Ghosts of Oynx 2!

[Night_stalker]

Well, it's offical. Karen Traviss has a new project. The sequal to Eric Nyland's best selling Halo novel, Ghosts of Oynx is going to be written by everyone's favorie Mando wanking author.

Link ishttp://halo.xbox.com/en-us//transmissio ... o-Universe

So, what are the views on this startling bit of news?

[Peptuck]

A thousand times over.

[Jake]

Well, I enjoyed the first Ghosts immensely, and I have read Karen Travis's star wars books and they're decent. I would rather have Eric Nylund do it though, as he is kind of the guy to beat when it comes to halo books.

[Darksider]

Well, I enjoyed the first Ghosts immensely, and I have read Karen Travis's star wars books and they're decent. I would rather have Eric Nylund do it though, as he is kind of the guy to beat when it comes to halo books.

Erm. how many of Traviss' SW books have you read? 'cause anything after Triple Zero is mediocre at best, and god-awful at worst. Traviss' problem is that she tries to re-shape an already existent universe to suit her whims, she did it with SW with her mandowank bullshit, she did it with Gears of War (i'm not sure how, given that i've never read the GoW books) and she'll do it with Halo if she gets a bug up her ass that makes her pick a favorite faction and wank them over all others. The woman has no idea that she's playing in other people's sandboxes. If her own personal viewpoint of the Halo universe syncs up with Bungie's, she'll do well. If not, see every SW book she's ever written after hard contact.

[Ford Prefect]

On the upside, I hear Greg Bear is going to write a trilogy of novels set in the Halo universe.

Greg Bear.

[Jake]

What was so bad about her NJO books? Mandalorians have been known as jedi fighting super soldiers since KOTOR and Boba Fett. As I recall, the mandos got their asses handed to them by jacen anyway (although this may not have been the one traviss wrote).

[Peptuck]

Erm. how many of Traviss' SW books have you read? 'cause anything after Triple Zero is mediocre at best, and god-awful at worst. Traviss' problem is that she tries to re-shape an already existent universe to suit her whims, she did it with SW with her mandowank bullshit, she did it with Gears of War (i'm not sure how, given that i've never read the GoW books)

The GoW fuckups basically consisted of her making the entire COG a patriarchy where women's entire role was to pump out babies, added in an ethnic group called the Pesanga who fought in the Pendulum Wars who were SO SUPERIOR in every way to the COG's Gears (just like the Mandalorians) yet were unfairly persecuted for no articulated reason (just like the Mandalorians), made the COG have absolutely no industry despite the fact that they're clearly operating heavy industry in the second game, and made the Locust into complete retards.

Expansion on that last one: part of the main plot of Aspho Fields is that Marcus and his squad are escorting a major food production equipment shipment from outside Jacinto to a safe place inside the city. Without it, the city will starve. So they end up fighting the Locust, only to have the Locust completely ignore the convoy and focus exclusively on the six soldiers escorting the convoy. Because apparently, the six soldiers escorting the convoy are more important than the food supply for hundreds of thousands of people. And the COG troops agree with this assessment.

I wish I was making this up.

[Jake]

I don't know anything about Gears ( I only played it once), but what did she do wrong with the Star Wars books besides supposedly overpowering the Mandalorians? I mean, you can't spell Mandalorian without Man after all...

[Darth Yoshi]

As I understand it, she had some pretty outlandish minimalism with Odds, which effectively ended up wanking the Mandos. When she got called on it, she then threw a temper tantrum and proceeded to wank the Mandos even more. Supposedly it got so bad that in Legacy of the Force, (written by Denning, Allston, and Traviss in sequence) and Denning and Allston actually had to spend part of their books basically undoing everything that Traviss did.

[Black Admiral]

Fuck. Well, provided she's kept under decent editorial control, we shouldn't be looking at any disasters on the scale of the Republic Commando novels - on the other hand, the later RC novels (and Triple Zero was a major drop in quality from Hard Contact, so it's only "good" in comparison to its direct sequels) are atrocious, so they don't fill me with much hope.

(honestly, why couldn't they've gotten someone with a clue to continue from GoO?)

[adam_grif]

From what I gleaned playing the games, Spartan wank is canonical, so she may be playing to her strengths here.

[Lord Relvenous]

No...



