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There are only so many stories one can watch/read/play in any given franchise before, eventually, the plots all start to threaten to run together into one giant narrative muck…and unfortunately, I think I’ve reached that point with “Halo.��

Don’t get me wrong �� “Hunters in the Dark,�� on its own terms, is a solid enough novel, telling a story that’s set primarily in or around the Ark post-Halo 3. It’s a great setting for a story, and writer Peter David, to his credit, does yeoman’s work exploiting the setting for all it’s worth; it also doesn’t hurt that he’s populated it with a cast of characters that are genuinely interesting and well-paired with one another. We care about this cadre of individuals, and we genuinely want to see them make it out of this treacerhous terrain, which goes a long way towards imbuing the novel with a sense of genuine stakes.

The problem �� and really, it’s not a problem so much with “Hunters in the Dark�� as it is the broader “Halo�� franchise in general �� is that these stories have begun to feel very, VERY familiar. There’s only so many books or comics that follow the same general trajectory �� characters pursue and/or conflict over ancient Forerunner technology �� that one can read before a sense of narrative fatigue begins to set in. Maybe the issue is less that the series is going through the same motions as it is that I've just happened to read too many "Halo" stories in too much proximity to one another �� who knows. Regardless, I still can’t help but hope that the “Halo�� franchise starts to take some more risks with the types of stories that it's telling, because - as things are now - the series is starting to feel just a wee bit stale.