{{
`${userDetail.user.displayName}${userDetail.user.cachedBungieGlobalDisplayNameCode ? `#${standardizeBungieGlobalCode(userDetail.user.cachedBungieGlobalDisplayNameCode)}` : ""}`}}
{{getUserClans()}}
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.
-
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]
