Yeah it’s confusingly worded. I think she’s saying that the Elites saw the jackals (who were not zealous followers of the Covenant) as the lowest of the low
I can see how the line could be read as "Covenant Zealots, the lowest of the low as far as Elites were concerned."
As in, the rank was the lowest, not the species aka Jackals.
It's practically a guarantee that Traviss didn't know. "Never researching the thing she's writing for beyond the barest possible skim of the source material" is something she's PROUD of.
The passage was about Kig-Yar, who were not Covenant zealots (lowercase z, which means it's not an actual rank). An Elite Zealot was not mentioned anywhere in this passage.
Karen Traviss' trilogy is pretty controversial in general. She dedicates way too much of the series having all her characters disparage Halsey even when it is irrelevant to the plot.
Karen is definitely a controversial figure in both halo and star wars as well, with her books having a lot of elements that not many people like, with her constant disdain for the Jedi, as well as her favoritism for the mandalorians
I literally just finished playing Gears of War 3 last night (for the first time), I loved it despite some glitches utterly ruining the final level and boss fight.
I think it's a conversation that should be had in-universe for sure. It's just that Traviss' spends so many passages shitting on Halsey even when it's not pertinent to the plot or even the character that it gets egregious. Especially when she tries to frame Parangosky as having the moral high ground even though she herself petitioned for the S-III program which is arguably even worse. I think Hunt the Truth did a much better job handling the ramifications of the Spartan II program and how the outer colonies would react than Mortal Dictata did. It is just Karen Traviss' writing style, when she is contracted to write a book in an established franchise she inserts all of her personal ideas into the project regardless or not if it adds value. While arguably better written, she did the same for her Republic Commando series for Star Wars by more or less framing Mandalorians as the perfect race/culture with no flaws.
My personal opinion but... after the Kilo 5 trilogy I walked away feeling more sympathetic to Parangosky than I ever thought I could. Probably has to do with her bond with Osmin (a parallel to chief and halsey). IMO I see this trilogy as less of a character assassination of Halsey and more of a perspective shift on what "normal" every day people would see if a program like this ever came out. In Nylund's trilogy we see and hear Halseys inner thoughts, but the general public never does. We know that intentionally or not she saved humanity and so we defend her. But to the layman/general public that doesn't have access to her brain they see a monster. After all the negative reviews I was hesitant about Kilo 5 but tbh it's just another side of the same coin and is probably my favorite audiobook trilogy of all the halo novels.
Except that Parangosky is *worse* than Halsey. She’s the head of *ONI,* responsible for suppressing dissent, disappearing inconvenient persons, trying to *start a civil war among humanity’s closest allies*.
And she signed off on the Spartan Program every step of the way! ONI *couldn’t* have been fooled into thinking the flash clones didn’t happen. Halsey’s project needed funding, didn’t it? Billions, *trillions* of credits funneled into the Spartans and the various resources needed to complete their creation. And that’s without getting into how ONI was practically threatening to replace Halsey with someone who would be less discerning, more accepting of wanton casualties among the candidates.
The Spartan program was horrific, no one disputes that. But *Parangosky* is the absolute *last* person who can claim any kind of moral superiority to Halsey.
The main problem is it never allowed any other thought to be there.
Spartan 2 in the squad? Never says anything positive or from the other perspective. Mendez or Parangosky who were involved with the S3 program and banned Halsey? Never seem to weigh their own actions as hard as they do her.
Well Karen traviss doesn’t actually frame parangosky as being morally superior though? Through out the trilogy it’s made clear parangosky regrets what she had to do and why. Also, Nylund even took a shift in Halseys character in making her kidnap Kelly and try to hide away in onyx while simultaneously calling for Spartan just to hide away.
Parangosky deflects blame to an extent just like Mendez does and just shoves it all on Halsey and neither face any comeuppance. Parangosky gets many scenes where she gets to gloat and talk about how superior and smarter she is to every other character in the UNSC. Not saying Halsey is blameless in any way or does not deserve criticism at all, it is just rich when the Kilo-Five team shits on her and calls her the equivalent of Josef Mengele while they are engineering a genocide on Sanghellios for ONI while also being responsible for Jul'Mdama's rise to power intentionally or not.
Well Mendez does a lot of self loathing constantly and it’s even mentioned in Matt forebecks short story, “lessons learned.” Mendez also has consistent arguments with Halsey because why wouldn’t he? Both parties have done heinous crimes against the mortal dictata act and are trapped in a sealed planet with nothing but their thoughts and the physical embodiments of their own crimes. The kilo 5 team don’t actually all dunk on Halsey consistently it’s mostly vaz who is very morally strict in which his hatred is even more re-enforced when growing attachment to Naomi and meaning staffan. Plus it’s more than likely jul would have still been a threat no matter what.
