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sarah_d's review
4.0
This book took me a bit to get into, mainly because I have a hard time when, right at the beginning of the book, several unfamiliar terms are introduced with no explanation. My brain gets caught up trying to puzzle out what these terms mean so that I can understand what's happening, and I can't move on until I do.
Luckily, I was ultimately able to move on and I'm glad I did because this was a really, really enjoyable scifi novel. The world Traviss created was compelling, I was interested in the plot and all the different dynamics between the various groups of aliens and humans, and it even made me pause to think a bit about humanity and our values (even our "good" values) and what those might look like to outsiders.
The book was very entertaining and tidied up loose ends in a way that you don't always see in a series, and that might be the best part, that there's a whole series of books following this one! I definitely look forward to reading more.
Luckily, I was ultimately able to move on and I'm glad I did because this was a really, really enjoyable scifi novel. The world Traviss created was compelling, I was interested in the plot and all the different dynamics between the various groups of aliens and humans, and it even made me pause to think a bit about humanity and our values (even our "good" values) and what those might look like to outsiders.
The book was very entertaining and tidied up loose ends in a way that you don't always see in a series, and that might be the best part, that there's a whole series of books following this one! I definitely look forward to reading more.
fiddledragon's review
5.0
I found this book through a random search on Amazon looking for new sci-fi/fantasy authors. It came up as a recommended book based on books that I'd bought in the past, I had some mad money on hand and figured if I didn't like the book I wasn't out anything.
Oh wow. I can't rightly give a review without giving much away - but I now very highly recommend this book to pretty much everyone I meet regardless of whether or not they are fans of science fiction/fantasy. The themes throughout this book are as applicable to todays world as they are to some fantastical world in the future.
Karen Traviss does a beautiful job of weaving storylines, creating characters, and sending a message - though her message is decidedly overt. Though beware - her main character is somewhat one-dimensional in this particular book. But that's ok - the rest of the book made me want to keep reading the *rest* of the books.
This is her first non-media-tie-in novel, and while I haven't read her other books, I feel it's a very good start at her own world building. The rest of the books thusfar published in the serious do well in the foundation laid here.
Oh wow. I can't rightly give a review without giving much away - but I now very highly recommend this book to pretty much everyone I meet regardless of whether or not they are fans of science fiction/fantasy. The themes throughout this book are as applicable to todays world as they are to some fantastical world in the future.
Karen Traviss does a beautiful job of weaving storylines, creating characters, and sending a message - though her message is decidedly overt. Though beware - her main character is somewhat one-dimensional in this particular book. But that's ok - the rest of the book made me want to keep reading the *rest* of the books.
This is her first non-media-tie-in novel, and while I haven't read her other books, I feel it's a very good start at her own world building. The rest of the books thusfar published in the serious do well in the foundation laid here.
boonana's review against another edition
3.0
Not the worst book I've read for a class. The first half of the novel was super slow, but once the drama with Parekh and the Bezeri developed the story started to pick up. I liked Aras at first, but when I started thinking harder on who he is as a character, I realized he wasn't very developed. Also, I'm all for strong female protagonists, but Shan seemed more like a man in woman's clothing than an actual real female perspective. Also, Shan got super annoying towards the end with Lindsay; I didn't like her feeling all fake sympathetic towards Lindsay when I knew she really didn't give a shit about her situation. Not the worst science fiction book I've read, but also not my favorite.
fbone's review
2.0
This was 392 pages of nothingness. The world creation was ok but minimal. There was such a good opportunity for more development but Traviss didn't take advantage of it. The storyline was straightforward with no surprises. The book just ended neatly with no climax. Nothing here.
celiaedf12's review
4.0
I love this series - five books, beginning with City of Pearl. We follow Shan Frankland, an environmental police officer, from an Earth controlled by corporations to a distant planet, where religious Earth settlers co-exist with several alien species. Shan is in charge of a group of scientists, who quickly get on the wrong side of the Wess'Har (the peacekeeping species who tend to ruthlessly move to eliminate any threat to the planet), and she becomes involved in increasingly complex negotiations between species.
