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Old 10-29-2009, 11:14 AM   #32
owlrigh
Bibliomanist
owlrigh began at the beginning.
 
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Location: Australia, somewhere
Device: [past:PRS-700, PRS-505, PRS-T2] Now: Kobo Glo HD, Samsung G7 Edge
Sony had City of Pearl, by Karen Traviss, book one of the Wess'Har series, available for free a while ago. I downloaded and duly read it; it was readable, just, and I was curious to see how the next book went -- whether it got better ... no, it didn't, and book three was WORSE. Apparently book four has her cutting open her belly to retrieve her fetus, which she then puts under a pile of rocks and then grenades to keep it from staying alive (she's become immortal).

But in the first book -- she's part of an expedition sent from Earth to see what happened to a bunch of Christian separatists who went offworld years ago and haven't been heard of since. She finds them on a planet protected by the Wess'Har, ultra-light backpackers, vegan, hard core environmentalists extraordinaire; to keep worlds 'pure' they see nothing wrong with extermination of a particular, deemed dangerous species.

As the books go on the protagonist sees all humans as unworthy, that only the pure Wess'Har belief is worthwhile, and that everyone must be culled for their own good -- isenj and humans alike.

The ideology is puerile and simplistic, with honesty being prized above everything, reacting with violence the highest form of ... truthful morality. Humans and aliens, all of the species, have a very same thought process; for all that we're told they are very different, whenever we are in the thought process of one of the aliens, if it weren't for the names being different then you'd not see which was what.

Not to mention the whole pining-after-Shan thing happening; Mary Sue galore. Any man wanting her and any female wanting to BE her, although from what I can see she's a simple-minded, antagonistic thug!

... avoid.
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