Halo: Primordium

Halo: Primordium (Halo #9)
Author: Greg Bear
Genre: Science Fiction
Release Date: January 1st, 2012
GoodReads

This isn't a book that you can casually just pick up and get into, and expect to know everything about it, even if you're a hardcore science fiction fan. You'd have to have an extensive understanding of the whole Halo universe to even get any of the references which I eventually got by reading up the Halo Wikia, which is something that I do regularly for all of my science fiction or fantasy reads especially after getting into a bit of trouble remembering all the lore and background, which is happening a lot more often now that I've been jumping around between all the various series that I have been reading and not finishing, and then suddenly deciding to pick up again a few months later.

Primordium involves a lot of walking around. I mean of the type that usually happens in high fantasy novels, but you wouldn't exactly expect to happen in the science fiction genre. I mean seriously, 50% of the book involves walking around this massive construct called a Halo, finding random dead aliens and remains of crashed warships and then more walking. Not a lot happens aside from that for over half the book. I probably should have read more Halo books prior to this but hey, I didn't want to invest the time into something that I wasn't really interested in to begin with (unlike the Warhammer 40k-verse, which is frigging awesome by the way), and I wanted a peek at the Halo-verse. I was not impressed with what I read.

So around the halfway mark through my reading of the novel after blundering around blindly and trying to get through the endless walking and poking of dead corpses, I finally did some research into the Didact, Forerunners, the Primordial and pretty much everything (including spoilers). Imagine my surprise when the story started to become interesting for some reason and when I continued reading it was still boring despite knowing pretty much everything about the lore but it finally perked up during the final third of the book. The final third of the book hinted at points that actually piqued my interest and made me keep reading to find out more. The ending left everything off on a cliffhanger and strangely enough I want to find out more despite how bland most of the book was. My interest wasn't due to the actual book itself on its own merits but rather due to the fact that I wanted to find out more about the lore from where it left off. Otherwise the book is totally forgettable.

Scores:
Cover: 4
Characters: 3
Story: 3

Overall:  3/10 (2 Stars)