Halo: Cryptum

A vast tale bringing Forerunner history and future together as understood by a cast of compelling characters. An interesting narrative propelled by engaging action sequences. So much more to come. I’m all in!

Halo as a series has almost unlimited potential for compelling and interesting stories, but one of the areas most ripe with potential has largely been un-elaborated on. The wondrous Forerunners and their mythological legacy has always been one of the most fascinating and mysterious aspects of Halo. Up until now, the most we really got in terms of explaining what exactly happened to them was in the games' stories (the details of which were cryptic and mysterious at best), and in the form of obscure (but cool nonetheless) terminals in the games that added some detail to their demise. This book, Cryptum, is the first of a trilogy meant to finally explain what happened 100 millennia ago that lead to their disappearance. Great idea!The book is written from the perspective of a young and rebellious Manipular (think Forerunner teenager) named Bornstellar Makes Eternal Lasting, who runs off to search for ancient artifacts from an even MORE ancient, powerful, and seemingly extinct race, the Precursors. Along with some human companions he has made the journey, they uncover and awaken a powerful, legendary Promethean (think super powerful Forerunner warrior) general named the Didact (recognize that name from the terminals of  Halo 3  and  Halo Anniversary ?) who has spent the last thousand years in exile-by-slumber in a Cryptum. Needless to say, times are pretty tough for the Forerunners, who are now rumored to be struggling against the hideous flood in their border worlds. How fortunate, that they would find this legendary general at such a time! It's the start of a compelling and exciting journey, to be sure. This is merely a glimpse of the premise of the story, and obviously the book has many more interesting details to uncover.Greg Bear is a fairly famous science fiction writer with a rather impressive resume and pedigree. It's easy to see why he has this reputation when reading Cryptum. His diction is undeniably compelling and elegant, and the flow of his writing has a major feeling of eloquence to it. Bear's writings from Bornstellar's perspective perfectly reflects the kind of elegance and higher-thinking you'd expect of the brilliantly advanced and enlightened Forerunners, as well as the kind of arrogance you may expect of a teen (but he grows up quite a bit throughout the story in ways both conventional and not). The story itself is fairly compelling and fast moving. It was very easy to just keep reading and reading and reading, 100 pages flash by in what seems like a few minutes. It's super engrossing. The characters are, for the most part, well written and the story surrounding them progresses quite naturally. It's very compelling.Bear's intriguing word choice and flow also complements the overall Forerunner culture. Even after reading this book, the Forerunners still feel mysterious and details of their existence are still quite open to interpretation and speculation. Even the physical description they are given leaves some room for interpretation, and their technology still feels like magic. How does their personal armor/suits allow them to go without sleeping? How does it extend the lifespan so many thousands of years? Writing from the perspective of a Forerunner is pretty clever, as he describes the technology like it's common and the inner-workings and functions of it all is already understood, so no attempt to explain that stuff is made. So while we may read that a ship that assembled itself from a mechanical seed activating under a mountain, converting said mountain into raw materials and then into a massive monolith of a ship, we have no clue how it does so, keeping the sense of mystery and wonder at the Forerunners' ingenuity intact. Great job with that!The only complaint I would make about this book is that, at times, it feels as if Bear was instructed not to say *too* much with regards to important details. This trilogy is being coordinated by 343 Industries, the company in charge of Halo's development, and as such, they have a large degree of control over what details go into each book. They have expressed that this trilogy of books will majorly resonate with the upcoming  Halo 4  and the rest of the new Reclaimer Trilogy. Because of this, the book sometimes feels like major details are kept hush-hush and skimped over, and more minute, inconsequential details are fluffed up and stretched out more to fill-out the book, all in the name of keeping Halo 4's surprises, well, surprising. In fact, some "big moments" are so small in comparison to the build-ups of them, you'll be left wondering, "Wait, what just happened? Did I miss something?" As such, there are times when this book feels a bit like a tease, a dangling carrot on a stick that doesn't quite get the pay-offs or explanations you'd hope for after all the build up in the book. Again, I understand the information and details have to be rationed out because of 343i's agenda. Even so, these complaints are pretty small in comparison to the strengths of the book. Don't let it dissuade you from picking Cryptum up. It is, after all, the first in a trilogy and the future installments will undoubtedly answer questions this book doesn't.Overall, this is a definitely solid start to a great idea for a Halo book trilogy. A lot of details that have been revealed in this book may upset a lot of people who thought they figured everything out about the Forerunner history. I was kind of shocked at some of the details this book revealed about not only Forerunner history, but also the history of ancient Humans, San 'Shyuum (also known as the "prophets" of the covenant), and the flood. Despite the "carrot on a stickery" at times, this book has *a lot* of relevatory details to enjoy. As one who loves the Halo series mostly for its awesome story, this is a fairly easy recommendation. Just don't go in with preconceived notions of what the story should be, and you'll be much rewarded with a well-written, fascinating look at the beginning of the end for the Forerunners.

