City of Pearl (The Wess'har Wars, 1)

CITY OF PEARL, the beginning of a trilogy, is a fine debut for Karen Traviss. For me, the first forty pages or so were a bit rocky, but after that I was hooked, pulled slowly but surely through the first half of the book then literally unable to put it down throughout the latter half.
Traviss' prose isn't remarkable, but it is solid and readable. Her strength, though, lies in her characters. This book is, as other reviewers have pointed out, "hard SF," but it's not about its science. It does have a group of marines, but unlike so many other books with similar plots, it doesn't devolve into milporn with stock characters and action scenes. Each character is well-developed and human, often all too human. (In fact, one of my problems with this novel is one I have with a lot of SF novels: the aliens are too human for my liking. But that's a minor quibble.) This is a very character-driven novel, despite the silliness on the cover. Also, Traviss manages the tricky feat of integrating her various themes and ideas -- environmentalism, responsibility and loyalty, heroism and courage, humanity and its various strengths and shortcomings, and plenty more -- into the novel without coming over as preachy or pretentious.
One thing about the book that left me cold was the violence. There was remarkably little of it, but what there was was neither terribly engaging nor terrible effective; it just kind of happened. Makes me wonder how the inevitable violence in Traviss' upcoming Star Wars novel will turn out.
But that aside, this is an extremely compelling and quite satisfying novel that definitely kept my interest to the end and left me thirsty for more. It ended well, with an appropriate amount of closure, and I can't wait until Book 2 comes out to get back into the lives of these characters. I wonder whether we'll stick with Shan as much in the sequel, or whether the focus will shift to a POV character closer to the Isenj. Either way, I hope and suspect we'll be seeing more of Eddie, the journalist character (into whom I suspect the author poured more than a little of herself), the Constantine colony, and, perhaps, if he can be worked in, Bennett.
Really, this is a 4.5 star novel, an extremely impressive debut and quite a worthwhile and satisfying read.

More like 1.5 stars. The premise of this book seemed so interesting, and I am always on the lookout for a new first-contact tale, but ultimately it disappointed.

The author tries desperately to present her protagonist (Shan Frankland) as a strong, willful woman but then she immediately rolls over upon meeting the alien race that dominates the story. She readily accepts that the aliens, though militaristic, brutal, and callous, are morally superior to humans because of their stewardship of the environment and the fact that they look good compared to another alien race in the story.

Among other things Frankland allows a member of her party to be executed over what was admittedly a terrible crime, but nonetheless based upon a horrible misunderstanding, and with essentially no discussion with the aliens beyond their stating "this is what has been decided." And, to boot, the misunderstanding was precipitated by Frankland keeping the science team in the dark about essentially everything (though the author tries hard not to present it that way) because she felt she was the only person who deserved to know any details due to her political acumen! At this point she becomes totally subservient to the aliens.

I don't truly think that the author is a militant environmentalist using the book as a pulpit, primarily because she demonstrates a tolerance of law enforcement and the military that I wouldn't expect froma true radical, but I can't escape a nagging feeling to that effect in the back of my mind. The whole "humanity brought this all upon itself" theme is crudely applied. It is interesting to note that many of the reviewers who rated this book highly profess a strong ecological agenda. I suspect that most of those who don't profess one do indeed have one as well.

At base I agree with much of the book's environmentalist message as well, so perhaps it tells you something that I nonetheless despise the main character. (I have even donated money to Zero Population Growth.) I love books with antihero protagonists but that isn't what this book presents- it presents a quisling. If I didn't already know some of what happens later in the series from reading reviews I wouldn't be surprised if Shan Frankland ended up as the gauleiter of Wess'har-occupied Earth, gleefully feeding her fellow humans to the gas chambers or working them to death correcting the ecological damage they had done. (At least that would be interesting.) But, I'm supposed to sympathize with this woman???

