, though I won't agree with that bit applying to them, too big, too far out from its roots. Silentium is the sort of thing I would come to expect in something like Doctor Who or Warhammer 40K....series that actually have what can only be described as literal space magic, with space gods and demons....it doesn't match Halo's tone throughout the series. It foregoes the realism and so forth that Halo has maintained in favor of branching out into the supernatural and fantasy elements...which don't work in Halo, as it's never had them and has never been anything even hinted at in the fabric of its reality :/ >_>
