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Edited by HMBravo:
3/23/2013 6:27:10 PM
19
Halo Silentium
So, this book has been around for a few days and I was not disappointed by the contents. Several big question got answered for me and I would like to share what I picked up on.
[spoiler]It would appear that most, if not all, Forerunners did not escape the firing of the Halo arrays. We never get a direct confirmation but the characters believed that the Greater Ark was overwhelmed and destroyed.
Precursors did indeed create humans, Forerunners, and Flood. Or at least the last remaining one did. The creature that we previously thought to be the Primordial was simply a puppet. Precursor artifacts activated all over the galaxy at the endgame to assist the Flood.
The Forerunners, millions of years prior, built massive extragalactic fleets to eradicate the precursors. We don't get any info on how the engagements played out other than the Precursors seemed to be unable to defend themselves adequately and were dumbfounded that their creations were fighting them.
343 Guilty Spark IS Chakas. Not a fragment of, but is.
Master Chief is all but confirmed to have a dormant Iso-Didact geas. This has been around since Halo CE. In CE, 343 asks chief: "Last time, you asked me, if it were my choice, would I do it? Having had considerable time to ponder your query, my answer has not changed." Now, at the end of Silentium, page 314 Iso-Didact asks; "Tell me, Chakas, if this as your choice, after all we have seen and survived... would you fire the rings?" In Halo CE, Chakas clearly recognizes the Chief as Iso-Didact. I'm willing to bet a whole plate of internet cookies that the voice Chief was hearing in his head in Halo 4 was his reawakened geas.
And now I will go on to what intrigued me the most out of the entire book. On page 329 we have this passage:
[i]There is one last patch of communication, somewhere below, within a great dense cloud-perhaps a star nursery. A new and precocious civilization acquiring its voice only now, having eluded both the Foerunner and the Flood... sending its first plaintive, hopeful signals.
Crying out for attention.[/i] Heed us!
Now what on God's green Earth just happened on the second-to-last page of this trilogy? Clearly this species is important, if it was worth mentioning during such a pivotal moment in the entire series. I have another plate of internet cookies that I'm willing to bet that the mystery ship in the Halo CEA terminal comes from this civilization. One of my theories includes that since we know nothing about them and that they were undetectable by Forerunner and, more importantly, Flood, maybe they had a cure for the Flood or a way to combat them? What were they trying to desperately say before the Halo array was fired? I feel that it will tie together with the Librarian discovering that the Domain is the Organon. I also feel that the Librarian was somehow able to preserve the knowledge that the Domain retained and that is what the Absolute Record will be.
[/spoiler]
If you read through all of that, thank you. I am excited to hear feedback from fellow Haloverse fans and their thoughts and interpretations of the new information this book provides.
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Edited by ROBERTO jh: 3/24/2013 3:29:29 AMApologies for double posting, but I wonder: have you listened to the [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpESU2ZPMsA]epilogue[/url]? It details post-Halo events, such as the reseeding. Can be unlocked on Waypoint X-Box with the codes in Silentium. There are actually quite a number of Forerunners still alive, including Bornstellar, but I'll let you listen to learn more.
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17 RepliesOoh! More Halol fan fiction not-so-cleverly disguised as a novel...
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12 RepliesEdited by Haruspis: 3/24/2013 7:17:49 PMYou 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.
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Edited by Tartan 118: 4/4/2013 12:42:16 PMLate to the party, but you can blame Tor and/or Amazon for releasing it so late on Kindle. Anyway, my reaction: it was an epic story, I'll give it that. Such enormous tragedy and widespread mystery and destruction. Character development was all pretty good, but, as with Halo 4's Terminals, I had trouble reconciling what I knew of Cryptum, Primordium [i]and[/i] the H3 terminals with Forerunner history and trying to work out who was doing what and working with whom at which time. None of the revelations were especially powerful, IMO: [spoiler]I figured Guilty Spark's reference to Chakas is just metaphorical rather than literal, but maybe you guys are right. Either way, that revelation in Primordium was cooler. I thought the ascendant species at the end might have been the Sangheili, but I guess not. I didn't really understand when the Flooded humans were saying how old the Precursors were, I again thought it was some poetic nonsense reaching back into the oldest aeons of time. But a time before stars... again, I didn't know what to think. I just figured they must have been kicking about at the dawn of the Universe. It seems like they were. But that was not their birth. For me, the novel was more about actually witnessing this tragedy, and feeling the echoes of Halo's past in all that we have done as John-117: Guilty Spark asking him if he would do what BS-Didact asked of him, BS-Didact activating the Array, the Librarian starting the construction of the Ark portal artefact on Earth. I'm not sure what to make of people saying BS-Didact is John's geas. I can't remember how the Librarian says she put ancient human memories in younger humans, but what of this? Am I, as per usual, not seeing an obvious plot point? I also find it quite delicious that the Ur-Didact is trapped for millenia within his Cryptum with nothing but his own madness for company. I know I shouldn't. I know that his maddening at the hands (tentacles?) of a Gravemind is a terrible torture for the once noble spirit, but he was just such a bastard in H4, and using the Composer again (or rather, for the first time) on people on Installation 07, he richly deserves such punishment. But... it was the pain that made him bad.[/spoiler] Yeah. Good book. Not quite as good as Cryptum, I think, but largely better than Primordium. Still, Primordium's ending had a stonker of a twist, and I loved that. Edit:[spoiler]Oh, and what was the deal with the Organon being the heart of the Domain? Firstly, I always assumed the Domain was just like a galaxy-wide Forerunner wifi network that they invented. Was there any indication that they didn't? Were the indications in this novel alone? As you can see, there was a lot I didn't pick up on. And what's the point in telling us all this about it if it was destroyed when the Halo array activated? Also also, I thought it was pretty cool that the Forerunners rose and conquered the Precursors with only the denial of the Mantle as provocation. Those arrogant bastards. Also also also, is it ever explained how the Flood was imprisoned on the Halo Array? Or is that all implied with the fact that they're the Halo Array? What of Installation 07's outbreak? Taken care of by Bornstellar-Didact?[/spoiler]
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This book (along with the rest of the Forerunner saga) were amazing. Greg Bear FTW!
