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19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
I wish I could give this one more than 5 stars..., October 29, 2005
This review is from: The World Before (Mass Market Paperback)
WARNING: THIS CONTAINS SPOILERS REGARDING CITY OF PEARL & CROSSING THE LINE
The third of Karen Traviss's Wess'har Wars 6 part series (although only three have been published to date) is The World Before.
This book continues in our year 2376, shortly after the conclusion of the events in Crossing the Line, with Aras and Ade surveying the devastation on Bezer'ej.
We see how these two try to cope with their significant loss and begin their bond as "brothers". The emotional input into these characters goes beyond what we saw in the previous two books and means that as they progress we feel not only their pain but the difficulty that goes with a significant decision that each has to make near the end of the book - an ending that is even more emotionally charged and stunning than that in Crossing the Line.
The book introduces us to the Wess'har from Eqbas Vhori - the original planet of their species from which the Wess'ej clans split 10,000 years earlier because they preferred a simpler life. We see their much more advanced technology, their different lifestyle and their interventionist approach to the environmental issues of other worlds, in this case including Bezer'ej, Umeh and Earth.
Once again the narrative is very fast paced but is even more fabulously descriptive. The character development has grown exponentially, to the point where I actually teared up whilst some were agonising over making significant decisions.
The book is even better than the first - and the second - and I again highly recommend it to everyone.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The World Before Series, January 9, 2007
This review is from: The World Before (Mass Market Paperback)
An excellent read, I have become very fond of the characters in her previous two books in this series. (City of Pearl & Crossing the Line) I almost didn't purchase the first one but am very glad I did.
If you like to investigate other world's and other societies, Karen does an excellent job of creating them. They are all "people" despite what they look like and how they act. She is a great teacher of embracing our differences. Her alien characters are interresting both physically and psyschologically.
The herione, Shan Frankland, a tough, street-wise "copper" has much to be admired in her character but still has a lot of faults. Her alien counterpart Aras is a conflicted "person" you can't help but like even thought he is very "different".
This series is also a scientific and political statement that can't be ignored.
I really do suggest that you read the first two books before you pick this one up. It's well worth the investment for all three.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
less than Traviss's best, but better than most authors can do, July 25, 2006
This review is from: The World Before (Mass Market Paperback)
At the end of Crossing the Line the entire bezeri population of Bezer'ej was destroyed by a nuclear bomb laced with cobalt. They were killed as an after effect of Lindsay Neville attempting to destroy the c'naatat organism that had infected Shan Frankland (human) and Aras (wess'har) and which would be a disaster for the human race back on Earth should any government get their hands on it. C'naatat grants the host near immortality, though at the cost of making the host different than the species it once was. Frankland can never go home to Earth because she would be a lab rat for centuries and Aras can never be a true part of Wess'har society. Also at the end of Crossing the Line, Shan Frankland died. One of the very few known (or believed) ways to kill an organism infected with c'naatat is the vacuum of space. Frankland deliberately stepped out of a ship without a suit so that Neville would not have the satisfaction of killing Frankland herself.
Now in The World Before the wess'har are gathering for a potential war against Earth. Since it was humans who were responsible for the genocide of the bezeri and that there is a line of responsibility back to Earth, the only thing that will save humanity is if they act in accordance with the wess'har notion of personal responsibility. The more people who try to cover for those responsible or make excuses, the worse the wess'har response will be. The Wess'har on Wess'ej have called their more aggressive kin from their home planet to help and these wess'har will take a stark response. Meanwhile Aras is trying to come to terms to the loss of Shan Frankland, his isan (a wess'har term for wife). Frankland was the only known individual to also be infected with c'naatat and he loved her. But, now Aras learns that Ade Bennett, a marine and a good man has been infected in the fight to capture Frankland (from the previous book) and a bond grows between them. Frankland is presumed dead because she was lost in space without a suit, but c'naatat is highly adaptable and anyone who read the first two volumes has to be asking the question: Is she really dead?
After the power of the first two volumes and the shocking end to Crossing the Line, The World Before has a lot to live up to. Karen Traviss has proven herself a talented novelist and one who can tell a brutal story and make it compelling like nothing else. But while The World Before has a lot going on, it feels more like a middle book than the middle book did. The novel serves to set up Matriarch far more than it does to advance a storyline here, and that's not a bad thing, but it does knock the novel a peg or two down below the first two volumes of the Wess'har Wars. What this means is that the writing is just as sharp, the emotions just as strong, but that the story doesn't have quite the same punch of narrative imperative that the first two did. There is resolution for the characters and so on a personal character scale, the novel completes a story arc, but it sets up a grander story arc that is not at all complete. To say that The World Before is a peg or two below City of Pearl or Crossing the Line only means it isn't quite as excellent as the previous novels but that it is also still far above nearly every other science fiction and fantasy novel I have read in years. Karen Traviss has set the bar awfully high for herself.
-Joe Sherry
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