Sunday 7 April 2013

SCIENCE FICTION REVIEW: Halo: The Forerunner Saga 3: Silentium - Greg Bear

Release Date: 19/03/13
Publisher:  Tor (Pan Macmillan)

SYNOPSIS:

In the last years of the Forerunner empire, chaos rules. The Flood -- a horrifying shape-changing parasite -- has arrived in force, aided by unexpected allies. Internal strife within the ecumene has desperately weakened Forerunner defences. Too little, too late, the legal rate of Juridicals is only now investigating possible crimes by the Master Builder and others. Evidence-gathering agents, known collectively as Catalog, have been dispatched to collect testimony from the Librarian and both Didacts: the Ur-Didact, treacherously abandoned in a Flood-infested system, and the Bornstellar Didact, who accompanies the Librarian as she preserves specimens against the dire possibility of Hal extermination. Facing the imminent collapse of their civilization, the Librarian and Ur-Didact reveal what they know about the relationship between the long-vanished Precursors and the Flood. The Precursors created many technological species, including humanity and the Forerunners. But the roots of the Flood may be found in an act of enormous barbarity, carried out beyond our galaxy ten million years before. Because of that barbarism, a greater evil looms. Only the Ur-Didact and the Librarian -- husband and wife pushed into desperate conflict -- hold the keys to a solution. Facing the consequences of a mythic tragedy, one of them must now commit the greatest atrocity of all time -- to prevent an insane evil from dominating the entire universe.


REVIEW:

You’ve savoured the games, loved the imaginative universe and currently are sat back wondering what to do in order to sit back and relax.

Well you may want to try the Forerunner Saga as it not only gives you something set in the same worlds but helps to flesh it all out in such a way that the reader gets not only something unique but something that is brought to them by a well-known name, in this case Greg Bear.

The characters are interesting, the idea’s within fascinating and when blended with the quandaries supplied by the premise leaves the reader asking quite a few questions which, in addition to providing a solid escape, really does give you a great experience. My only cautious note is that because of the complexities within you really should start with book one to get the full flavour.



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