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the content of this book is very impressive in terms of the plot of halo
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4 RepliesThis book is not just the best Halo book, but the best book I own. I practically started reading it again right after I was done.
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1 ReplyI don't have this book, and likely won't get it for a while (back logged by at least a half dozen other books). So, can someone tell me any neat feats the Forerunners accomplished? Preferably with page numbers and quotes. From what others have said, this definitely sounds like a good book. I didn't enjoy the first two that much, mainly because I am not a big fan of Bear's writing style. Primordium's extremely slow pace din't help my opinion of it much. Compared to the first two, would you say this book is the strongest of the trilogy?
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1 ReplyEdited by SergeantFlood: 3/24/2013 2:26:14 AMI hate 343's books. The forerunner trilogy books have a decent story I guess, but they're so boring. It's just some guys walking around and chatting about how the Didact hates humans. And I love Halo, I just hate 343.
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9 RepliesSilentium was absolutely incredible.
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3 RepliesEdited by ROBERTO jh: 3/24/2013 3:24:04 AMThe Precursors [i]could[/i] defend themselves, but instead chose to study the chaos of war rather than fight back. Their minds do not think as ours. To them, death is an inconvenience, proven in how they resurrected themselves with such vigor. And the new civilization that was mentioned was put there, so far at least, only to emphasize the slaughter of the rings, that an infant civilization just now looking to the stars and wondering what lies out there...is simply crushed by the all powerful might of the Halos.
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My copy loads on Kindle on Thursday. :/
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I believe I will be getting this book now and reading it on the train in the mornings.
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2 RepliesHave yet to read this book, hoping to buy it soon. How is the pacing? As slowly as Primordium, or faster? Besides, did me remember this particular thread on the old forums: http://halo.bungie.net/forums/posts.aspx?postID=61497429
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Edited by Quantum: 3/24/2013 3:16:17 AMFurther information: The Flood evolved again, the Gravemind getting upgrades. By upgrades, I mean multiple Graveminds, now called Keyminds, that can out process a Contender Class AI. The Domain was really the Precursor organon, a living memory of 100 billion years of Precursor knowledge. Yes, the Precursors are older than the universe. They don't seem to have physical form, I think the book pointed out that they would sometime appear out of nowhere, similar to a creature materializing itself out of sand on a beach. The Flood was only one of their physical forms. Near the end, they used those un-breaking Precursor filaments are rammed all Forerunner things to oblivion. The Domain/Judiciary trampled Forerunner society. In 2/3rds of the galaxy, slip-space travel was blocked, all Forerunner devices were rendered neutral. The presence of a large mass of Flood could bend space time. Finally, the Didact. As we saw in the Terminals, the Librarian locked him inside his Cryptum. What she did not predict, was his madness. When the Halo rings fired, the Domain in the Milky Way galaxy was destroyed. The Didact was locked in solitary confinement for 100,000 years as a result, with nothing to talk to, or even relate to the outside world.
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4 RepliesIs it anywhere near as boring as the first two? I still haven't finished Primordium. God, this trilogy is dull.
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2 Replies[spoiler]About the whole new civilization thing, I think it was meant to represent a new fledgling species that the forerunners and flood did not yet know about, but was tragically snuffed out before their time by Halo. That civilization is dead, it stopped transmitting after the Halo wave hit them, and as they were previously undiscovered, there was no way they could be reseeded, so they can't be the owners of the ship that landed on Alpha Halo. I think you're over-thinking them, and they were there simply to underscore the tragedy of the Halo's firing[/spoiler]
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2 RepliesEdited by Gunny 186: 3/23/2013 6:52:30 PMI haven't yet read Silentium, i need to get it. All of what you state makes sense and it all fits together. I also think that the ship in the CEA terminal may be this other civilization. nothing is known about it or them, even Spark can't identify the ship or the language from the distress beacon. only that the ships atmosphere is nearly identical to 'ours'. I had thought for a long time that Spark had to have met Chief previously somehow. too much of what Spark says indicates he has has prior conversations with the Chief, but how? now we know. This also fits in with what the Composer was used for and how the Monitors were made and came to be. I'm curious if 343i will commision another round of books to further explore all the new questions that have been raised in the Forerunner Trilogy....
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I didn't realise it was out, seeing as I'm just about finished my current book I shall have a look for this tomorrow
