Mindless but not very entertaining; really a rather dreadful little book. If I were reading a hardcopy I would have dropped it after about 50 pages.*It makes one appreciate the skills of Heinlein or Haldeman (or - by hearsay, in my case - Bujold and Scalzi) when it comes to military SF. Aside from the extraordinarily clunky writing style, the greatest sin Monsieur Nylund commits is not being able to tell a story well. He has no conception of pacing (or he doesn't evidence it here). Novels have rhythms: Sometimes there's a throbbing urgency that demands edge-of-your-seat, heart-pounding writing and sometimes there's a quiet, deliberate interlude that demands equally calm and introspective writing. A good, recent example of the former is the 70+ pages of the battle of the Spire in Steven Erikson's The Crippled God; a good example of the latter is Tolkien's build up throughout the first half of The Fellowship of the Ring, with its birthday parties and detours to Farmer Cotton's.*
But Halo: Ghosts of Onyx takes place entirely in 2nd gear, trundling along at about 20 mph from disc 1 to disc 9.
And don't get me started about the unexamined assumptions and implications of turning 12-year olds into sociopathic killing machines...
* "Why," you may ask, "did you continue to listen to this dreck?" A fair question. The answer: My tolerance for audio-visual dreck is far greater than that for prose, and it's not like there's much better on the radio (remember, I'm listening to this on the way to and from work).
** It's a shame that many modern readers of Tolkien find the "slow" parts of LotR interminable. And he's perfectly capable of action: The charge of the Rohirrim at the battle of the Pelennor Field in The Return of the King or the equally tense and gripping scene with the Mouth of Sauron (book version not - repeat NOT - movie version).
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I need something mindless but hopefully entertaining for the ride in the car....
