"Glasslands" (Ghosts of Oynx Sequel) Announced

[Cadet]

Cover art and a release date were released on Waypoint today for the follow novel to Ghost of Oynx,entitled Glasslands. It is being written by Karen Tarviss and has a release date of October 25th. Waypoint claims we will get to know the fate of the characters from Oynx.

http://halo.xbox.com/en-us/news/hea...-of-first-halo-novel-from-karen-traviss/86029

I have mixed feelings on Karen Traviss. Human Weakness in Evolutions was pretty good, but, I'm tentative about her. Her earliest Star Wars book, Republic Commando: Hard Contact, is still one of my favorite Star Wars novels, and pieces of military science fiction. She seemed to do a good job of getting into the heads of the Commandos realistically, not easy when they are genetically engineered, fast aging, soldiers. However after that, I just felt like she went too Mando heavy, introduced one too many "Mary Sue"-esque characters, completely got the characterization of Delta Squad from the game wrong, and her stuff just started to fly in the face of what was established in-Universe, from getting terminology wrong to just having characters go against what we would see in Episode III.

I did pick up her Gears novel, and saw some of the same issues, so I'm not super excited for her work. I'd much rather have seen Eric Nylund get the chance to finish his story arch with his characters, but hopefully Traviss can get pull this one out.

 

[Templar 320]

Looks good. I'm looking forward to reading it. To be quite honest, I'd skip over both Eric Nylund and Karen Traviss and instead get Vince Flynn to write it.

 

[Sangheili811]

Of course I'm gonna read it, but I'm really disappointed it's not Nylund. I didn't really like Human Weakness, and Karen Travis pretty much strikes me as the Grant Blackwood/David Michaels of scifi. Not good.

 

[ForgedReclaimer]

Now im going to be two books behind everyone else. Darn bills lol.

I agree, we need Eric Nylund writing these stories, so far i only truly enjoyed his books out of the series. I mean i like the others, but nothing beats him.

 

[Shade88]

I am optimistic about this novel, I like how she wrote Human Weakness, looking forward to the fall.

 

[Tyvern]

I've loved every novel so far that has been written. GoO was one of those perticular novels that puts you right into the struggle of the UNSC and all her soldiers.

 

[SchizophrenicMC]

I'm not so jazzed about Traviss writing at length in the Halo Universe. Especially not for a sequel to Nylund's novel.

 

[Varsity]

i agree we need nylund to write it. :/ just gotta hope it will be good.

 

[spartan 087]

I think Karen Traviss will do a good job. I read the gears of war books and they are really good. But not only she's a good author she is really nice and cool to talk to in person.

 

[OptimusWang]

...her stuff just started to fly in the face of what was established in-Universe, from getting terminology wrong to just having characters go against what we would see in Episode III.

Have you read the Halo books & comics? Except for the Forerunner book by Greg Bear, they all fly in the face of what's going on in-universe. Spartans retiring to have babies? S-II's and III's having no idea each other exist? Humans and covenant living together like some kind of tijuana-esque asteroid? I love the books as much as anybody, but not even George Lucas could claim that there's a master plan to that madness

 

[Boba Fett]

but not even George Lucas could claim that there's a master plan to that madness

May I say sir, that that is the best thing I have EVER read on a forum? Bar none? LMFAO!!!!

But seriously, with the Karen Traviss thing: yes, she was mando-biased. Of course, the viewpoints of the book ARE from a mandalorian perspective. And might I mention, Kal softens up in order 66 and admits he DOES have a somewhat irrational hate of jedi, seeing that Etain/Zey weren't so bad as he'd hacked them up to be. Also, Mandalorians were the top warriors of the galaxy, few if ANY could beat them straight-up. Jango killed jedi remember, that tells you something. Quite honestly, aside from the terminology errors you mention, her books seem to be right on the money (aside from the 3million men thing). And there WAS a reason for that. Personally, I think she's a fantastic writer if you can get over a few problems she has. Overall, I'd rather HER write a book as opposed to... oh, Troy Denning from Star Wars.

 

[Cadet]

Have you read the Halo books & comics? Except for the Forerunner book by Greg Bear, they all fly in the face of what's going on in-universe. Spartans retiring to have babies? S-II's and III's having no idea each other exist? Humans and covenant living together like some kind of tijuana-esque asteroid? I love the books as much as anybody, but not even George Lucas could claim that there's a master plan to that madness

Well, the rubble wasn’t all the Convent, it was Kig-Yar, which had been established to be more Pirates operating under letters of Marquee than true devote followers of the Covenant, plus, at the end, we find out it was all a part of a plan by the Prophets to get Covenant weapons with tracking systems installed into human hands with the hopes of them using them to find the locations of other human colonies. So, yeah, there's your master plan, right there. It was, in fact, a real master plan to quickly track down the human worlds by the Prophets.