“Halo: Cryptum” is a tough book to read, and an even harder book to review. The first in a trilogy, set hundreds of thousands of years before the events of the original “Halo” video game, “Cryptum” digs DEEP into the lore of the Forerunners, the Flood, and the origin of the Halo rings…and it does all of that without ever once even coming close to holding the reader’s hand.For my money, that’s both a good thing and a bad thing. It’s a good thing, because writer Greg Bear clearly trusts that his readers are smart enough to keep up with the LITANY of made-up vernacular – seriously, this book comes with an entire glossary of terms, just in case you forget what ‘ancilla’ or ‘Mantle’ or ‘metarch’ or ‘gea’ means and need to check – and murky Forerunner politicking that he packs into these 352 pages. It’s refreshing to read a book that doesn’t speak down to the reader or overexplain plot points that don’t need belabored. What’s more, reading a “Halo” story that’s set outside of the confines of the Human-Covenant War, in a time frame that’s yet to be truly explored and fleshed out, is beyond refreshing – it’s exhilarating, kind of in the same way that it was when George Lucas opened the floodgates to the Prequel Trilogy era. Getting to witness firsthand things that, up until now, had been only mentioned in vague asides is a real treat…at least, most of the time.And that’s where my issues with “Cryptum” begin to crop up. As mentioned, this is the first book of a trilogy, and boy, does it feel like it. In my humble opinion, the best “number ones” in trilogies do two things: they clearly and excitingly set the stage for the events yet to come in Parts 2 and 3, while also telling a compelling story on its own terms. If I were grading Cryptum on how well it does both things, I’d probably say that it puts forward a B/B+ effort with the former, and a C/C+ for the latter. It’s amazing - for a book that’s so dense and at times indecipherable, “Cryptum” often feels shockingly meandering and even – dare I say it - emptyI think part of the problem is that we’re given zero characters to connect with here – our protagonist, Bornstellar – whose perspective we view the entire story through - is basically an empty cypher, one who is nearly impossible to relate to; meanwhile, all of the supporting characters are either clichés or similarly unreadable. It also doesn’t help that the entirety of the novel’s plot – without spoiling anything – ends up, by the third, being completely tangential to the REAL plot that’s clearly going to be dominating Books 2 and 3. Don’t get me wrong, I’m psyched to read them and see what happens next…but it would have been really nice if this book felt less like a novel-length prelude to the real story and more like the first 1/3 of Bear’s epic saga. Throw in the fact that there are significant chunks of this novel that are difficult, if not nigh impossible to fully understand without consulting Halopedia, and it’s hard not to feel just a little but gipped by the time you reach the last page.So, overall, is “Halo: Cryptum” worth a read? I’d say – just as I have with so many of these “Halo” novels and comics – that if you’re a fan of the franchise and are curious to know the backstory of this universe, then absolutely – there’s enough fun fan service, interesting revelations, and promises of a greater and better story to come to make slogging through the less enjoyable portions here worth it. Non-Halo fans, however, definitely need not apply.

I have never played the game, nor read any of the books. In fact, I know nothing at all about Halo, except there is a lot of stuff out there. When I saw that Greg Bear had written what I think is a prequel, I thought that would be a good point to start - do the prequels, and then move on to what, I suppose is the main course; the books that have been around from the beginning.It certainly inhabits a different world and I am not sure whether any of the characters, or indeed life forms make it through to the later books, but I enjoyed how they were all fleshed out. The settings are described in detail, albeit from a mostly alien perspective, and you soon come to inhabit that world and take interest in the characters and what happens to them. This book certainly focuses on the young Forerunner and, as I start book two, I see that other characters are coming to the fore.I really enjoyed this book and on the strength of it, I have downloaded 2 and 3.My only, slight gripe, is to do with the odd typo here and there, particularly near the beginning but that seems to settle down.

