[5VF]≡ Libro Free City of Pearl The Wess'har Wars Karen Traviss 9780060541699 Books

City of Pearl The Wess'har Wars Karen Traviss 9780060541699 Books

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City of Pearl The Wess'har Wars Karen Traviss 9780060541699 Books

This science fiction book takes place in the 2300s, in a future where massive corporations hold power which rivals that of governments. Every strain of food crop, from wheat to soy to beats, has been genetically altered and patented, to the point where all original strains of food crops have gone extinct and to so much as grow tomatoes in your backyard is considered theft and punishable by law. In this future, which also has seen humanity spread out to new planets from Mars and beyond the Solar System, Environmental Enforcement Officer Shan Frankland has spent her career in a never ending battle against the overreaches of these massively powerful conglomerates. She’s a police officer, a copper--she’s the one that shuts down geneticists engineering diseases tailored to exterminate crops, and other such abuses. It’s been a long and hard career, and one she’s ready to put behind her in retirement.

However, of course, retirement is snatched away from her. Shan is approached by a politician who has rescinded her right to retirement and presented with one last, critical mission: a journey to a far-off star system, a round-trip of 150 years with transit spent in cryo-stasis. Thanks to expensive drugs known as Suppressed Briefings Shan is blocked from remembering the details of her mission until such a time that the information is relevant to her, but she is left knowing that whatever she was told in that briefing was compelling enough for her jump eagerly at the mission which will condemn her to be a woman displaced from her own time forever. Little did she know that on arriving at the second planet of Cavanagh’s Star not only would she encounter humanity’s first contact with intelligent alien life, but she would become entangled in a tense standoff between _three_ sapient races, and the single tiny human colony planted a century before that drew her there in the first place.

Karen Traviss has been among my top three favorite authors for a long time now, and while I have read every instance of her Star Wars, Halo, and Gears of War novels, this is the first time I’ve read something of her original work. I was not disappointed; though the beginning of the book threw me off, as I continued to read I fell in love with the characters and the setting.

I have two criticisms for this book. The first is that the prologue, while displaying an otherwise interesting scenrio, is completely bogged down by a flood of unique sci-fi words. Are they nouns? Are they verbs? What _do_ any of these represent? We don’t know, and we aren’t given any context to help figure them out. The rapid assault of generic nonsense sci-fi vocabulary would have seen me put the book back on the shelf if I had found it browsing a bookstore, but thankfully I was already invested in the author and so pushed on. Considering City of Pearl was Traviss’ first published novel, I’m willing to forgive it as a rookie mistake made in the past. My second criticism is less concrete, and it’s that I don’t really like the whole narrative mechanic of the Suppressed Briefing. It effectively adds tension and mystery, true, but it _artificially_ does so, so I’m lukewarm at best on the concept.

Everything else about this book though, I loved. Karen Traviss’ forte is the interpersonal stories and camaraderie of military people; it’s plainly evident in her Republic Commando and Gears of War books, and it’s here as well. City of Pearl has a strong cast of likeable, empathetic, realistic characters. It also has a strong cast of detestable ****heads, who perfectly create the emotions they’re intended to evoke. Characters such as Commander Lindsay Neville the young but competent Royal Marine who woke from cryo to find her command usurped by Frankland, Sergeant Adrian Bennett who is courageous and decisive in the moment of action but loses his crap--literally--in terror once everything is settled, and Eddie Michallat the likable reporter who threw himself out of time for the chance at his great big story. Most interesting of all is Aras, who is not human at all, but a member of the titular Wess’Har people with a long and fascinating history. As discovering more about him is one of the greatest joys of the story, I’ll avoid spoilers and simply say he’s an exceedingly compelling character to figure out and discover.