I really didn't want a sequel, and this just makes me cringe. Then again, almost all the Halo EU has made me cringe after the original 3 books published.

[Srelex]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWaLxFIVX1s

Not that the Halo books have any high literary merit anyway, but these days, no scifi universe deserves to have Travissty dig her nails into it. What'll she think of this time? A group of superbadass female lesbian SPARTANs and the UNSC fleet numbering three ships held together with elastic bands and wishful thinking?

[Kuja]

Not that the Halo books have any high literary merit anyway, but these days, no scifi universe deserves to have Travissty dig her nails into it. What'll she think of this time? A group of superbadass female lesbian SPARTANs

Sold.


Admit it.

[ANGELUS]

and she'll do it with Halo if she gets a bug up her ass that makes her pick a favorite faction and wank them over all others.

So who will it be? The Spartans or the Elites?

[Srelex]

Tough question. The Elites are ugly aliens, but have a warrior culture already. The SPARTANs, however, don't have much time for happy family-farming bullshit...actually, she'd just do both.

[OmegaChief]

Not that the Halo books have any high literary merit anyway, but these days, no scifi universe deserves to have Travissty dig her nails into it. What'll she think of this time? A group of superbadass female lesbian SPARTANs

Sold.


Admit it.

Normally I'd agree, but somthing gives me the terrible feeling that Traviss would somehow screw that up so that it was infuriating to read.

I know, I don't understand how it'd be possible to screw up that primise either

[Hawkwings]

I'm gonna call it right now. There's going to be some sort of sequence where a Spartan-II interacts with S-IIIs, looks down on them/calls them inferior/shows them up. Then later, the S-IIIs have to go save him/her and show that they're "real" Spartans too. Cue bonding.

edit: oh, and there will be some horribly emo introspective on all sides.

addendum: Greg Bear speaks.

[Ugolino]

Onyx sequel: good.

Bitter, obsessive Karen Traviss writing it: not good.

Gah.

[Ghost Rider]

and she'll do it with Halo if she gets a bug up her ass that makes her pick a favorite faction and wank them over all others.

So who will it be? The Spartans or the Elites?

Given her insane Mando love and what she did with Gears of War's Locusts?

The Mand...I mean SPARTANs will discover that the human and Covenant are secretly in this war together! Furthermore, the Flood are a race of innocent herbivores that these evil motherfuckers have purposefully BRED FOR WAR!! And finally, have some unknown chick explain this to us, explain how the war is really fake for the idiots on Earth and they, the TRUE HUMANS must strike out and make the universe safe from these bastards!!!

Oh and SPARTAN III's will be obviously the evil tool they must show they true MAND...SPARTAN heritage.

And the Elites will reproduce through raping innocent human women.

[aieeegrunt]

Knowing Karen Traviss she's going to decide to obsess and wank over the Brutes, and her novel will go on and on about how misunderstood they are and how they are the real heros of the story, and the Spartans are actually evil and have been in league with the Prophet of Truth this whole time.

Also Grunts reproduce by raping Hunters or something equally loony. But of course involving rape.

[Balrog]

I don't know anything about Gears ( I only played it once), but what did she do wrong with the Star Wars books besides supposedly overpowering the Mandalorians? I mean, you can't spell Mandalorian without Man after all...

If you search for Traviss on the SW subforum, you'll find discussions aplenty about what she did wrong; IIRC there were also a few links provided to some scathing reviews done on theforce.net which lay out in detail how royally screwed up her books were. Jedi being compared to Nazis and whatnot.

[Night_stalker]

Onyx sequel: good.

Bitter, obsessive Karen Traviss writing it: not good.

Gah.

Yeah, WTF 343 Industries? Was Eric Nyland, you know the author of the ORIGINAL not availible or something? God, this novel had better be damn good and without any , or there will be Hell to pay.

[Icehawk]

Eric Nylund has been authoring an extensive journal which is done from the perspective of the character Dr. Halsey. It's supposed to be included with the upcoming Limited and Legendary edition Halo Reach games. An interview with him talking about it HERE.

[Imperial528]

This gives me very sad thoughts, as I was hoping there would be a sequel to Onyx. But. Not. Like. This. Oh well, at least having bad thoughts about Traviss' fuck ups she calls books is better than actually reading them.

I start rating the book at 4.9/10.