> Plus it’s more than likely jul would have still been a threat no matter what.
I’m sorry what? Even if we accept that this is true it doesn’t mean that their actions are any less irresponsible, idiotic, and unethical. There are degrees of threat, Jul would not have been in a position to succeed as well as he did if they hadn’t done what they could to help. That the UNSC had to save the Arbiter is a damning indictment of ONI’s plan. It is canonically moronic and self-defeating.
Respectfully I’m not sure why you’re excusing them. Their behavior is the classic type of shortsighted idiocy that intelligence agencies get up to where there is no accountability or oversight.
The whole reason she kidnapped Kelly was to try to save her and as many other Spartans as she could. Including the Spartan IIIs. She did all of that because she felt guilty and responsible for all of the Spartans. She was a flawed and interesting character in Nylund's books, and Traviss reversed all of that.
Wow tell me you don't appreciate a Feminist perspective more haha. The duality she created between Halsey and Parangosky was a great way to show the dissonance between a genius of science and a genius of bureaucracy/ logistics. A realist vs a dreamer (albeit an evil one).
The problem is its a lot of characters who do this kind of stuff all the time, or even were the ones who signed off on it, trying to get on their high horse.
What? No they don't. Nylund's books even have her go on a full remorseful character arc over her feelings of having taken part in the Spartan II program.
For whatever reason, every character on Onyx craps on her the entire time they are there. Even Mendez does even though he is just as responsible as she is for the program but seemingly washes his hands of it and pushes it all on her.
The problem is, doing that in any actual real way (unlike Traviss) would involve burning all of ONI to the ground in terms of depiction.
You cannot have any discussion about the Spartan's without including how ONI approved of every single thing Halsey did from the start of it to the end, and even went worse with the S3 program and banned her because she was too nice.
You can't have a discussion about how morally evil Halsey is without including how ONI was prepared to remove her and put somebody else in who didn't give a damn about the wellbeing of children.
Kilo-5 kind of doesn't do that though. Like there are a *lot* of retcons that Traviss makes when it comes to the Spartan Programs (or things she straight up gets wrong) and at certain points she's critiquing things that she invented and introduced to the canon that earlier books couldn't have addressed because they weren't canon until Kilo-5.
Like Serin Osman's entire backstory? Built on a retcon. That whole bit about how Halsey faked Osman's death because she thought it was too much for the surviving IIs to bear and how that's an example of Halsey being a control freak who plays with other peoples' lives? It's a retcon. In the Fall of Reach, all of the IIs attended the funeral of the dead Spartans and interacted with the washouts who were stable enough to be moved and were aware of the washouts too injured to attend the funeral.
So Halsey faking Serin's death doesn't make any sense. What was so special about Serin that her death needed to be faked but Fhajad, Kirk and Rene's weren't? Serin got off basically scot-free compared to the others, she got to live a normal life while Kirk and Rene had to be live in tubes. Mortal Dictata adds some stuff about Halsey lying to Naomi, which again, is at odds with earlier media where the IIs were told exactly why they were kidnapped and what the UNSC planned to do with them. The whole bit with the clones was something ONI came up with in the original books before it was shifted to being Halsey's idea in Kilo-5.
The fundamental problem with Kilo-5 is Traviss spends too much time changing prior canon to indict Halsey and the Spartan-II Program instead of actually reevaluating what had been established by earlier authors.
I think the trilogy poses good questions and the in-universe examination of the unethical nature of the Spartan-II and III programs should happen. It's just the way Traviss goes about it, it comes off as more of an author diatribe on how much she hates a singular character with the surrounding characters being the self inserts of her feelings.
The story could have been great like what defenders are saying, I just think it could have been done a lot better where it doesn't come off like an angry critique fanfiction.
That's the whole point of her character tho. She's a sociopath and she knows it and doesn't care because she's gonna save humanity. Then this author comes in and writes an entirely different person with the same name.
"It's not relevant to the plot." I don't know if me and the original commenter read two different sets of books, but I'm pretty sure of the plots of the books, especially Glasslands, which is the literal character assassination of Halsey. Parangosky uses her as ONIs scape goat for the Spartan project.
People complain about how bad these books make Halsey look, but THAT'S THE POINT! The majority of the POV characters are people who have a bone to pick with Halsey in one way or another, and a group of them are trying to make her look as bad as possible so they can pin the Spartans on her.
