City of Pearl
From AwardAnnals
| Book: | City of Pearl: Book 5 of Wess'Har series |
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| Author: | Karen Traviss |
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| Publisher: | Eos |
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.
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A great debut novel of war, religion, first contact and ecology—reminiscent of Mary Doria Russell’s The Sparrow—from a talented new voice in science fiction.
The mission should have been an easy one—send eight scientists, six Royal Marines, and a disgraced anti-terrorism officer 25 light years from Earth to determine the status of the missing Constantine colony, take scientific samples and data from the potentially rich planet, and return to Earth to forthcoming professional and financial reward.
But what no-one knows is that Cavanaugh’s Star is a territory disputed by three alien races—and the mission’s landed right in the middle of the demilitarised zone. The reclusive religious human colony that has somehow miraculously survived isn’t pleased to see them, either. And the planet has its own secrets, in the form of an enigmatic alien named Aras.
Nothing in her tough police training can prepare Shan Frankland for keeping the peace between alien and human or even human and human as the conflicts escalate into outright violence, especially once a disastrous accident finds her carrying the secret of Constantine’s survival—one that will make her the most hunted human in four worlds.
Reviews
Barnes and Noble
City of Pearl, the debut novel by Karen Traviss, is a magnificently complex story about alien societies struggling to coexist on a remote planet similar to Earth. When a small team of marines and researchers—led by hard-nosed Environmental Hazard Enforcement officer Shan Frankland—comes in search of a lost human colony, their discovery is both astonishing and potentially deadly.
The planet is inhabited by an aquatic race of sentient, squidlike beings known as the bezeri. Another race, the wess’har, live on the planet’s moon and are protectors of the planet’s fragile ecosystem. Yet another race, the isenj, has made territorial claims on the planet and will not stop until they have colonized it. When Shan and her crew arrive, the tenuous balance is shattered when it is learned that a native parasite holds the secrets to immortality.
A fascinating blend of C. J. Cherryh’s Foreigner novels (for their thorough, almost sociological study of the interaction between cultures) and Anne McCaffrey’s Brain Ship novels (for their strong moral themes)—with a touch of Harry Harrison’s Deathworld trilogy (for its depticiton of strange alien flora and fauna as gruesome predators)—City of Pearl is a not only an entertaining and utterly satisfying read, it is a thought-provoking novel that raises profound questions about the role of humanity in the universe. —Paul Goat Allen