The alien Wess'har are indeed alien, in thought if not in physical form, and I enjoyed that aspect of the book since it is so rare to find an alien who isn't simply a human in a funny suit. The book was well-enough written that I may try the second in the series just to see if the first was a setup for something more impressive, but I will be checking it out of the library rather than buying it, and I will desert the rest of the 6-book (?) series if it doesn't deliver.

The wess'har are a joyless race of condescending ultra-vegans who pursue a philosophy that eschews most forms of resource consumption and the ownership of any private property that is not useful and cannot be carried in a sack. Lacking any sense of humor, they are blunt-talking, preachy (about their moral ways...they have no religion whatsoever), and supercilious, and they spend their days trying to figure out how to lessen their super-minimal impact upon the world, to the extent that most of them live in underground caves carved out of the bedrock, and when on the surface they walk randomly so as not to leave paths. They believe that every species of animal life should be considered people with full rights equal to any sentients. The wess'har lifestyle is one in which they almost regret being born, since to live is to consume and hasten entropy. Naturally, they despise humans.

Fortunately, they meet their counterpart in the form of Shan Frankland, a human cop sent as a leader of an expedition to get in contact with a lost Earth colony that has fallen under the protection of the wess'har. Frankland also hates humans, is a vegan, speaks her mind, doesn't believe in a god or afterlife, and carries all of her possessions in a tote bag. She is also the worst commander ever.

It's hard to read this book without wanting to smack the smugness out of her. Her constant mental refrain is "You don't know me, you don't understand me, you can't judge me." She's continually flabbergasted that no one really gets her, but that's probably a consequence of the fact that she openly hates everyone, treats them with contempt, hardly says two words to them, loads them down with restrictions and curfews, monopolizes all critical information, handles all alien contacts by herself, and declines to tell anyone anything important. She is disgusted by virtually every single member of the expedition and indeed the entire human race and pretty much thinks that her ways are grossly superior to those of all other people and that they are ignorant swine. The only one she warms up to is Aras, a wess'har infected with an alien virus that makes him functionally immortal and also a bit of an outcast from his own kind. They find a common bond in their dislike of humanity and their celebration of their own awesomeness and eco-friendliness.

The relentless thrusting forth of Frankland and Aras as the source of all that is pure and right grows wearisome quickly. This is especially so when the scientists in the expedition are almost uniformly portrayed as venal and grasping morons purely devoid of the slightest shred of ethics or basic compassion. I say "portrayed" rather than "characterized", because they aren't characters...they're cardboard cutouts whose only purpose is to make Frankland look good. The military personnel are almost worse, since we only learn about two of them and the rest are just names and some vague attitudes. Basically, the only point any other person serves is to show how great Frankland and her buddy Aras are, and how everyone misunderstands them and can't wait to start torching the environment and making alliances with other alien races that can only be considered as Pure Evil. (That mankind in the 2300s is still hell-bent on eating every animal everywhere, dumping toxins into the sea, multiplying out of control, and fighting petty civil wars seems a bit unlikely, but one thing that Traviss does hit on is the growing corporate influence over governments and the dubious tactics employed by agribusiness with patented crop strains and sterile plants that won't germinate to produce more seeds.)

Most readers will come away believing that a green agenda is being unsubtly blasted forth here, but I've read an interview with the author in which she states that she doesn't necessarily share the views of Frankland. Still, it's hard not to see this as an environmental polemic that verges on a hysterical screed condemning humanity and praying for an end to their thoughtless despoiling of everything. If I want to hear that, I'll go to an Al Gore lecture. I don't need it in my recreational reading.

Seems like forever since an interesting, well-written, character-based science fiction novel has been released!

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. What draws me into a book is usually the characters, and Traviss did an excellent job on this. Shan and Aras are both unique and full-fledged, with intriguing stories in their past. Their actions are believable and realistic, and the rest of the characters seemed honest as well.

