Glasslands Was Not Bad

Community Halo Universe
1

Now clearly, this is my opinion. The point of this thread is to have a discussion. I understand there are those who disagree with my perspective, and I would really enjoy having a conservation with those people (and hopefully a constructive one).

I’ll address the two predominant points brought up.

  1. Traviss judged Dr. Halsey with incredible bias.

This was actually my initial impression as well. However, what I have come to understand is that Traviss isn’t telling the reader what certain characters are or are not, she is simply shifting perspective from what we are used to from the previous novels. It is easy for those not familiar with the context of Halsey’s work (Vaz for example) to quickly judge her actions as completely despicable. However this is not Traviss’ view. Also, this is the first book in Traviss’ trilogy; it is likely that there will be elaboration.

  1. ONI would never make the decision to give weapons to the Sangheili who are against Thel.

I genuinely disagree here. ONI has never been about choosing to do the righteous act; ONI’s actions are completely dependent on how to make sure the humans are the winners all the time. Admiral Parangosky (I’ll call her Maggie) recognized that the Arbiter was not the majority in his views towards humans, and that other powerful factions would undoubtedly try to assassinate him and start creating tremendous trouble for the humans. Maggie, therefore, commissioned the sale of weapons to 'Telcam because it would breed instability within the chaotic political system of Sanghelios. Also, it is important to recognize that 'Telcam was not completely upfront about overthrowing the Arbiter; it was Jul Mdama who confronted 'Telcam about this, and Telcam agreed but did not begin immediate action. That is why Jul’s plan had not succeeded by the end of the novel, because 'Telcam delayed.

One last point I’ll make is that the novel is not perfect. One detail which I felt was excluded and really needed to be included was the following counterargument to the assertions against Halsey:

While Dr. Halsey did kidnap children from their families, the Spartan III project used similar children, although not kidnapped, as disposable soldiers to buy time. Halsey went to extraordinary means to save her Spartans who she did feel she had wronged.

Like I said in the beginning, feel free to disagree, and we can have a fruitful conversation.

2

I agree, I actually really liked Glasslands.

3

Traviss always does a good job of getting inside the minds of the characters and making it less about the action and war and bringing it down to a personal level.

I liked Glasslands. It was interesting, although I think they did the annoying thing of writing the trilogy as a single story rather than three connected with an overall story arc. It’s perfectly understandable, but if you want answers its a nightmare.

4

I did not liked it at all. I regret buying this book.

My two cents.

5

I absolutely adored the book. Like you said, it did give us another perspective on Catherine Halsey, the one that the outside population would have on her. However, the book expected the reader to use their brain and also use what previous books as well as Halsey’s Journal (if you’ve read it) to put both perspectives together to have an actual full image of who Halsey really is.

I also loved how even after war, it wasn’t all love and peace, like how life truely is. Even when the war is done, battles of every size still rage on, whether they are political or through killing.

Seeing the fate of the Spartan-IIs and IIIs was also great, and the hints at Halo 4 really made me want the game to come out sooner.

6

Good book. . . unfortunate writing.

7

awesome book. and i say IMO well written different yes but bad by no means.