Forum:Halo: Broken Circle

So... this happened. Can't say I'm not excited, even though a part of me was holding on to the hope of seeing a triumphant return of Nylund or Staten. Still, in terms of content, this novel represents a major step in the right direction: 343i seems to have finally gotten the memo that the fans weren't too big on the super-jingoistic flaunting of human supremacy of late and that there's more to the Covenant than just the savage, animalistic monsters Halo 4 and, to an extent, the Kilo-Five Trilogy, presented them as.

I really like the cover too. Very subdued and a major departure from the comic book silliness of the cover art for the otherwise phenomenal Silentium. It could easily pass off for a "proper" literary science fiction book cover (albeit with the difference that the cover actually seems to have something to do with the book's content, which isn't the case with SF novels most of the time).

The author is a complete unknown to me, for better or worse. Looking him up, he seems legit enough, though he's obviously no SF titan like Greg Bear (then again, few authors are). But he's no Karen Traviss either (in that he doesn't seem to have elicited any major controversies) which is always a plus.

Looking forward, 343's willingness to explore the distant past of the Haloverse makes me hopeful for a UNSC origins book I've been wanting to see for some time — a more grounded, harder SF story set during the early space age climate of the Interplanetary War and the related conflicts. --Jugus (Talk  | Contribs ) 05:08, 22 June 2014 (EDT)

The mystery planet
Any ideas as to the nature of the planet seen in the cover? From the decidedly Forerunner architecture it could really be anything - perhaps another variety of shield world or simply another, previously unseen type of installation. I just hope the story doesn't turn out to revolve around chasing after another Forerunner MacGuffin, though admittedly the Covenant-centric scenario would be more ideal for that sort of thing. Another possibility is that it's actually a High Charity under construction — the surface features do show some similarities to the city's dome. The seemingly complete planet underneath doesn't quite mesh with the idea of the city being built around a small chunk of the San 'Shyuum homeworld (I always did wonder how exactly the Dreadnought took a piece of the planet with it), though it could be another world being stripmined for materials.

The worst-case possibility is that the construct is a horrible misinterpretation of the nature of the quarantine shield around the San 'Shyuum home system, though I want to trust 343i (or their artists) to understand their own works enough not to make mistake on this scale. --Jugus (Talk  | Contribs ) 05:08, 22 June 2014 (EDT)

We know that a lot of the early Covenant's technology came from several Shield World installations that they stumbled across, allowing the Prophets to reverse-engineer more technology not derived solely from the dreadnought. If it was anything like Trevalyan, then it probably had ships, vehicles and Huragok, which would have been a significant jump in immediate tech level. The cover may depict one of those.--  Qura 'Morhek   The Autocrat     of Morheka   05:52, 22 June 2014 (EDT)

Author
I haven't read anything that John Shirley has written, but I did some research on the guy. He is a majority of his novels seem to be steampunk related. He did create prequel novels for Borderlands, BioShock, Predator, and Watch_Dogs, and from what I hear, that BioShock novel was very-well received. He is adept at writing about politics and fictional religions and, as Wikipedia claims, his novels "reflects his tendency to create fantasy entertainment which is also political satire, or spiritual allegory". He also seems to actually do the research about the universe before he writes a novel:

So I feel hopeful that he can write a successful novel. And at least this time, the aliens cannot say "As the humans say..." - NightHammer (talk) 10:29, 22 June 2014 (EDT)