[Kamakhya]

It's not quite midnight here on the Left Coast of the US, but we might as well get the party started. :)

We seem to do a lot of first books by new authors here, for better or for worse. This one seemed to be for the better for me. I liked it so much, that I went out and bought the second in the trilogy as soon as I finished City of Pearl.

I thought there was a good plot line and some believable characters. What I didn't like was the sort of heavy handed ideology. While I tended to agree with the ideology, it seemed a bit too much even for my tastes. However, it did seem to advance the story, at least in terms of understanding the aliens.

At any rate, I will try and post more when I have some more time to reflect on the story.

What did you think?

[FicusFan]

Good grief. The month has almost started and I have yet to start reading. I better get on the ball. By the way the title of the thread you used is 'March BOTM' , but its really the February BOTM. We are still voting on March.

[Erfael]

I have other thoughts, but I would just like to shoot in that I thought that all of the save-the-earth stuff was pretty well-presented and not too heavy at all. Then again, it's only been a few short months since I read Beauty by Sheri S. Tepper for the fantasy group, who lays it on way too thick, so maybe it's all about perspective.

I have other thoughts, but just got home and don't feellike typing more right now.

[Rob B]

Anybody who has read my review (http://www.sffworld.com/brevoff/145.html) knows how impressed I was with this novel. I really admired Shan Frankland's chararacter and enjoyed reading her story. I thought the interaction between all of the cultures was very engaging and very thought-provoking.

I felt on the whole the entire novel was very polished, and much more even than many a first novel.

[Archren]

I'll start by reposting my review from January:

"I finished reading "City of Pearl" by Karen Traviss over the weekend. I think this will be a book club book soon, but so many people here were interested in it that I had to give it a go. I very much enjoyed it, and I will be reading the next one, but I did find it flawed.

1) Good alien, bad alien. This is a cliche that is admittedly hard to eliminate from SF writing, but the wess'har are pretty much all good environmentalists, the isenj are all bad exploiters and the besser'ej(?) are pretty much just passive victims.
2) Good Marines, Bad scientists. The scientists all act in an irrational and xenophobic way that makes no sense to me at all. Apparently they are all in thrall to evil corporations and greed makes them selfish. They have no ethics and are all one-dimensional characters. On the other hand the armed forces on the expedition are all rational, willing to deal with the aliens and their regulations and perfectly fine with abandoning the interests of their own species. This goes against stereotype, which is cool, but introduces a new stereotype that makes no sense.

On the other hand, there were great strong female characters, the alien main character was really interesting and the plot moved well. I can't say I agree totally with the political stance it takes, but that didn't detract from enjoying the book as a whole."

[Kamakhya]

Good grief. The month has almost started and I have yet to start reading. I better get on the ball. By the way the title of the thread you used is 'March BOTM' , but its really the February BOTM. We are still voting on March.Thanks for the correction. It appears that someone beat me to the fix. :)

[FicusFan]

Well this thread seems a little quiet so I will post, even though I am still reading. In fact for some reason I find it very easy to put the book down, yet I like what I have read so far. Strange.

I am reminded of two things so far. One is CJ Cherryh - this seems like a type of book she would have written. The other is that with the " ' " in the names and something actually being " 'Har ", it reminds me of Walter Hunt's series that started with Dark Wing . I am at the point where I still don't know what Aras is -- but I am wondering if he/she/it is bird-like.

I was a bit confused about the gorilla, and where it was, and if it was a real gorilla. They seemed to be in suits on Mars and floating around, but I wasn't sure if they were in hardsuits in vacuume or if they had put some type of atmosphere on Mars.

I also liked the idea of a suppressed briefing. Only knowing what you need to when you need to. Cool Idea.

Well I will go back to reading now.

[Rocket Sheep]

I'm sorry, I haven't read this book. I just wanted to make sure that science fiction fans who never go to the fantasy section realise that their book of the month is Jeff Vandermeer's Veniss Underground. So naturally, there is a bit of sf type discussion going on there since VU blends, sf, horror and fantasy.

[Erfael]

Another quick bit about this one:

I cringed when I first read about the suppressed briefing. With a first-time author, pulling something like a suppressed briefing seemed like it was a total setup for a plot coupon. "I have no other way to move the story ahead, so I'll just pop in some new info whenever I need it." I was pleasantly surprised that that wasn't the case, though I was a little disappointed by how small a part the briefing actually played after all the setup for it.

I agree with the good/bad slant that Archren points out...it is a little simple and tired. Though to really flesh out the races and shade them in more ways would have taken more time, which could have affected the narrative even more negatively than the stereotype.

The book does have a real set-up feel to it. While I enjoyed the whole of it, there really wasn't that much of a plot. It seemed more like a prelude to the war she is setting up for the next books.

[Archren]

One thing I find interesting is that the clearly "Good" aliens, the wess'har have no problem with genocide of intelligent species. She seems to take the view that killing innocents is just fine as long as they are of the same species that is doing something bad to even more "innocent" species, like the squid people.

How do people feel about that sort of ethical statement?