City of Pearl
Ratings8
Average rating3.3
15
Ratings8
Average rating3.3
Three separate alien societies have claims on Cavanagh's Star. But the new arrivals -- the gethes from Earth -- now threaten the tenuous balance of a coveted world. Environmental Hazard Enforcement officer Shan Frankland agreed to lead a mission to Cavanagh's Star, knowing that 150 years would elapse before she could finally return home. But her landing, with a small group of scientists and Marines, has not gone unnoticed by Aras, the planet's designated guardian. An eternally evolving world himself, this sad, powerful being has already obliterated millions of alien interlopers and their great cities to protect the fragile native population. Now Shan and her party -- plus the small colony of fundamentalist humans who preceded them -- could face a similar annihilation . . . or a fate far worse. Because Aras possesses a secret of the blood that would be disastrous if it fell into human hands -- if the gethes survive the impending war their coming has inadvertently hastened.
Series
4 primary booksThe Wess'har Wars is a 4-book series with 4 primary works first released in 2004 with contributions by Karen Traviss.
Reviews with the most likes.
I first discovered Karen Traviss while reading a Star Wars novel that she'd written, and at the time I remembered thinking that she was far too good of a writer to be stuck writing movie tie-in novels. If I thought that before, it's definitely been reinforced after reading City Of Pearl, the first novel in her “Wess'har” series.
This novel stars Shan Frankland, a police officer in the European Union's environmental hazards division, who is sent along with some scientists and marines to track down a missing group of colonists who may hold the key to humanity's future with them. As soon as the group arrives at their destination, they find themselves in the middle of an intergalactic cold war between no less than three alien species.
There's a lot going on in this novel - it is, at various times, a critique of corporatism and genetic modification, while also being a manifesto on veganism and situational morality. At the same time, as well, it's enjoyable on the level of being a cool-as-hell science fiction adventure story, full of political intrigue and complex ethical quandaries. Traviss also does an excellent job of presenting the three alien species in the novel as all unique, and fully-developed races. We see each of them as having their own culture, philosophy, and political factioning within their culture. It's a lot more thought than what normally goes into alien species within science fiction novels, and it would be an enjoyable read on that level alone, even if it didn't have the complex political and philosophical commentaries built into it as well.
Read 10% and gave up. Too slow, too confusing, too generic, too nowadays tech and ideas (in supposedly far future). But mainly too slow-going.