It isn’t inconceivable that the SPARTAN IIs did not know of the existence of the IIIs. We know that the IIIs did know the IIs existed, because the SPARTAN II program being made public. The IIIs were designed almost as fire and forget weapons, meant to be used on covert Ops with a high fatality rate. It really isn’t until Halo: Reach came out that the relationship between the two classes of SPARTANS is muddled, and we get major continuity errors and clashes, up until then the two groups could exist perfectly well in the same universe without the II class knowing the IIIs were even around. Not too mention IIs and IIIs were created and maintained by separate divisions of ONI, the IIIs being from the Beat-Five division that even other ONI members did not know existed.

As for Maria-062, the choice to have her as having be retired and starting a family was a story choice directly from Bungie, before the 343 Industries days, and since it was a Bungie story idea, not a 343 idea, and the story came out even before Halo 2 came out, I think Bungie knew what they were doing. This was in the midst of their hey-day, when they were super protective of their IP and its story. There are several possible explanations for her retirement. Perhaps she had been wounded severely in a previous engagement enough so that she was unable to use MOLJNIR armor for extended periods of time, but was still able to use it for testing purposes. Also, given ONI’s penchant for backdoor and second hand programs and tests, perhaps she was injured and ONI allowed her to retire, wanting to see if the genetic augmentations given to the SPARTAN II candidates could be passed onto to future offspring, allowing for another, future group of super soldiers that wouldn’t need the costly augmentations, because, they were born with them.

The key thing with Maria-062 was that she RETIRED, with the consent and permission of the UNSC and ONI. Which makes sense for a SPARTAN. They had been raised and trained since age 6 to be loyal to and serve the UNSC. She didn’t quit. She didn’t go AWOL. She didn’t join the Insurrection. She legally retired.

The Republic Commandos and some of the other clones in Karen Traviss’s novels had been trained literally since birth to be loyal to the republic. Attack of the Clones very explicitly states they had been genetically modified to be more docile and receptive to orders, and Episode III clearly shows what appears to be the entire Clone Army following through with Order 66 without a bat of the eyelashes. Whereas in Karen Traviss’s world, Clones left and right were going AWOL, wanting to ditch the Republic, the only thing they had known there entire life, and go off to join Mandalore, a place they had only heard snippets of. I know her Mary Sue super Null ARC apparently did not have the genetic conditioning to be more docile and subservient to the Republic, and were loyal only to Kal, but she had rank and file Clone Troopers like Core ditching the Republic to run off to Mandalore.

 

[SchizophrenicMC]

^ And it's that loss of continuity and Mary Sue characterization I'm afraid of, especially since the involved characters are so idealized to begin with. Super-genius Halsey and a bunch of Super-soldiers. It's hard to write them with flaws, and yet Nylund manages this. Traviss writes flawed characters (Null team - more aggressive to a fault) to a state of Mary Sue.

And there's the issue of going with what's already established. Traviss has a hard time doing this. The characters in the snippets of Gears novels I've read were not the same as in the games. As has been mentioned, she has terminology issues, and massive character discrepancies over set character types. (Clones are genetically stoic, for Christ's sake)

Beyond all this, it's Nylund's novel. Shouldn't Nylund be the one who finishes what he started? (Not to mention he's probably the best Halo writer, with the most experience)

 

[OptimusWang]

So, yeah, there's your master plan, right there. It was, in fact, a real master plan to quickly track down the human worlds by the Prophets.

:facepalm: I meant for the train wreck that is the overall continuity, not that specific book.

up until then the two groups could exist perfectly well in the same universe without the II class knowing the IIIs were even around

In the books III's never worked with II's, only had the stealth armor, and were extremely young except for the two trainers. In Reach they're late 20's, have mjolnir, and are embedded with II's before the Covenant find Reach. The division that existed in the books doesn't exist at all, they're essentially just more Spartans.

As for Maria-062, the choice to have her as having be retired and starting a family was a story choice directly from Bungie, before the 343 Industries days, and since it was a Bungie story idea, not a 343 idea, and the story came out even before Halo 2 came out, I think Bungie knew what they were doing.
*snip*
The key thing with Maria-062 was that she RETIRED, with the consent and permission of the UNSC and ONI. Which makes sense for a SPARTAN. They had been raised and trained since age 6 to be loyal to and serve the UNSC. She didn't quit. She didn't go AWOL. She didn't join the Insurrection. She legally retired.

Just because Bungie green-lit the project doesn't mean it makes sense against everything else we've ever been told about the Spartan's character, especially when you think back to what Nyuland wrote about the deformed ones only wanting to continue to serve. One of them is going to quit being a soldier to raise kids while mankind gets wiped out? Seriously?

