Wess'Har Wars
Jun. 24th, 2007 01:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
varjohaltiaI've been reading the series of Wess'Har books by Karen Traviss, and just finished with the latest one, Ally. I assume there will be more, judging by the ending.
The basic setting is a human extrasolar mission going to find an earlier, pioneering religious group that had taken with it, much like Noah's Ark, a gene bank to an alien world. There are a few alien races, and a parasite that grants near immortality. The first book starts off as a fairly generic sci-fi romp, but oddly enough the series gets better as it goes along; the prose suffers a bit, as it tends to in series where the author gets too familiar with what they're doing and the guaranteed paycheck, but the ideas and moral complexities grow at an astouding rate.
The basic read, and I suspect Ms. Traviss' personal take, is one putting little faith in Christianity and bordering a little on eco-fascism. I'm comfortable with this thematic, so it doesn't bother me nearly as much as I suspect it will some of my friends. However, the calls of what is right, what is wrong, what is too high a price to pay for sustainability, the ethics of expansion, of ecological management, of the superiority of a race versus another, the importance of intent vs. outcomes, and relativity of ethics between races all take center stage.
The protagonists in the series tend to suffer from being better than thou, although at some point it dawns on you that even those entirely certain of the correctness of their decisions may, in fact, not be on the side of the line they think they are, nor on the side the reader might think they should be. They never become truly deep and realistic individuals, but they're not paper-thin either, they're interesting, and they play succesfully to some stereotypes. There are a few foils for them, although they tend to strike me as a bit too extreme, and at times oversimplified.
The main protagonist or character has much of the same butt-kicking tom-boy attitude as Anita Blake and while I like this and can admire her, she never really becomes a likeable character; she's too broken and aggressive for that. Yet, Ms. Traviss doesn't torture her characters too much -- it could be argued that she's bending over the Mary Sue camp if anything. Beyond that, I really rather like the writing style. It is always a pleasure to read, not too contrived nor too simple, and the pacing, action and suspense of the plots is excellent. Several of the books in this series have kept me up until I've finished them, despite a looming work day mere hours away. Whatever else can be said, there rarely is a compliment higher than that for a literary work.
The alien races and cultures are very nice. Some liberties have been taken with the ability to communicate and share an environment, but less so than in many other works, and some can be conceivably explained away to satisfaction. None of the aliens are "evil" or bent on destruction, and I appreciate how the problem of balancing their relative interests and deeper look into their natures serves as a setting for pondering humanity as well.
In short, I really like this series; I found it to be an extraordinarily fun read, yet one that made me frequently pause, set the book aside, and ponder what I would do in a given situation, and just how I would balance things if I had a choice.
The basic setting is a human extrasolar mission going to find an earlier, pioneering religious group that had taken with it, much like Noah's Ark, a gene bank to an alien world. There are a few alien races, and a parasite that grants near immortality. The first book starts off as a fairly generic sci-fi romp, but oddly enough the series gets better as it goes along; the prose suffers a bit, as it tends to in series where the author gets too familiar with what they're doing and the guaranteed paycheck, but the ideas and moral complexities grow at an astouding rate.
The basic read, and I suspect Ms. Traviss' personal take, is one putting little faith in Christianity and bordering a little on eco-fascism. I'm comfortable with this thematic, so it doesn't bother me nearly as much as I suspect it will some of my friends. However, the calls of what is right, what is wrong, what is too high a price to pay for sustainability, the ethics of expansion, of ecological management, of the superiority of a race versus another, the importance of intent vs. outcomes, and relativity of ethics between races all take center stage.
The protagonists in the series tend to suffer from being better than thou, although at some point it dawns on you that even those entirely certain of the correctness of their decisions may, in fact, not be on the side of the line they think they are, nor on the side the reader might think they should be. They never become truly deep and realistic individuals, but they're not paper-thin either, they're interesting, and they play succesfully to some stereotypes. There are a few foils for them, although they tend to strike me as a bit too extreme, and at times oversimplified.
The main protagonist or character has much of the same butt-kicking tom-boy attitude as Anita Blake and while I like this and can admire her, she never really becomes a likeable character; she's too broken and aggressive for that. Yet, Ms. Traviss doesn't torture her characters too much -- it could be argued that she's bending over the Mary Sue camp if anything. Beyond that, I really rather like the writing style. It is always a pleasure to read, not too contrived nor too simple, and the pacing, action and suspense of the plots is excellent. Several of the books in this series have kept me up until I've finished them, despite a looming work day mere hours away. Whatever else can be said, there rarely is a compliment higher than that for a literary work.
The alien races and cultures are very nice. Some liberties have been taken with the ability to communicate and share an environment, but less so than in many other works, and some can be conceivably explained away to satisfaction. None of the aliens are "evil" or bent on destruction, and I appreciate how the problem of balancing their relative interests and deeper look into their natures serves as a setting for pondering humanity as well.
In short, I really like this series; I found it to be an extraordinarily fun read, yet one that made me frequently pause, set the book aside, and ponder what I would do in a given situation, and just how I would balance things if I had a choice.