Shan - vegan, pagan, hard-arse Shan - is a fantastic character, and I love the way she develops over these books. Can't wait to re-read the next one.
Shan - vegan, pagan, hard-arse Shan - is a fantastic character, and I love the way she develops over these books. Can't wait to re-read the next one.
scherzo's review
3.0
A few flaws, but some multi-dimensional characters, fantastic world-building and great story.
brownbetty's review
4.0
If you're reading this on Goodreads, you'll see I gave it four stars, and honestly, I almost gave it five, but decided not to only because of some uncertainty about the sequel. Not that I've read it, yet, because my public library, for reasons best known to certain city officials, lacks the funding to catalogue paperbacks, so every library expedition is a bit like a dungeon crawl. Does the library own the sequel? Who knows! Certainly not the Public Library! (Mr Katz, I hope to make you the number one google result for "library cheapskate." You're welcome.)
Back on topic. A lot of the SF I read is more properly space opera; it may pay some lip service to relativity, but the only physics it obeys are Newtonian. Here is SF with science behind it; undergirding it; moving it. Not the sort where a half chapter is taken up with cats in boxes and lecturing the reader, but the sort where the science is almost palpably a character in itself.
Shan Frankland is an interesting protagonist: a retirement-age civil-servant and former police officer. She's explicitly Pagan, something I would have liked to have seen more of, although there are something like five sequels to this book, and quite a bit more room for it to come up.
The other interesting thing, to me, was how much of the book was about ecology, and human (and alien) environments, environmental sustainability, and biology. More than is evident at the start of the novel, certainly. I want to say more, but am wary of spoiling.
I'm not entirely certain if this book is very good, or just very much the sort of thing I enjoy. It takes mature loners and gives them a connection which they didn't expect to find. I like those sorts of stories.
Back on topic. A lot of the SF I read is more properly space opera; it may pay some lip service to relativity, but the only physics it obeys are Newtonian. Here is SF with science behind it; undergirding it; moving it. Not the sort where a half chapter is taken up with cats in boxes and lecturing the reader, but the sort where the science is almost palpably a character in itself.
Shan Frankland is an interesting protagonist: a retirement-age civil-servant and former police officer. She's explicitly Pagan, something I would have liked to have seen more of, although there are something like five sequels to this book, and quite a bit more room for it to come up.
The other interesting thing, to me, was how much of the book was about ecology, and human (and alien) environments, environmental sustainability, and biology. More than is evident at the start of the novel, certainly. I want to say more, but am wary of spoiling.
I'm not entirely certain if this book is very good, or just very much the sort of thing I enjoy. It takes mature loners and gives them a connection which they didn't expect to find. I like those sorts of stories.
tachyondecay's review
3.0
Some science fiction revels in its immersion in the futurescape, that unknowable presentation of technology and society that seems so distantly related to our own. Utopian fiction likes to posit that we will somehow overcome our vices (though, for the sake of story conflict, discover wonderful new ones). Dystopian fiction does the opposite, amplifying our vices with scary new methods of oppression, while also offering the hope of an easy dismantling of the totalitarian bureaucracy, very often by a plucky young protagonist who doesn’t know any better.
So, it’s kind of nice when someone like Karen Traviss offers up science fiction that throws such comfortable ideas out the window.
City of Pearl offers no easy answers. There is no magic formula that persuades antagonists to change their mind, no way to smooth over relations and create a happily-ever-after. From the moment Shan sets down on the planet around Cavanaugh’s Star until the moment the other human ship arrives, everything just seems to get worse, despite all her efforts to make it better. In the end, Traviss makes one question whether one person can ever be enough against the inexorable tide of folly that seems to follow our species around.