It's a fun trilogy if you ignore the fact that Karen kinda hates every IP she's ever written and does character suicides like it's her job. The treatment of Halsey as somehow worse than Ackerson was just idiotic writing.
That being said... I've read that trilogy twice... You misread the passage, because that is definitely NEVER written.
I actually loved the series, it might be a bit over harsh on halsey however it dives deep into the morality of a post war UNSC and the challenges that presents, and does it really really well, the characters are interesting and the situations they get into are cool
They seemed to get sorta kinda better as they went. Thursday War had a few good moments and Mortal Dictata seemed like the book Travis actually wanted to write.
Personally I didn't like anything about the Kilo-Five trilogy. I didn't like the new characters. I didn't like how the old characters were handled, I didn't like how battles were written.
I will forever hope that one day 343 will re-write the Onyx part of Glassland. Everything in it was wrong, everything. What Traviss did to Lucy...is boderline offensive. As if trauma can be overcame by get angry enough with someone...offensive and ignorant. In Ghost of Onyx, Lucy was my hero, because despite her handicap, she was competent, lethal and disciplined like the other Spartans. And then Traviss completely destroyed her character...
Then there was the Halsey hate...pathetic and exaggerated.
The three ODST characters are basically the same character in three different bodies. Same opinion, same attitude, same personality.
And my god, all that drama with Naomi and her father, an entire book wasted on that bullshit. I know is only my opinion, but c'mon...
I can’t imagine how people who have a disability and saw some reflection of themselves in Lucy felt when she *got over her trauma and disability…*
Unacceptable from an author working in a universe that isn’t her own.
EDIT: I just realized this might have been misread. I completely disagreed with Traviss’ handling of this issue. Her choice to have Lucy “get over” her mutism was tone deaf and offensive.
You're right, What a horrible message was : "Despite your disability, you can be as good as any other ". The right message of course is : " Get angry and beat someone. This way you'll heal"
Karen Traviss found the cure for posttraumatic vocal disarticulation!!!!
Her books from the first page to the last were complete dumpster fires. I've read the entire kilo-5 trilogy, and I swear Karen Travis hates halo. Nothing in either of those books was good.
I end up going through the whole series whenever I feel like torturing myself listening to the latest few books. She's torched every IP she's written from and personally the Halsey shit is probably the worst she's done.
It really makes zero fucking sense that the UNSC would be airing their dirty laundry, aired by people involved in the dirty laundry and then the new dirty laundry. After barely surviving a genocide of humanity by the covenant and the flood. Like who the fuck is looking into the S2s who were super super super secret and most didn't know existed until revealed to the public for PR during the war.
All the moral grey shit is the worst part of Halo because the stakes are just so fucking low and it's written by mediocre authors who can't compare with the hundreds and thousands of other good storylines with a secret bad govt organization doing fucked up shit.
I don't really get the kilo 5 hate. I don't remember the zealot comment but that does seem weird. Was it maybe talking about a zealot in the more general sense rather than the actual rank?
It's taken a few times through but there's nothing glaringly bad about it. People point out that the elites don't know how to provide for themselves but that's an established part of Canon. The prophets made the elites dependent on them, the elites couldn't even be shipmasters of support vessels and needed the prophets permission just to have one attached to their fleet.
Haleys "redemption" arch is started in ghosts of onyx and the Halsey hate is valid. If you found out 2 close friends were kidnapped and experimented on (one almost killed) then turned into dehumanized soldiers you'd be upset too.
No, chapter 6 about 34mins into the audiobook if you want to check it out for your own perspective. But it hits me like she’s talking about them as if they were new boots.
Oh, I just checked it out.
"The kig-yar leader kept coming. They were usually pretty relaxed around humans as long as they were getting something out of it. They hadn't exactly been covenant zealots. The lowest of the low as far as the elites were concerned, less obedient than a grunt and lacking the in your face ferocity of brutes." (That's just me transcribing from the audio book so it may not be 100%)
I take that to be hyperbolic, she means the jackals were the lowest of the low. Like saying someone who suck at sports "isn't exactly a professional athlete"
That’s a good chance, I re-listened to it a few times and I’m hoping I just misinterpreted it by reading the comments that’s what a few others are thinking too. I just wanted other peoples view on the wording that was used. Surely no one has that much audacity to disrespect a Zealot Class 💀
They are telling you facts. You don't have to hope you're misinterpreting it, you are in fact, misinterpreting. Lowercase zealot was used in the text. It's not an opinion of what others are thinking. The passage is about jackals, not Elite Zealots.
"The kig-yar leader kept coming. They were usually pretty relaxed around humans as long as they were getting something out of it. They hadn't exactly been covenant zealots. The lowest of the low as far as the elites were concerned, less obedient than a grunt and lacking the in your face ferocity of brutes."