I particularly liked the idea of a Suppressed Briefing. It's a device I hadn't encountered in science fiction before, and I thought it was very well done. A bit annoying at times, because I never would have gone for it, but satisfying none the less.

I also liked the idea of one's body being host to another sentient being, that could re-write DNA at will. It vaguely resembles what viruses can already do (minus the sentience of course), but it was a take I hadn't seen before. Very well done.

The universe Shan lives in is also quite thoroughly developed. The government(s) are complicated and the cultures are rich, with a bit of history thrown in.

I'm definately reading the sequel.

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.

It's always interesting to see what an author's truly able to do in a land of their own design. Karen Traviss has created a cast of likable (and some purposefully unlikable) characters.

Shan Frankland's not just any cop; she's hard edge with a conscience and that not even bleeping suppressed briefing can keep down forever. She's got a rocky relationship with her "horribly young" (27) second in command, Commander Lindsay Neville, and she's walking a diplomatic tightrope between three bonified alien species, one of which could wipe out her entire mission with sickening ease should it take a notion to do so.

Anyone want her job? Well, that's fine...she's good at what she does, too good in fact, and that's going to cost her big time. For a woman of retirement age, she sure don't know how to quit while she's ahead.

Let me state this upfront...I can't believe that this is a first novel! This is a mature and polished work, filled with deep characterization, imaginative aliens, psychological complexity and an unrelenting pace of narrative. Traviss has created a rich and very believable alien landscape, 'peopled' by characters that one truly grows to care about. Shan and Aras especially are endlessly fascinating beings, and ones that I wanted to spend
more time with. Thankfully, this is only the first book of a planned trilogy, so I expect my wish to be satisfied.
Other reviewers have outlined the basics of the story, so I won't cover the same ground. For real SF fans, Traviss has drawn on many of the great themes and genre predecessors, but has made them convincingly her own. While reading, I found in parts echoes of Anthony's 'Macroscope', Clarke's 'Childhood's End', Asimov's 'The Gods Themselves', Larry Niven's oeuvre and einlein's 'Starship Troopers' to name a few -- but creatively built upon with terrific characterizations and a unique perspective. I really can't wait to see what becomes of these new literary 'friends', and the worlds they inhabit, next!

Before I started reading City of Pearl I was most familiar with author Karen Traviss because of her first two entries into the Star Wars Universe. She is the author of Republic Commando: Hard Contact and Republic Commando: Triple Zero. These are easily two of the best Star Wars novels. City of Pearl was a well regarded debut and I had been meaning to pick the book up for months. Now I wonder what took so long.

Like the Republic Commando novels, City of Pearl focuses on the "guys on the ground". Shan Frankland is an officer in Enviromental Hazard Enforcement. What this means is that Frankland is an eco-cop. In 2299 the Earth is a pretty messed up place. Corporations own patents on every variation of seed and probably DNA on the planet. Farmers can only grow what they can buy and most seeds are terminator seeds, which means the seed dies after one planting thus making the farmers, the economy, and pretty much everyone who wants to eat, entirely beholden to corporations. Frankland's job is to enforce the laws of the planet (and beyond) in order to protect the environment from being harmed even more. She is a hard edged cop, very intimidating and willing to act without hesitation. She is also one of the few who have not accepted some sort of modification to her DNA and body to better do her job. She's just good at it.

But this is background. A senator from the Federal European Union offers Frankland a mission to a faraway planet which had been colonized by humans. The catch is that Frankland won't know exactly what the mission is after she accepts it because she is given a Suppressed Briefing. This is a drug which will inhibit the memories of the previous conversation and the memories will only return in time and when certain things trigger the memories. The Senator has her reasons and Frankland apparantly has her own reasons for accepting when she was about to retire. The mission will, because of space travel, take one hundred and fifty years of Earth time by the time Frankland returns. Everything and everyone she knows will be long gone when she comes back. Still, she accepts.