City of Pearl has strong themes of environmentalism and tribalism, as you might expect when its protagonist is an Environmental Hazard Enforcer. The Wess’Har aliens live strictly under a philosophy of asceticism, taking only what they need to live. They treat all animals as if they were also people, and are repulsed by the hubris of species that would change the natural landscape with their buildings (they prefer to build their cities underground). While that’s a level of environmentalism I find frankly silly, the book does present a clear and compelling case against wanton waste and irreverent exploitation, and the chapter header for Chapter 7 provided a stunningly compelling quote for the kind of environmentalism I do support. It reads:
“The universe is not here for our convenience alone. If we assume it is simply our larder, we shall starve. If we think that damage we cannot see cannot harm, we shall be poisoned. Wess’har have a place in the universe, but we should take no more from it than we absolutely need. Being as strong as we are now, we can take everything from other beings. But we have a duty not to, because we have a choice. Those who have choices must make them. And the wider the choices one has, the more restrained one must be in making them.”
As for the themes of tribalism, that is evident in the way some of the civilian scientists on the mission behave. They assume that the dominance of humanity on Earth has carried over to this new alien world, and that it is within their right to take what they please from it--even failing to recognize that what they are trying to take is another sapient being of equal worth as themselves.

The human colony of Constantine that came to this alien planet centuries ago is a Christian community that set out with a mission, to index and preserve the genetic diversity of Earth’s flora and fauna as a safeguard against the planet’s destruction by mankind. It was a unique and interesting experience to see Christians prominently featured in science fiction, and I was glad to see that they were presented earnestly in good faith, yet also not written as the infallible beacon of light and truth and unfailing virtue that I myself might have been tempted to make them. What they were was a representation of hope for mankind. Shan Frankland is a jaded cop who’s seen all the worst of mankind, and the humility and honest lifestyles of the colonists is stunning and refreshing to her, even though she herself is a Pagan.
Still, while I did enjoy it all, I can easily see how the constant moralizing of environmentalism and veganism (the Wess’har continually demonize mankind for eating meat, and their word for us even translates to “carrion-eater”) can quickly and severely grate against people’s nerves. Traviss was very much not subtle in that respect in this book, and that heavy hand is not something she lost over time--in the Kilo-Five trilogy Halo books, Traviss perpetually demonized Dr. Halsey to an absurd degree in both frequency and severity. If I have on piece of advice for Traviss (who is, remember, my favorite author), it would be to learn that difficult art of subtlety.

To bring it all together, the story of City of Pearl has an incredibly gripping plot. The tension ramps up perfectly as the political and military situation becomes more and more revealed and simultaneously more and more complex and dangerous. It was a fantastic read all the way through, and I can’t wait to read the next in the series.


Tags : City of Pearl (The Wess'har Wars) [Karen Traviss] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Three separate alien societies have claimson Cavanagh's Star. But the new arrivals -- the gethes from Earth -- now threaten thetenuous balance of a coveted world. Environmental Hazard Enforcement officer Shan Frankland agreed to lead a mission to Cavanagh's Star,Karen Traviss,City of Pearl (The Wess'har Wars),Harper Voyager,0060541695,Science Fiction - Action & Adventure,Science Fiction - General,Science Fiction - Space Opera,Human-alien encounters,Life on other planets,FICTION Science Fiction Action & Adventure,FICTION Science Fiction General,FICTION Science Fiction Space Opera,Fiction,Fiction - Science Fiction,FictionScience Fiction - Action & Adventure,Science fiction

City of Pearl The Wess'har Wars Karen Traviss 9780060541699 Books Reviews

Karen Traviss knows what she wants to do, and she knows how to bring it off. "City" is a fine example of 21st-century "character" based sf (think Catharine Asaro, Kristine Smith, Lois Bujold) that the author hooks onto a standard-issue survey team tale that John W. Campbell could have pubished 50 years ago.

Her Shan Frankland, the cynical protagonist, is in charge of the usual "survey team" components--herself, marines, and some truly obsessed scientists ("the payload"), and the inevitable journalist. They they touch down near a human colony on a world that's inhabited by an alien species that lives underwater, under the protection of another, one of whom is on station looking out for the colony. His species inhabits the planet's moon.

Splendidly done. Nicely paced. Well thought out. First of a trilogy. I'm there for the second.