This is a postcolonial novel. Science fiction is one of the best settings for postcolonialism, as City of Pearl demonstrates. It’s too easy these days to think that colonialism is "over", that just because the "colonies" are gone the attitudes don’t remain. Traviss shows that colonialism is an ongoing process, one that would extend into space travel if it possibly could. This is a story about how corporations have colonized our heritage and pushed people out into the stars, only to come chasing after them, waving patents and injunctions like so many smallpox-infected blankets. The psychic and physical destruction wrought to Bezer’ej by humans and isenj in the name of “survival”, “commerce”, or any other totem, is no different from the way colonizers of the past and present have asserted and continue to assert their rights while trampling on those of indigenous people, be they inhabitants of a continent on Earth or the bezeri in this book.
Shan is our window into this world. She exists to provide a facet of nuance to an otherwise bleak morality play that indicts humanity’s expansionist ethos. I love that Shan is so far from perfect there’s no point in measuring. She is flawed, and so human and conflicted in her choices and actions. Ostensibly an agent of “the man”, a government enforcer of bureaucracy and regulation, she nurses a wilder, more rebellious side that agrees with what some of the eco-terrorists she represses are trying to do. This is all supposed to be moot when she takes the 75-year journey away from Earth to a distant planet. But with the arrival of Actaeon, everything comes crashing down. Shan is forced to act, perhaps rashly. Yet she remains our rock, our only point of sympathetic reference, because so many of the other humans in this book seem to be fucking awful.
From the self-absorbed, self-righteous scientists to the distant governments of Earth, the other humans in City of Pearl make me ashamed of my species. And I think that’s what Traviss is going for. This is not a "yay, humanity!" book. Unfortunately, it seems all too realistic a prediction of what could happen if interstellar colonization becomes possible. Any hope that the past few centuries of history and hindsight have changed us for the better is fatally misplaced.
That’s not to say that the antagonists are one-dimensional. Some of them certainly seem that way on an individual basis. But there are plenty of people, like Eddie and Lindsay, who are grey areas. Neither antagonist nor protagonist, they are free agents who aid or act against Shan based on the dictates of their consciences, which might differ from her own. Lindsay’s character arc particularly fascinates me. She begins by supporting Shan, even when Shan’s actions start to become extreme from the others’ points of view. But as her own sense of authority erodes in proportion to her pregnancy, Lindsay begins to question whether Shan’s morality is the best for the mission. Aras’ decision to save Shan’s life by infecting her with the c’naatat compounds the problem, for when Lindsay finds out it could have saved the life of her infant, she flips out. And, on balance, it seems obvious that Shan and Aras have the right of it when they defend their decision. But that doesn’t lessen the emotional impact of the event, or make Lindsay’s pain any less real.
The climax is a harsh lesson that often there is no easy answer to these vast dilemmas. There is no easy way for Shan to shake off c’naatat and avoid a hearing regarding her actions as expedition leader. There is no easy way to deal with the political tangle of Earth governments getting cozy with the isenj even as the colonists have become closer to the wess’har. Instead, the situation just gets messier and messier, until something has to give.
City of Pearl isn’t exactly about colonizing a planet as it is not colonizing it. It’s the story of how being 75 years away can mess up the best laid plans of governments and politicians. It’s the story of how individuals make mistakes and try to make amends, and sometimes it’s just not enough. It’s messy and tragic, occasionally funny, and very entertaining.
So, it’s kind of nice when someone like Karen Traviss offers up science fiction that throws such comfortable ideas out the window.
City of Pearl offers no easy answers. There is no magic formula that persuades antagonists to change their mind, no way to smooth over relations and create a happily-ever-after. From the moment Shan sets down on the planet around Cavanaugh’s Star until the moment the other human ship arrives, everything just seems to get worse, despite all her efforts to make it better. In the end, Traviss makes one question whether one person can ever be enough against the inexorable tide of folly that seems to follow our species around.
This is a postcolonial novel. Science fiction is one of the best settings for postcolonialism, as City of Pearl demonstrates. It’s too easy these days to think that colonialism is "over", that just because the "colonies" are gone the attitudes don’t remain. Traviss shows that colonialism is an ongoing process, one that would extend into space travel if it possibly could. This is a story about how corporations have colonized our heritage and pushed people out into the stars, only to come chasing after them, waving patents and injunctions like so many smallpox-infected blankets. The psychic and physical destruction wrought to Bezer’ej by humans and isenj in the name of “survival”, “commerce”, or any other totem, is no different from the way colonizers of the past and present have asserted and continue to assert their rights while trampling on those of indigenous people, be they inhabitants of a continent on Earth or the bezeri in this book.