Perhaps she... *insert theories here*

You should read the last page of the comic again, where she talks about retiring to start a family and basically not giving a crap that the covenant are out there glassing worlds.

Karen Traviss

You guys must think I'm sticking up for this chick or something when I've never read any of her stuff. My whole point in that first post was that the Halo universe is already a mess continuity-wise. While she might potentially write a crappy book, it's not like she can break something that's already broken (Halo Legends, I'm looking at you).

 

[Cadet]

I do really understand where you’re coming from, Optimus, things in the state of Halo canon are not pretty anymore, but they used to be a heck of a lot better.

Continuity didn’t really seem to be a major issue, except for the wiggle room in the number of SPARTAN IIs present on Reach, until 343 Industries took over and just started cranking out content. Trust me; I have no love for the vast majority of their creative decisions, especially their heavy handed ret-con approach to the franchise they’ve taken since gaining creative control of the Halo franchise. Don’t get me started on Halo: Legends. First time I tried to watch it, I got less than half way through the shorts and just turned it off and walked away. That one is such a mess I just pretend it didn’t happen most of the time.

The original core novels, Fall of Reach, First Strike, and Ghosts of Oynx are good. In the midst of the continuity wasteland 343 has created, they still work at least together, the characters, their personalities, their characterizations, all flow and fit, and work and they manage to do a good job of maintaining continuity between the three of them, because they were all written by Eric S. Nylund. And now 343 is passing off his characters and his story, and I just don’t want to see something else lost to the ret-con/mismanagement of the story. That’s the real shame to me. . When Bungie had creative control of the Halo World, they did an OK job of keeping continuity. When 343 took over, well, we are wherewe are now.

As for the appearance of the IIIs in Halo: Reach, I wasn’t happy either, man. Bungie tried to do some damage control vignettes in the notes on their Reach section of their websites. They had little snippets of communiqués between Kurt and Mendez talking about being asked by to pull select kids out of the training pools that were deemed to valuable or two exceptional to be “wasted” on the ops like the rest of the kids. It’s a bit thin, but, Bungie at least tried a little bit to make it fit better.

As for Noble Team’s age, it’s actually mostly correct. Carter, for example, was born in 2520. Per Ghosts of Oynx, Alpha Company of the SPARTAN IIIs was conscripted in 2531. In Ghosts of Oynx most of the kids were described as being around 6 years old, Carter, however, would have been 11. So, older than most of the kids, and only about ten years younger than the average SPARTAN II. It’s a stretch that they might have recruited a kid that old for the program, even an orphan, but his age and appearance do match with the established time line. I don’t agree with the choice to make him that old. How keeping him around six at conscription and loosing 4 years off his age would have changed much

I really get the feeling that Bungie made the call to make it a small group of IIIs pulled out of training, and outfitted with good gear was that they wanted to balance giving the player the familiar abilities from the previous games (Super soldier, shields, armor, et cetra) without getting into the mess of making you a different SPARTAN II, which really would have thrown continuity for a loop. In this case, making them IIIs in Reach was the lesser of the two evils.

 

[OptimusWang]

Yeah, I really wish they had left the Spartan stuff to Nyland. I mentioned Greg Bear's Forerunner stuff because not only is his book great, but the way they made the break between his stuff and everyone else's seems like the best way to have multiple authors working in the same domain. I haven't read the ODST comics, I'm assuming they stay away from the main timeline as well like the game did.

 

[Tyvern]

Ghosts of Oynx....II and III worked together......Reach, really what do I say? NOBLE team?

Fall of Reach....The ORIGINAL TIMELINE fits with Halo Reach's timeline, minus a few parts.

Helljumper fits with the overall story.

Beta five was Army , Section three was Navy....explains ranks and other stuff, however there are S-III's with Navy ranks.

Red and Blue teams, and Master chief are the Most Iconic of the Spartans......need to have background profiles consistant.

___________________________________________________________________________

So; Ash-G-099, Olivia, Mark, Fred-104, Kelly-087, Linda-058, CMCPO. Mendez, Dr. C. E. Halsey, the A.I. Jerrod are in the M.D.S.; WTF will they do now? Well we do know they made several burial stones for William, LTCMDR. Kurt "Ambrose"-051, Holly, and Dante and started to get their gear to start walking somewhere inside the MDS.

As long as the novel isn't a cheese fest in every page I'll be honky-dory with what ever is thrown at my eyes.

There has to be some excitement in the novel like combat and suspense during said combat and maybe another death. I mean it wouldn't be a novel if they were just walking a loney road to nowhere inside a thing that's 1AU big....huge ass distance to do not'in in.