City of Pearl

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.