The World Before

By book three, the badass female protagonist is still badass, but pretty much every other "good" character has become completely incompetent at everything and either needs to be rescued by the protagonist or manages to create additional problems for her. Which is frustrating - several of them were interesting characters.

"What am I then, then?" asked Sergeant Bennett.

This sentence has become one of my favorite "first lines". It's a knockout, especially when followed by:

"Am I still human?"

To reveal more would be to risk telling a plot spoiler. This book begins with a punch, and it is one of the reasons I recommend reading the series from the beginning.

All six of the wess'har war books in the series can stand alone. Not every series deserves to have all the books read in order of publication. This series, though, is worth reading all the way through from the beginning work, "The City of Pearl".

The third wess'har novel, "The World Before", continues to unfold the fascinating characters introduced in the first book, knitting their lives together in totally show more unexpected but satisfying ways and places.

I like the plot twists in Karen's books more than nearly anything I've read, and I don't intend spoil the surprises for anyone else, so it becomes a challenge to convey the excitement of discovery, the pleasure of the tantalizing developments in this story.

Five alien societies live and rub shoulders in the wess'har war series, (humans included). They all have domestic and political problems, which are dwarfed by the secret,: something so transforming of their worlds that obtaining or containing it becomes their top priority.

Russell Letson, reviewing Karen's second book, "Crossing the Line" in Locus (2004), favorably compares Traviss to Le Guin, Nancy Kress, and C.J. Cherryh. I agree with him: Karen's writing is easily as entertaining, thought-provoking and skillful as any of the leading lights of Science Fiction today. To his list, I would add David Brin (the Uplift series), and S. L. Viehl. (Stardoc series), two of my personal favorites.

Looking for aliens that are truly alien and not just humans in funny costumes? Looking for unforgettable characters, in spite of (or is it because of) they're flaws? Looking for a plot you cannot see coming a mile away, but which is believable once it arrives?

The wess'har war books give all that and more. Just don't make the same mistake I did, but order all five of yours together. Because once you start reading, you won't be able to put them down. Since I only ordered the first two in paperback, and couldn't wait for the next three to be delivered, I ended up with those three in digital format. Now I'm usually agreeable with digital books, but these five novels are books I want to take places with me, read again when I go on vacation, handle and pop open and consider. Not so easy with digital. You've been cautioned.

(My original review was first published at Forward Motion online, and on my blog, Pandababy.) show less

The wheels of doom continue to slowly grind forward in this portion of the series, as the impact of just what has happened to the Bezer'ej in "Crossing the Line" begins to wash over all concerned. The real climax of this book has less to do with Shan Frankland (despite her stunning reemergence) then it does with how Frankland's companions, Aras and Sgt. Ade Bennett, deal with their excruciatingly complicated mutual sense of obligation, and how justice is exacted from Lindsay Neville and Mohan Rayat for their genocidal actions.

This 3rd novel in the Wess'har series begins with the potential for war between Wess'ej and Earth. The action and idea-packed first two books in the series raised a lot of questions and complexities; however, many of those answers are put on hold and this novel feels more like a setup for future books in the series. Traviss set the bar high and this sort of pause is still better than 90% of the science fiction out there.

The third volume in The Wess'har Wars series. As opposed to in the earlier books in the series, the plot gets a bit over convoluted in this volume. There is too much focus on particular themes and the ending is unbelievable at many levels. I'm not giving up on the series however. Traviss is a good and intelligent writer.

What happens when a culture fanatically devoted to ecological balance, the Wess'har is asked to remediate a world overrun by the dominant sentient species? Chilling but less engaging than the first two books in the series.

And Ms Traviss continues to continues to marry very different themes and pose awkward questions with no easy answers in this series that for all its SF trappings is very much about today.