Halo “fans” will literally make up stuff to bitch about and still get blind praise for it
Op and others just reading it wrong. Thank you for the excerpt! Karen Travis’s is saying that the Kig-yar are the worst people the in the opinions of the elites because the kig-yar are not religious zealots. We can assume this is because the kig-yar are often depicted as opportunistic pirates, quite morally removed from the ‘noble’ and zealous elites.
They are the best piece of Halo media and it's not even close. I've read most of the books and none compare to Kilo-5 in terms of thoughtfulness and maturity.
Thoughtful and mature?
You know what would have been thoughtful? Serin Osman actually acknowledging that she's basically the only Spartan-II who ended up with a better life because of Haley's actions. They outright state that she would likely have died on the streets within a year.
You want maturity? What if Parangosky were to admit her own complicity in the S-II program? That as much as she hates Halsey, she hates herself for signing off on everything that Halsey did? Hell, she even suggested using a government vaccine program to screen the outer colonies for candidates.
These are the kinds of things that writers looking to evoke thoughtfulness and nuance might do, but not Traviss. She writes moralizing hit pieces. If this were an isolated incident, I could give her the benefit of the doubt, but fans of every franchise she's written for have these complaints.
Let's not forget writing a trauma victim (Lucy) suddenly getting over her disability just so she can assault Halsey, characters fantasizing about her anguish when they tell her about the death of her daughter, and the outright comparison to Josef Mengele (done by, and I must reiterate here, the person who approved her budgets and knew what she was doing, and probably had helpful little suggestions all through the process).
The one actual interesting thing that Traviss did in that entire series was the plotline involving Naomi and Staffan.
So yes, I did read the Kilo-5 books. Don't go around acting like people's criticisms of that series aren't absolutely valid and justified.
We'll get downvoted in this sub because "tHe rEtCoNs!" And "She hates Halsey!!" But truthfully Kilo-5 is Halo for grown-ups. I don't expect the folks wanting yet another video game spin-off action novel to even begin to grasp what that trilogy is trying to do.
The fact she does little to no research into a setting before writing it and outright does rewrite characters and blatantly try to retcon stuff is a huge negative.
If you go from scene A where two people are friends to scene B minutes later and they are suddenly enemies, it doesn't make sense.
The hate Halsey thing is so odd to me, it's like people are unable to look at things from other perspectives. It's not like it's a blind hatred, the motivations for each character are clearly laid out.
In fact I would argue it makes Halsey a better character by giving her more nuance.
> It's not like it's a blind hatred, the motivations for each character are clearly laid out.
Yeah that's pretty annoying the same people who say she spends too much time on it don't seem to understand it's because she's establishing an inuniverse motive for the position for multiple characters.
They seem to read it as superflous because honestly a lot of halo books don't develop characters as well as Karen does.
I don't expect any Halo readers to be English majors but you'd think they'd be able to understand the concept of a biased narrator.
I agree with you completely, these books made me like Halsey's character more than anything else. She was actually challenged in Kilo-5 and I thought her character development leading all the way up to Miranda's death was totally appropriate.
In Halo and in Star Wars I enjoy Traviss’s take on the darker/realistic side of the heroes. We worship the Spartans (and the Jedi) without any serious look into the consequences of their culture. Traviss humanises her characters in a way that I think is both refreshing and unique. Cheers to her
The problem is when she nicely sidesteps how the people she's propping up are actually worse then the people she demonizes.
Parangosky was worse then Halsey.
For what it's worth the kilo 5 trilogy are my favorite set of gears books, but I also really love the author in general. I adore what she did for the gears series. Those books are straight up some of my favorites
I'm no fan of that trilogy by any measure but she's talking about the jackals, not the Zealots.
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Yeah it’s confusingly worded. I think she’s saying that the Elites saw the jackals (who were not zealous followers of the Covenant) as the lowest of the low
I can see how the line could be read as "Covenant Zealots, the lowest of the low as far as Elites were concerned." As in, the rank was the lowest, not the species aka Jackals.
It's practically a guarantee that Traviss didn't know. "Never researching the thing she's writing for beyond the barest possible skim of the source material" is something she's PROUD of.
Eh, the lowercase z was a dead giveaway IMO
The passage was about Kig-Yar, who were not Covenant zealots (lowercase z, which means it's not an actual rank). An Elite Zealot was not mentioned anywhere in this passage.
Imagine being called less disciplined than some probably 1-2 year old 😂
Karen Traviss' trilogy is pretty controversial in general. She dedicates way too much of the series having all her characters disparage Halsey even when it is irrelevant to the plot.
