I mean seriously, you could cut most of the cast from First Strike and Ghosts and have very little appreciable change in the plot of the stories. First Strike and Ghosts of Onyx are bloated with loads of characters, most of whom are there only to raise the body count (sorry Locklear). Nylund's characters I also feel leave a bit to be desired.

Her prose honestly does really outshine Nylund's prose even though Nylund's world building is for the most part better (because the UNSC spending 30 years losing to jackals and grunts is moronic). I haven't finished the Forerunner Saga yet so I suspect that Bear's prose might be comparable, but Traviss has got some damn fine prose that most other writers struggle to match. Say what you will about the actual plot of Kilo 5 (and anyone who's seen me around this sub knows that I'm more than willing to trash Kilo 5 should the situation require it), but Karen Traviss is actually a damn good writer. The Fall of Reach (and lesser extent Ghosts of Onyx) pretty much doesn't have an overarching plot, with the titular battle happening in the last like 50 pages (and this is why TFOR would be a horrible novel to adapt). But as a writer, yeah, the books have some issues. He writes pretty solid action scenes and he's pretty solid at world building (although far from perfect, to the point that honestly, I'd wish the Fall of Reach was retconned even more than it already has). He's many people's first entry into the expanded universe and his books themselves are pretty exciting. TLDR Nylund best, Gay second best, everyone else is kinda just.there for me.įrankly, I think a lot of the favor he's got is partly based on nostalgia.

As it is now she’s basically her Halo 5+ character right off the bat, and it’s.unfortunate, in my opinion. Using Kelly as our example, if she wore he same armour as everyone else for most of he War, but added in slight alterations a time went on, and began to subtly alter he armour and weapons, first with some slight etching that could be passed off as battle damage, further into some small line art of a rabbit, then a further colouring in of that rabbit, and in her off-time mention she’s tinkering with a shotgun and have John just kind of brush it off, then, post Halo 5, have her bring out that shotgun (Oathsworn) as a way to show off the culmination of her 30 years of finding herself (and 20 years of book material). (Looking at you, Denning, Traviss).īut I do often wonder, in an ideal world, What Nylund’s interpretation of current lore would be, and I wonder if a more drawn out transition for Blue Team to what we see them as now would be like.įor example, instead of Blue Team and the Spartans as a whole getting unique armours and weapons right off the bat like in Collateral Damage, Forward Unto Dawn, etc, we saw a gradual identity form in each of them. Part of this is that, as a franchise, characters change hands quite often, and so authors tend to insert their own ideas for how a character should be written, or even change that character for the sake of their own plot. The blunt, mission focused pseudo robots who show emotion in small, quiet body language paints a much better picture of who they are over other authors trying to force more personality into them where it doesn’t make sense and without any real earned growth. His depiction of Spartans is a much more compelling one to me. He’s definitely my favourite writer out of the ones we’ve had with Kelly Gay close behind.

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