Shan is our window into this world. She exists to provide a facet of nuance to an otherwise bleak morality play that indicts humanity’s expansionist ethos. I love that Shan is so far from perfect there’s no point in measuring. She is flawed, and so human and conflicted in her choices and actions. Ostensibly an agent of “the man”, a government enforcer of bureaucracy and regulation, she nurses a wilder, more rebellious side that agrees with what some of the eco-terrorists she represses are trying to do. This is all supposed to be moot when she takes the 75-year journey away from Earth to a distant planet. But with the arrival of Actaeon, everything comes crashing down. Shan is forced to act, perhaps rashly. Yet she remains our rock, our only point of sympathetic reference, because so many of the other humans in this book seem to be fucking awful.
From the self-absorbed, self-righteous scientists to the distant governments of Earth, the other humans in City of Pearl make me ashamed of my species. And I think that’s what Traviss is going for. This is not a "yay, humanity!" book. Unfortunately, it seems all too realistic a prediction of what could happen if interstellar colonization becomes possible. Any hope that the past few centuries of history and hindsight have changed us for the better is fatally misplaced.
That’s not to say that the antagonists are one-dimensional. Some of them certainly seem that way on an individual basis. But there are plenty of people, like Eddie and Lindsay, who are grey areas. Neither antagonist nor protagonist, they are free agents who aid or act against Shan based on the dictates of their consciences, which might differ from her own. Lindsay’s character arc particularly fascinates me. She begins by supporting Shan, even when Shan’s actions start to become extreme from the others’ points of view. But as her own sense of authority erodes in proportion to her pregnancy, Lindsay begins to question whether Shan’s morality is the best for the mission. Aras’ decision to save Shan’s life by infecting her with the c’naatat compounds the problem, for when Lindsay finds out it could have saved the life of her infant, she flips out. And, on balance, it seems obvious that Shan and Aras have the right of it when they defend their decision. But that doesn’t lessen the emotional impact of the event, or make Lindsay’s pain any less real.
The climax is a harsh lesson that often there is no easy answer to these vast dilemmas. There is no easy way for Shan to shake off c’naatat and avoid a hearing regarding her actions as expedition leader. There is no easy way to deal with the political tangle of Earth governments getting cozy with the isenj even as the colonists have become closer to the wess’har. Instead, the situation just gets messier and messier, until something has to give.
City of Pearl isn’t exactly about colonizing a planet as it is not colonizing it. It’s the story of how being 75 years away can mess up the best laid plans of governments and politicians. It’s the story of how individuals make mistakes and try to make amends, and sometimes it’s just not enough. It’s messy and tragic, occasionally funny, and very entertaining.
will_sargent's review
3.0
Okay. I liked the overall approach to humanity on the part of the aliens (basically: humans are trash because they think they own all the life on their planet) but I found the day to day mechanics of the book to be dull.
The humans, especially the scientists, do aggressively stupid things and get stomped for it, sulk and repeat.
The alien is hulking and says little and broods, yet secretly has googly eyes for the protagonist.
Still, it's better than average.
The humans, especially the scientists, do aggressively stupid things and get stomped for it, sulk and repeat.
The alien is hulking and says little and broods, yet secretly has googly eyes for the protagonist.
Still, it's better than average.
nachof's review
3.0
El mensaje ecológico tiene toda la sutileza de un ladrillazo en la cabeza, pero no molesta demasiado. Capaz que un poco pesada la misantropía, pero bueno.
Las partes feas son las que se leen más como una carta de amor a la policía y al ejército. Son más sutiles que la parte ecológica, pero incomodan feo.
Igual el libro es ágil y entretenido.
Las partes feas son las que se leen más como una carta de amor a la policía y al ejército. Son más sutiles que la parte ecológica, pero incomodan feo.
Igual el libro es ágil y entretenido.