Notes and asides At one point Shan visits the aliens on the the planet's moon, and we learn that the gravity there is even heavier than the gravity on the planet, which is heavier than earth's. So this system is really a double planet, one of which has aliens living under water. What about the tides? There ought to be major tidal issues, to say nothing of quakes.
I finished City of Pearl in about three days, I just could not put it down except to eat, sleep work and do some writing of my own, and even then I wanted to get back to reading. The story is a classic, humanity's first contact with another intelligent species, or rather, several intelligent species. But these aliens are true aliens, not just men in lizard suits (unlike the equally classic Star Trek TOS episode, "Arena"). Their culture, motives and ethics are foreign to the humans they have to deal with. And that's not even when things get really interesting...

City of Pearl is a very well crafted first contact story, but its greatest success, in my own opinion, is as a commentary on how different cultures can possess wildly different ethics and morality.
Karen Traviss never fails to both compel and intrigue. Not only does she have a limitless imagination, she has a deep understanding of human complexity and weakness when translated on to the page is a dazzling story that is both foreign and relatable.

I cannot recommend her writing enough, and the wold she's created through the Wess'har is fascinating and rich. Going to buy the next book now!

(This book is the first in a series)
There is a lot of great writing in this book, but not much of it is traditional science fiction action.

This book is driven by the characters and their relationships. It is overall a very good story, but if you are looking for space battles or gun fights, you've come to the wrong place.
myself an avid life long science fiction reader. of late too many books i have come across were rated highly but were so predictable, almost scripted. this book absolutely is not like those. this is book is refreshingly good imho. it is unique, creative, good story lines and characters. the author has a knowledge of science (rare these days). the writing style keeps you wanting to go on and on. i wish more contemporary authors would follow her example in regards to this work of fiction. my reviews for books i read are either for the really bad ones or the really goods ones and this most certainly falls into the latter category, just great!
This science fiction book takes place in the 2300s, in a future where massive corporations hold power which rivals that of governments. Every strain of food crop, from wheat to soy to beats, has been genetically altered and patented, to the point where all original strains of food crops have gone extinct and to so much as grow tomatoes in your backyard is considered theft and punishable by law. In this future, which also has seen humanity spread out to new planets from Mars and beyond the Solar System, Environmental Enforcement Officer Shan Frankland has spent her career in a never ending battle against the overreaches of these massively powerful conglomerates. She’s a police officer, a copper--she’s the one that shuts down geneticists engineering diseases tailored to exterminate crops, and other such abuses. It’s been a long and hard career, and one she’s ready to put behind her in retirement.

However, of course, retirement is snatched away from her. Shan is approached by a politician who has rescinded her right to retirement and presented with one last, critical mission a journey to a far-off star system, a round-trip of 150 years with transit spent in cryo-stasis. Thanks to expensive drugs known as Suppressed Briefings Shan is blocked from remembering the details of her mission until such a time that the information is relevant to her, but she is left knowing that whatever she was told in that briefing was compelling enough for her jump eagerly at the mission which will condemn her to be a woman displaced from her own time forever. Little did she know that on arriving at the second planet of Cavanagh’s Star not only would she encounter humanity’s first contact with intelligent alien life, but she would become entangled in a tense standoff between _three_ sapient races, and the single tiny human colony planted a century before that drew her there in the first place.

Karen Traviss has been among my top three favorite authors for a long time now, and while I have read every instance of her Star Wars, Halo, and Gears of War novels, this is the first time I’ve read something of her original work. I was not disappointed; though the beginning of the book threw me off, as I continued to read I fell in love with the characters and the setting.

I have two criticisms for this book. The first is that the prologue, while displaying an otherwise interesting scenrio, is completely bogged down by a flood of unique sci-fi words. Are they nouns? Are they verbs? What _do_ any of these represent? We don’t know, and we aren’t given any context to help figure them out. The rapid assault of generic nonsense sci-fi vocabulary would have seen me put the book back on the shelf if I had found it browsing a bookstore, but thankfully I was already invested in the author and so pushed on. Considering City of Pearl was Traviss’ first published novel, I’m willing to forgive it as a rookie mistake made in the past. My second criticism is less concrete, and it’s that I don’t really like the whole narrative mechanic of the Suppressed Briefing. It effectively adds tension and mystery, true, but it _artificially_ does so, so I’m lukewarm at best on the concept.