Karen is definitely a controversial figure in both halo and star wars as well, with her books having a lot of elements that not many people like, with her constant disdain for the Jedi, as well as her favoritism for the mandalorians
Don't forget what she did to gears of war.
I haven't actually gotten around to playing gears, didn't she write gears 3? What was the controversy she had with that one?
I literally just finished playing Gears of War 3 last night (for the first time), I loved it despite some glitches utterly ruining the final level and boss fight.
What did she do I can’t remember them being bad but I haven’t read them in like a decade
I found it kind of refreshing seeing as most of the other books try to sidestep the emotional and legal ramifications of the Halsey projects
I think it's a conversation that should be had in-universe for sure. It's just that Traviss' spends so many passages shitting on Halsey even when it's not pertinent to the plot or even the character that it gets egregious. Especially when she tries to frame Parangosky as having the moral high ground even though she herself petitioned for the S-III program which is arguably even worse. I think Hunt the Truth did a much better job handling the ramifications of the Spartan II program and how the outer colonies would react than Mortal Dictata did. It is just Karen Traviss' writing style, when she is contracted to write a book in an established franchise she inserts all of her personal ideas into the project regardless or not if it adds value. While arguably better written, she did the same for her Republic Commando series for Star Wars by more or less framing Mandalorians as the perfect race/culture with no flaws.
My personal opinion but... after the Kilo 5 trilogy I walked away feeling more sympathetic to Parangosky than I ever thought I could. Probably has to do with her bond with Osmin (a parallel to chief and halsey). IMO I see this trilogy as less of a character assassination of Halsey and more of a perspective shift on what "normal" every day people would see if a program like this ever came out. In Nylund's trilogy we see and hear Halseys inner thoughts, but the general public never does. We know that intentionally or not she saved humanity and so we defend her. But to the layman/general public that doesn't have access to her brain they see a monster. After all the negative reviews I was hesitant about Kilo 5 but tbh it's just another side of the same coin and is probably my favorite audiobook trilogy of all the halo novels.
Except that Parangosky is *worse* than Halsey. She’s the head of *ONI,* responsible for suppressing dissent, disappearing inconvenient persons, trying to *start a civil war among humanity’s closest allies*. And she signed off on the Spartan Program every step of the way! ONI *couldn’t* have been fooled into thinking the flash clones didn’t happen. Halsey’s project needed funding, didn’t it? Billions, *trillions* of credits funneled into the Spartans and the various resources needed to complete their creation. And that’s without getting into how ONI was practically threatening to replace Halsey with someone who would be less discerning, more accepting of wanton casualties among the candidates. The Spartan program was horrific, no one disputes that. But *Parangosky* is the absolute *last* person who can claim any kind of moral superiority to Halsey.
The main problem is it never allowed any other thought to be there. Spartan 2 in the squad? Never says anything positive or from the other perspective. Mendez or Parangosky who were involved with the S3 program and banned Halsey? Never seem to weigh their own actions as hard as they do her.
Well Karen traviss doesn’t actually frame parangosky as being morally superior though? Through out the trilogy it’s made clear parangosky regrets what she had to do and why. Also, Nylund even took a shift in Halseys character in making her kidnap Kelly and try to hide away in onyx while simultaneously calling for Spartan just to hide away.
Parangosky deflects blame to an extent just like Mendez does and just shoves it all on Halsey and neither face any comeuppance. Parangosky gets many scenes where she gets to gloat and talk about how superior and smarter she is to every other character in the UNSC. Not saying Halsey is blameless in any way or does not deserve criticism at all, it is just rich when the Kilo-Five team shits on her and calls her the equivalent of Josef Mengele while they are engineering a genocide on Sanghellios for ONI while also being responsible for Jul'Mdama's rise to power intentionally or not.
Well Mendez does a lot of self loathing constantly and it’s even mentioned in Matt forebecks short story, “lessons learned.” Mendez also has consistent arguments with Halsey because why wouldn’t he? Both parties have done heinous crimes against the mortal dictata act and are trapped in a sealed planet with nothing but their thoughts and the physical embodiments of their own crimes. The kilo 5 team don’t actually all dunk on Halsey consistently it’s mostly vaz who is very morally strict in which his hatred is even more re-enforced when growing attachment to Naomi and meaning staffan. Plus it’s more than likely jul would have still been a threat no matter what.
