Book Review - Halo: Epitaph by Kelly Gay - Goodnight Sweet Forerunner Prince
The Didact gets a proper sendoff in this emotional entry.
Note: I was given a free copy to review from Gallery Books
At the end of 2012’s Halo 4 for the Xbox 360, the Master Chief defeats the Didact, the last Forerunner, and throws him into The Composer where he becomes synthesized into information. Though not dead, the Didact is now within The Domain - an immaterial information plane where all Forerunner data exists. Halo Epitaph, written by Kelly Gay and published by Gallery Books, details what happened to the Didact in the domain and gives us answers to a few loose narrative threads. It’s been 12 years since the Didact’s “end” but now we finally get a proper wrap up to the Forerunner’s legacy.
There are 2 sides to Halo. There is the super soldier and militaristic side of the series and then there is the deeper lore surrounding the Forerunners. The Forerunners were a race who, as custodians of the universe, created and destroyed life with the flick of their hand. The Forerunners constructed the Halo rings as a weapons system and created humans (basically). This is the briefest of summations because to explain the entire importance of the Forerunners, well, this would be a long book review. The Forerunner lore is complex and looks impenetrable to a passerby but that’s why we have these excellent novels and writers to explain these complicated characters and histories.
In 2011, Greg Bear wrote the Forerunner Saga novels - Halo Cryptum, Halo Primordium and Halo Silentium. These explained the history of the Halo universe, how we got The Flood, what the rings are, and detailed what all those structures did when we first played Halo CE in 2001. At the time, it also allowed 343 (Halo 4 to present developers) to fill in the mythos of Halo and expand on the work of Bungie (the original IP developers).
Kelly Gay arrives in the Halo series around 2017 and gives us the Rion Forge books (Renegades and Point of Light) which are influenced by Bear’s work and featured a beloved Forerunner, The Librarian. The Librarian was/is The Didact’s wife and the driving force behind all of the Didact’s actions. Rion Forge is also a favorite character of mine - a badass scavenger who gets caught up in Forerunner technologies and mysteries.
Reading Halo Epitaph requires knowledge of all these things and more to have the context in which to appreciate the arc of the Didact’s story. This book is a culmination of lore laid out for over 20 years and a farewell to a complicated, intelligent, sympathetic, destructive, and infamous character. I will say out of the gate that it is a hard sell to anyone who has only played the games or just understands Halo as “big green man shoot things.” Halo Epitaph is for fans of what’s underneath the games and for fans of both Kelly and the late Greg Bear.
Halo Epitaph starts with the Didact waking up in a desert-like location and moving forward towards a spire in the distance. Interspersed with his journey, the Didact reflects on his incredible life which spans over a hundred thousand years. He technically was in stasis for most of those years but still leaves him with about 10k under his belt of “existing.” The Didact treads through memory and revisits moments from events in Greg Bear’s books to the events leading into Halo 4. Kelly doesn’t reenact these scenes shot for shot - they are expanded upon and lean into the dynamic The Didact had with his wife, The Librarian.
Of course this “desert wasteland” is just a projection of The Domain - a network of information that the Forerunners fed data into of the entire universe. Characters from The Didact's past arrive and wrestle with him intellectually about his decisions surrounding the fate of the universe. They are neither real nor imagined - they are data. Halo Epitaph answers what happens to information processed by The Composer - everything is data not this other, spiritual “thing” which is a great concept. The entire network of existence is just code.
This is a different Halo novel than most - I hope that is coming across. Halo novels tend to be “objective based” whereas there is end game to the novel for the characters or a mission to resolve. Halo Epitaph is heady and wanders in the mind of a character who, as a warrior, waged war on humans (before resetting humanity with the Librarian and leaving them on Earth) but also fought for what he considered peace. The book ruminates and focuses on failures and accomplishments of The Didact. It’s not a plot-heavy book and it wanders but it’s not aimless. It’s intent on summing up the Didact’s life in the same way we would walk through our own memories. The fact that Gay was able to distill all of this expanded lore into a singular novel for fans is an incredible feat.
With that said, the book also ties into the events that lead into Halo Infinite (the 2021 game). We get to see the Didact interact with Cortana as she tries to manage the power of The Domain and deal with policing the universe. Cortana, the now infamous AI program of the series, has these intellectual back and forths with the essence of The Didact about ethics in governing an entire universe. The back and forth felt like two Greek gods on Olympus arguing and it is joyous to be in the room with these powerhouses.
The direct tie-in to Halo Infinite is decent. It provides more context to the events of that game but not as much as say Kelly’s previous novel, The Rubicon Protocol, does. It’s less to do with Gay’s narrative and more a reflection of 343 and their vision for the series moving forward. 3 years later and we don’t have a sense of what 343 wants to do with The Endless, Atriox, or even Master Chief but that is a bigger conversation and one that strays from the novel at hand.
The end of the book is emotional. I won’t speak about specifics on how the Didact’s story wraps up but how he comes to terms with his immeasurable life is outstanding. Gay gives us a send off to the Didact that feels complete, loving, and appropriate.
I don’t want to say that all the other Halo novels are thoughtless (that’s hardly the case) but Epitaph is thoughtful about the fiction and characters. There is a sense of love moving through the pages by Gay for her send off to Greg Bear and the Didact. This comes highly recommended from me.
Great review, glad to hear so many positives about the book. Looking forward to your interview with Kelly!