Everything else about this book though, I loved. Karen Traviss’ forte is the interpersonal stories and camaraderie of military people; it’s plainly evident in her Republic Commando and Gears of War books, and it’s here as well. City of Pearl has a strong cast of likeable, empathetic, realistic characters. It also has a strong cast of detestable ****heads, who perfectly create the emotions they’re intended to evoke. Characters such as Commander Lindsay Neville the young but competent Royal Marine who woke from cryo to find her command usurped by Frankland, Sergeant Adrian Bennett who is courageous and decisive in the moment of action but loses his crap--literally--in terror once everything is settled, and Eddie Michallat the likable reporter who threw himself out of time for the chance at his great big story. Most interesting of all is Aras, who is not human at all, but a member of the titular Wess’Har people with a long and fascinating history. As discovering more about him is one of the greatest joys of the story, I’ll avoid spoilers and simply say he’s an exceedingly compelling character to figure out and discover.

City of Pearl has strong themes of environmentalism and tribalism, as you might expect when its protagonist is an Environmental Hazard Enforcer. The Wess’Har aliens live strictly under a philosophy of asceticism, taking only what they need to live. They treat all animals as if they were also people, and are repulsed by the hubris of species that would change the natural landscape with their buildings (they prefer to build their cities underground). While that’s a level of environmentalism I find frankly silly, the book does present a clear and compelling case against wanton waste and irreverent exploitation, and the chapter header for Chapter 7 provided a stunningly compelling quote for the kind of environmentalism I do support. It reads
“The universe is not here for our convenience alone. If we assume it is simply our larder, we shall starve. If we think that damage we cannot see cannot harm, we shall be poisoned. Wess’har have a place in the universe, but we should take no more from it than we absolutely need. Being as strong as we are now, we can take everything from other beings. But we have a duty not to, because we have a choice. Those who have choices must make them. And the wider the choices one has, the more restrained one must be in making them.”
As for the themes of tribalism, that is evident in the way some of the civilian scientists on the mission behave. They assume that the dominance of humanity on Earth has carried over to this new alien world, and that it is within their right to take what they please from it--even failing to recognize that what they are trying to take is another sapient being of equal worth as themselves.

The human colony of Constantine that came to this alien planet centuries ago is a Christian community that set out with a mission, to index and preserve the genetic diversity of Earth’s flora and fauna as a safeguard against the planet’s destruction by mankind. It was a unique and interesting experience to see Christians prominently featured in science fiction, and I was glad to see that they were presented earnestly in good faith, yet also not written as the infallible beacon of light and truth and unfailing virtue that I myself might have been tempted to make them. What they were was a representation of hope for mankind. Shan Frankland is a jaded cop who’s seen all the worst of mankind, and the humility and honest lifestyles of the colonists is stunning and refreshing to her, even though she herself is a Pagan.
Still, while I did enjoy it all, I can easily see how the constant moralizing of environmentalism and veganism (the Wess’har continually demonize mankind for eating meat, and their word for us even translates to “carrion-eater”) can quickly and severely grate against people’s nerves. Traviss was very much not subtle in that respect in this book, and that heavy hand is not something she lost over time--in the Kilo-Five trilogy Halo books, Traviss perpetually demonized Dr. Halsey to an absurd degree in both frequency and severity. If I have on piece of advice for Traviss (who is, remember, my favorite author), it would be to learn that difficult art of subtlety.

To bring it all together, the story of City of Pearl has an incredibly gripping plot. The tension ramps up perfectly as the political and military situation becomes more and more revealed and simultaneously more and more complex and dangerous. It was a fantastic read all the way through, and I can’t wait to read the next in the series.