I am a Halo fan so I had to get this book. I waited until the softcover version came out and started reading it. I was a bit curious about the story because it is far away from the Halo universe we know of. But that curiousity was answered with great satisfaction. The story is awesome and it reads really well, great writing. It is still Halo and many things are related to the terminals in Halo 3. It is a must for everybody that likes the Halo universe and is curious about the history of it. Even if you are new to 'Halo' you can read this because the red line through the Halo universe is pretty simple in fact (and this book is in the beginning). You go back to the far past and meet the Forerunners. The Forerunners are an awesome civilizition/species, I wish our world was a bit more Forerunner-ish lol. The scale of their world is behind words and their role in the universe is the most noble cause a species can have. Look I'm starting to dream again! Looking forward to the next two parts because that universe is so huge and well designed that I still need to discover a lot. The book has not the same dimension than the others (Ghosts of Onyx, ...) but hey that is not a problem. And like I am used to, Amazon delivered it fast and in good state.

Halo: Cryptum is about the origins of the Didact. This book introduces the characters central to the continuing plot of Halo - the Forerunner race, and the Precursor race. These two races are the future, and in some ways the past (without spoiling Primordium) of the Halo franchise, and therefore are vital to anyone wanting to fully understand the Halo plot. Greg Bear does a fantastic job at introducing the series here and leaving it on a cliffhanger that will instantly make you want the second part (imagine how this felt for those of us who had to wait eighteen months to get the next part of the story!). This book is followed by Primordium - read this after too to enhance your knowledge and for your own enjoyment because it is just so fantastically written! This is then followed by the conclusion, Silentium, which is the best conclusion to a trilogy I have ever read! Go for it! :)

Was pretty slow to start but loved it towards the end, definitely getting the second one just for the conclusion of the story really.Definitely have to agree with the previous reviewer Irvinus on the descriptions etc. The author took like a whole page to describe what a portal looks like but doesn't even describe how many of the characters look. Probably the most specific character description we get throughout the entire book is that the main character's father is 4 meters tall (Bloody hell!) and his mother's skin is bluish-gray. And some of the concepts and description I just couldn't really understand or visualise - the war sphinxes for example, machines which are mentioned plenty throughout the book. I'm pretty sure he never gave an actual description of their physical characteristics. Am I to believe that the Forerunners basically had flying metal sphinx-like machines which people could pilot? [...] Really? OK. Also descriptors like "hard light formed around the spokes of the ring (Halo)" (Not an exact quote but close enough), what is that? Just what is that exactly? Is there such a thing as soft light? How can light be hard? Oh and one thing that really got me was the description of the San-Shyuum (Aka the Prophets in Halo) as being "Beautiful", "Charming" and almost seductive. Just cannot wrap my head around that without an explanation - either the Forerunners' idea of beauty was vastly different from ours or the San-Shyuum looked very different and went from beautiful, gracious beings to shriveled worm-like long-eared freaks. The answer is left to us for now. Maybe it'll be explained later, or has already been done so in another form of media that I haven't seen. Hate to nitpick but when reading some of this stuff I just had to stop and think about wtf the author was actually describing.Nonetheless, it's an interesting read with quite a few interesting concepts like Forerunner mutations and their social structure, their armour, AIs, extreme terraforming, slip-space travel, The Flood, faint glimpses into the Precursors, the aforementioned portals and more. The plot is pretty interesting, as it includes some of the major Forerunner players seen in Halo 4 - The Didact and the Librarian. And as said previously, the plot really starts to kick off with an awesome finale.

I've been a fan of Greg bears for years and I was worried about this foray into the halo universe, computer games tend to have very little in the way of plot behind them.However the story here is rich and deep as any Greg bear tale. It takes the bare bones of the halo back story and weaves a complex brain twisting story on top of it.Overall it's hard to read but worth sticking with it to continue the series to its end