mostly harmless books

Via Joe, great news: Karen Traviss’ City of Pearl is available online.
(The offer is for US residents only, and you have to sign up to get the book, which I didn’t bother to do… so I wonder if it’s downloadable from other countries too.)

I didn’t write about City of Pearl, because I read it a year before starting this blog, but some rambling about the series and Ally (book 5) here and here. In short: bloody good SF.

Yesterday, when I left home, I took Ally with me thinking I had about 20 pages to go, more than enough for the journey downtown. I finished the book unexpectedly, after about 5 pages, in a subway station. “Whoa! The ship left! Let’s see what happens next… Shit, the book’s over!” Who’d have thought a book has acknowledgments and editorial stuff at the end? Yeah, I’m a bit thick sometimes.

I thought of 2 or 3 titles before finally deciding on this one. I think it fits, because in the end, almost every character in the book is alien in a way. The wess’har, the eqbas, the bezeri, the isenj are the “classic” aliens. Little green men (squid, insects…) from Mars (Bezer’ej, Umeh…). But Shan, Eddie, the marines are also aliens. Shan was an alien even on Earth due to her unusual mentality; Eddie became an alien when he got attached to Wess’ej and a little matriarch-to-be.

One of my favorite aspects of the book was the wess’har amazement at the way humans conduct their affairs. Once you think about it, we don’t make much sense, and it’s very weird to hear it coming from an alien, completely innocently. It’s never judging, it’s simple curiosity: how can humans be so stupid? It’s a very refreshing change of perspective after all the SF based around “the human spirit” conquering all. Let’s face it, we’re screwing up our planet and fighting pointless wars, we probably shouldn’t be running loose around the galaxy.

But then… is genocide justified for environmental reasons? (more…)

Just random thoughts so far. I’d had (and ignored) City of Pearl by Karen Traviss for years when I was asked to read it and the following two books in the series, for work. I was pretty dissapointed with SF in general at the time, after a couple of much-praised books I didn’t like, so I was expecting to trudge through these. I was blown away.

It is classic SF in some aspects: we’ve got humans and aliens, FTL travel, high-tech guns and communications and everything… but it’s not Star Trek. First off, it’s got an environmental theme, which would’ve been enough to get me interested. But it’s also got ethical dilemmas that make you (well, me) really think. It’s got relationships (and alien sex! :D). It’s got drama. It’s got more moral dilemmas. It’s got a bunch of different characters, but I like them so much it’s impossible to decide on a favorite. It’s got a writer who, judging by her background (journalism, military-type stuff), knows what she’s writing about. And she does it in the most awesome British English!

I’m halfway through book 5 (Ally) at the moment and loving it. The only unfortunate thing is that I read the rest of the books almost a year ago and I’m realizing how many details I forgot…

It’s also a bit weird that a book about aliens and their thoughts can remind me so much of some of my friends.