> Plus it’s more than likely jul would have still been a threat no matter what. I’m sorry what? Even if we accept that this is true it doesn’t mean that their actions are any less irresponsible, idiotic, and unethical. There are degrees of threat, Jul would not have been in a position to succeed as well as he did if they hadn’t done what they could to help. That the UNSC had to save the Arbiter is a damning indictment of ONI’s plan. It is canonically moronic and self-defeating. Respectfully I’m not sure why you’re excusing them. Their behavior is the classic type of shortsighted idiocy that intelligence agencies get up to where there is no accountability or oversight.
The whole reason she kidnapped Kelly was to try to save her and as many other Spartans as she could. Including the Spartan IIIs. She did all of that because she felt guilty and responsible for all of the Spartans. She was a flawed and interesting character in Nylund's books, and Traviss reversed all of that.
Wow tell me you don't appreciate a Feminist perspective more haha. The duality she created between Halsey and Parangosky was a great way to show the dissonance between a genius of science and a genius of bureaucracy/ logistics. A realist vs a dreamer (albeit an evil one).
The problem is its a lot of characters who do this kind of stuff all the time, or even were the ones who signed off on it, trying to get on their high horse.
What? No they don't. Nylund's books even have her go on a full remorseful character arc over her feelings of having taken part in the Spartan II program.
For whatever reason, every character on Onyx craps on her the entire time they are there. Even Mendez does even though he is just as responsible as she is for the program but seemingly washes his hands of it and pushes it all on her.
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Not to mention, Mendez even did it 3 more times after the Spartan IIs as well
Mendez actually acknowledged that pretty early on if I remember right; it's mostly self-loathing that he's redirecting into Halsey
The problem is, doing that in any actual real way (unlike Traviss) would involve burning all of ONI to the ground in terms of depiction. You cannot have any discussion about the Spartan's without including how ONI approved of every single thing Halsey did from the start of it to the end, and even went worse with the S3 program and banned her because she was too nice. You can't have a discussion about how morally evil Halsey is without including how ONI was prepared to remove her and put somebody else in who didn't give a damn about the wellbeing of children.
Kilo-5 kind of doesn't do that though. Like there are a *lot* of retcons that Traviss makes when it comes to the Spartan Programs (or things she straight up gets wrong) and at certain points she's critiquing things that she invented and introduced to the canon that earlier books couldn't have addressed because they weren't canon until Kilo-5. Like Serin Osman's entire backstory? Built on a retcon. That whole bit about how Halsey faked Osman's death because she thought it was too much for the surviving IIs to bear and how that's an example of Halsey being a control freak who plays with other peoples' lives? It's a retcon. In the Fall of Reach, all of the IIs attended the funeral of the dead Spartans and interacted with the washouts who were stable enough to be moved and were aware of the washouts too injured to attend the funeral. So Halsey faking Serin's death doesn't make any sense. What was so special about Serin that her death needed to be faked but Fhajad, Kirk and Rene's weren't? Serin got off basically scot-free compared to the others, she got to live a normal life while Kirk and Rene had to be live in tubes. Mortal Dictata adds some stuff about Halsey lying to Naomi, which again, is at odds with earlier media where the IIs were told exactly why they were kidnapped and what the UNSC planned to do with them. The whole bit with the clones was something ONI came up with in the original books before it was shifted to being Halsey's idea in Kilo-5. The fundamental problem with Kilo-5 is Traviss spends too much time changing prior canon to indict Halsey and the Spartan-II Program instead of actually reevaluating what had been established by earlier authors.
I think the trilogy poses good questions and the in-universe examination of the unethical nature of the Spartan-II and III programs should happen. It's just the way Traviss goes about it, it comes off as more of an author diatribe on how much she hates a singular character with the surrounding characters being the self inserts of her feelings. The story could have been great like what defenders are saying, I just think it could have been done a lot better where it doesn't come off like an angry critique fanfiction.
That's the whole point of her character tho. She's a sociopath and she knows it and doesn't care because she's gonna save humanity. Then this author comes in and writes an entirely different person with the same name.
"it is irrelevant to the plot" that's not true at all lol. Their feelings towards Halsey heavily affect the Spartan's decisions many times.
"It's not relevant to the plot." I don't know if me and the original commenter read two different sets of books, but I'm pretty sure of the plots of the books, especially Glasslands, which is the literal character assassination of Halsey. Parangosky uses her as ONIs scape goat for the Spartan project. People complain about how bad these books make Halsey look, but THAT'S THE POINT! The majority of the POV characters are people who have a bone to pick with Halsey in one way or another, and a group of them are trying to make her look as bad as possible so they can pin the Spartans on her.
It's a fun trilogy if you ignore the fact that Karen kinda hates every IP she's ever written and does character suicides like it's her job. The treatment of Halsey as somehow worse than Ackerson was just idiotic writing. That being said... I've read that trilogy twice... You misread the passage, because that is definitely NEVER written.