Cavanagh's Star II is the planet. Besides the remnants of the human settlement, the planet is claimed, one way or another, by three alien species: The Aquatic bezeri, the invading isenj, the harshly protective wess'har. The peace is uneasy because the wess'har have a blockade of CS2 to prevent the isenj from returning. Like everyone else, they have their reasons. The bezeri truly call the planet home.

But this is starting to get overly complicated in the description. Shan Frankland finds herself as the civilian commander of a group of marines and a team of scientists. The scientists work for corporations and want to take as many samples as they can. The humans on CS2 live in a very ecologically friendly manner and refuse to let samples be taken. Frankland finds herself siding with the natives and with the wess'har, of whom she meets Aras. Aras has a long history of protecting CS2 and the humans and he is willing to destroy Frankland's ship if necessary to protect the world.

What Karen Traviss has done here is create a military, environmental, character driven science fiction novel that doesn't hit the reader over the head with any of the points. It's quite remarkable, really. Traviss, as one might except after reading her Star Wars work, is quite adept at writing from the perspective of the soldiers. They are hard working and pragmatic and respect strong leadership and Frankland's leadership is stronger even that the military commander on that field. Frankland has to balance the requirements of the natives, the wess'har, and her own people. She also needs to discover what exactly her mission is on CS2. She hasn't found all of the trigger points to bring the briefing to the front of her mind. All of this is well written by Karen Traviss. Her focus on the characters rather than the over-reaching ambitions of the folks with true power is what is so fascinating, that she writes about the people who actuall do stuff and she writes it well.

City of Pearl is one of the best science fiction debuts I've read, though I admit I am not widely read in the genre. The only part of the novel that did not work was the cliche of using apostraphes in naming. In this case it was for some alien names rather than human, but still, I don't like it. There is much here to like, however. Traviss's use of flashbacks for Frankland was very effective as the flashback with the gorilla is one of the most memorable ones I've read and it really put the character into perspective and gave a good idea of why Frankland is the way she is. Excellent writing, excellent story and I cannot wait to read Crossing the Line, the next volume in the Wess'har Wars.

-Joe Sherry

This is the First SF novel by newcomer Karen Traviss and is an exceptionally polished work for a first novel. Even better is that it is "hard SF". As did one of the other reviewers I found that once started, this novel pulled you along until the finish, making it difficult for me to put down until I had reached the end.
This book has a very interesting central character in the person of Shan Frankland, who on the verge of retirement is persuaded to accept a mission to Cavanagh's Star, where one of the planets circling Cavanagh's Star is home to the only extraterrestrial human colony. A mission with an elapsed time of 150 years.
When they arrive at Cavanagh's star they find that the colony is there by permission of the wess'har, one of three alien species in the Cavangh system. Earths first ET contacts.
Traviss has created a realistic future earth/world. Her aliens have interesting, believable and quite different cultures. Her characters are also interesting and believable. I do not want to say to much about the storyline as I feel that it is best in this instance to let the reader discover what is going on as they themselves read the story. The story does contain/make some interesting comments on human behaviour.
So what you have is a great debut novel well worth reading. Better yet, the next novel of the wess'har wars is scheduled for publication in November 2004. And the fact that I plan to pick up and read this next novel as soon as it hits the shelves is all anyone really needs to know to judge just how impressed I was by this debut.

City of Pearl is the story of an earth-like planet that is in dispute between four species: the native acquatic species, humanity, a spidery expanionistic species, and a highly advanced civilization determined to protect the natives. The aquatic species and the advanced civilization are orignally conceived and a pleasure to read about. Humanity, on the other hand, is painted a little too bleakly for my tastes. This two-dimensional characterization is one of only two quibbles I had with this highly entertaining book. The other objection is that the book is sometimes too much of a platform for the author's vegan preachings. Aside from these two minor peeves, the plot is very engaging and comes to a satisfying, logical conclusion. I strongly recommend it.