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A review by captnpanda
City of Pearl by Karen Traviss
4.0
City of Pearl starts in an intriguing disjointed way, trying to figure out who exactly is being thrown at you and what their significance is to the setting. It was just enough to keep me intrigued and keep me reading.
It rewards you with the interesting dilemma of how Humans perceive life outside of earth, what is the morality of exploring and sampling alien life for the sake of research and science. At first I was worried that a book that is 15 years old would come across as outdated in a moral dilemma sense, but these trials and tribulations still felt very relate-able to society today.
While Shan was a very hot and cold character to me. I would like her and then dislike her in the very next paragraph. Still having her as a focal point for a majority of the story was fitting as she has to face many challenges both with appeasing the Locals and also making her crew happy as well. The sense of her being "stuck" in the middle of Human and Alien affairs eventually transitions to the bigger scope of things, where it is no longer only Shan between Alien Political affairs and what she feels is right but now all of human race.
All in all it was a very interesting read, some events that take place which have vital important to the plot did seem a bit mulled over and rushed, only briefly revisited before the end of the book, which is the only thing keeping this book from 5 stars for me. Even most of the other characters that you are introduced to are shown such insignificance with only a few still reaching barely mentioning. It branched as far as the ending, where every loose end was wrapped up in a neat brief little bow. I would have found myself more disappointed if I didn't know this was a series. I was hoping for a more climatic almost cliffhanger ending. Even with those faults, this series has a fan so far that will keep reading.
It rewards you with the interesting dilemma of how Humans perceive life outside of earth, what is the morality of exploring and sampling alien life for the sake of research and science. At first I was worried that a book that is 15 years old would come across as outdated in a moral dilemma sense, but these trials and tribulations still felt very relate-able to society today.
While Shan was a very hot and cold character to me. I would like her and then dislike her in the very next paragraph. Still having her as a focal point for a majority of the story was fitting as she has to face many challenges both with appeasing the Locals and also making her crew happy as well. The sense of her being "stuck" in the middle of Human and Alien affairs eventually transitions to the bigger scope of things, where it is no longer only Shan between Alien Political affairs and what she feels is right but now all of human race.
All in all it was a very interesting read, some events that take place which have vital important to the plot did seem a bit mulled over and rushed, only briefly revisited before the end of the book, which is the only thing keeping this book from 5 stars for me. Even most of the other characters that you are introduced to are shown such insignificance with only a few still reaching barely mentioning. It branched as far as the ending, where every loose end was wrapped up in a neat brief little bow. I would have found myself more disappointed if I didn't know this was a series. I was hoping for a more climatic almost cliffhanger ending. Even with those faults, this series has a fan so far that will keep reading.