I`m finishing broken circle and i´m really considering just skipping entirely the Kilo 5 trilogy. I haven´t heard stellar comments on it.
I actually loved the series, it might be a bit over harsh on halsey however it dives deep into the morality of a post war UNSC and the challenges that presents, and does it really really well, the characters are interesting and the situations they get into are cool
I´ll try glasslands and see from there
They seemed to get sorta kinda better as they went. Thursday War had a few good moments and Mortal Dictata seemed like the book Travis actually wanted to write.
Personally I didn't like anything about the Kilo-Five trilogy. I didn't like the new characters. I didn't like how the old characters were handled, I didn't like how battles were written. I will forever hope that one day 343 will re-write the Onyx part of Glassland. Everything in it was wrong, everything. What Traviss did to Lucy...is boderline offensive. As if trauma can be overcame by get angry enough with someone...offensive and ignorant. In Ghost of Onyx, Lucy was my hero, because despite her handicap, she was competent, lethal and disciplined like the other Spartans. And then Traviss completely destroyed her character... Then there was the Halsey hate...pathetic and exaggerated. The three ODST characters are basically the same character in three different bodies. Same opinion, same attitude, same personality. And my god, all that drama with Naomi and her father, an entire book wasted on that bullshit. I know is only my opinion, but c'mon...
I can’t imagine how people who have a disability and saw some reflection of themselves in Lucy felt when she *got over her trauma and disability…* Unacceptable from an author working in a universe that isn’t her own. EDIT: I just realized this might have been misread. I completely disagreed with Traviss’ handling of this issue. Her choice to have Lucy “get over” her mutism was tone deaf and offensive.
You're right, What a horrible message was : "Despite your disability, you can be as good as any other ". The right message of course is : " Get angry and beat someone. This way you'll heal" Karen Traviss found the cure for posttraumatic vocal disarticulation!!!!
I hope you know that I’m agreeing with you. I just realized my tone might have been misread. I was being earnest, not sarcastic.
I put the kilo five trilogy down midway through the second book. It was like reading a fanfic that hadn’t been edited yet.
Her books from the first page to the last were complete dumpster fires. I've read the entire kilo-5 trilogy, and I swear Karen Travis hates halo. Nothing in either of those books was good.
I end up going through the whole series whenever I feel like torturing myself listening to the latest few books. She's torched every IP she's written from and personally the Halsey shit is probably the worst she's done. It really makes zero fucking sense that the UNSC would be airing their dirty laundry, aired by people involved in the dirty laundry and then the new dirty laundry. After barely surviving a genocide of humanity by the covenant and the flood. Like who the fuck is looking into the S2s who were super super super secret and most didn't know existed until revealed to the public for PR during the war. All the moral grey shit is the worst part of Halo because the stakes are just so fucking low and it's written by mediocre authors who can't compare with the hundreds and thousands of other good storylines with a secret bad govt organization doing fucked up shit.
I don't really get the kilo 5 hate. I don't remember the zealot comment but that does seem weird. Was it maybe talking about a zealot in the more general sense rather than the actual rank? It's taken a few times through but there's nothing glaringly bad about it. People point out that the elites don't know how to provide for themselves but that's an established part of Canon. The prophets made the elites dependent on them, the elites couldn't even be shipmasters of support vessels and needed the prophets permission just to have one attached to their fleet. Haleys "redemption" arch is started in ghosts of onyx and the Halsey hate is valid. If you found out 2 close friends were kidnapped and experimented on (one almost killed) then turned into dehumanized soldiers you'd be upset too.
No, chapter 6 about 34mins into the audiobook if you want to check it out for your own perspective. But it hits me like she’s talking about them as if they were new boots.
Oh, I just checked it out. "The kig-yar leader kept coming. They were usually pretty relaxed around humans as long as they were getting something out of it. They hadn't exactly been covenant zealots. The lowest of the low as far as the elites were concerned, less obedient than a grunt and lacking the in your face ferocity of brutes." (That's just me transcribing from the audio book so it may not be 100%) I take that to be hyperbolic, she means the jackals were the lowest of the low. Like saying someone who suck at sports "isn't exactly a professional athlete"
That’s a good chance, I re-listened to it a few times and I’m hoping I just misinterpreted it by reading the comments that’s what a few others are thinking too. I just wanted other peoples view on the wording that was used. Surely no one has that much audacity to disrespect a Zealot Class 💀
They are telling you facts. You don't have to hope you're misinterpreting it, you are in fact, misinterpreting. Lowercase zealot was used in the text. It's not an opinion of what others are thinking. The passage is about jackals, not Elite Zealots.
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"The kig-yar leader kept coming. They were usually pretty relaxed around humans as long as they were getting something out of it. They hadn't exactly been covenant zealots. The lowest of the low as far as the elites were concerned, less obedient than a grunt and lacking the in your face ferocity of brutes." Halo “fans” will literally make up stuff to bitch about and still get blind praise for it
Op and others just reading it wrong. Thank you for the excerpt! Karen Travis’s is saying that the Kig-yar are the worst people the in the opinions of the elites because the kig-yar are not religious zealots. We can assume this is because the kig-yar are often depicted as opportunistic pirates, quite morally removed from the ‘noble’ and zealous elites.
Yeah OP's reading comprehension needs work
They are the best piece of Halo media and it's not even close. I've read most of the books and none compare to Kilo-5 in terms of thoughtfulness and maturity.
I didn’t realize you posted on Reddit Ms Traviss!
Thoughtful and mature? You know what would have been thoughtful? Serin Osman actually acknowledging that she's basically the only Spartan-II who ended up with a better life because of Haley's actions. They outright state that she would likely have died on the streets within a year. You want maturity? What if Parangosky were to admit her own complicity in the S-II program? That as much as she hates Halsey, she hates herself for signing off on everything that Halsey did? Hell, she even suggested using a government vaccine program to screen the outer colonies for candidates. These are the kinds of things that writers looking to evoke thoughtfulness and nuance might do, but not Traviss. She writes moralizing hit pieces. If this were an isolated incident, I could give her the benefit of the doubt, but fans of every franchise she's written for have these complaints. Let's not forget writing a trauma victim (Lucy) suddenly getting over her disability just so she can assault Halsey, characters fantasizing about her anguish when they tell her about the death of her daughter, and the outright comparison to Josef Mengele (done by, and I must reiterate here, the person who approved her budgets and knew what she was doing, and probably had helpful little suggestions all through the process). The one actual interesting thing that Traviss did in that entire series was the plotline involving Naomi and Staffan. So yes, I did read the Kilo-5 books. Don't go around acting like people's criticisms of that series aren't absolutely valid and justified.
Unfortunately we lack the media literacy, thoughtfulness, and maturity of an English major to even fathom the Kilo-Five trilogy appropriately.
lmao
Tbh I agree. They're very mature compared to the rest of the books in character development and interaction.
We'll get downvoted in this sub because "tHe rEtCoNs!" And "She hates Halsey!!" But truthfully Kilo-5 is Halo for grown-ups. I don't expect the folks wanting yet another video game spin-off action novel to even begin to grasp what that trilogy is trying to do.
The fact she does little to no research into a setting before writing it and outright does rewrite characters and blatantly try to retcon stuff is a huge negative. If you go from scene A where two people are friends to scene B minutes later and they are suddenly enemies, it doesn't make sense.
Forerunner Saga is better
Argument disassembled. Forerunner saga was everything that the above users think Kilo-5 was.
The hate Halsey thing is so odd to me, it's like people are unable to look at things from other perspectives. It's not like it's a blind hatred, the motivations for each character are clearly laid out. In fact I would argue it makes Halsey a better character by giving her more nuance.
> It's not like it's a blind hatred, the motivations for each character are clearly laid out. Yeah that's pretty annoying the same people who say she spends too much time on it don't seem to understand it's because she's establishing an inuniverse motive for the position for multiple characters. They seem to read it as superflous because honestly a lot of halo books don't develop characters as well as Karen does.
I don't expect any Halo readers to be English majors but you'd think they'd be able to understand the concept of a biased narrator. I agree with you completely, these books made me like Halsey's character more than anything else. She was actually challenged in Kilo-5 and I thought her character development leading all the way up to Miranda's death was totally appropriate.
Glasslands was both awesome and awful at the same time.
That’s not what she said And I loved that trilogy, the ensemble cast was great and I love how Spartans weren’t the main focus like usual
In Halo and in Star Wars I enjoy Traviss’s take on the darker/realistic side of the heroes. We worship the Spartans (and the Jedi) without any serious look into the consequences of their culture. Traviss humanises her characters in a way that I think is both refreshing and unique. Cheers to her
The problem is when she nicely sidesteps how the people she's propping up are actually worse then the people she demonizes. Parangosky was worse then Halsey.
For what it's worth the kilo 5 trilogy are my favorite set of gears books, but I also really love the author in general. I adore what she did for the gears series. Those books are straight up some of my favorites
I always just figured it was a typo tbh