Crossing the Line (Mass Market Paperback)

by Karen Traviss (Author) "Is it true?" Eddie Michallat concentrated on the features of the duty news editor twenty-five light-years away, courtesy of CSV Actaeon's comms center..." (more)
Key Phrases: Shan Frankland, Temporary City, Eddie Michallat (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
"The tale continues...and it's just as compelling ... Traviss clearly has no need to hook the reader with trumped-up suspense." -- LOCUS, January 2005 (Faren Miller)

"had me thinking of Le Guin...(readers) should find many of the same pleasures and useful discomforts." -- Russell Letson, LOCUS, November 2004

Product Description
Shan Frankland forever abandoned the world she knew to come to the rescue of a lost colony on a distant and dangerous planet -- a hostile world coveted by two alien races and fiercely protected by a third. But in the course of her mission, she overstepped a boundary and stumbled into forbidden lands. And she can never go back -- to being neutral, to being safe. To being human.

War is coming again to Cavanagh's Star -- and this time, the instigators will be the troublesome gethes from the faraway planet Earth. Former Environmental Enforcement Officer Shan Frankland has already crossed a line, and now she is a prize to be captured ... or a threat to be eliminated. But saving a coveted world and its fragile native population may require of her one unthinkable sacrifice: the destruction of her own ruthless, invading species.

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Eos (October 26, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060541709
• ISBN-13: 978-0060541705
• Product Dimensions: 6.4 x 4.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #102,425 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A thriller packed with great characters too, February 13, 2005

By	lb136 "lb136" (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews

"Crossing the Line," is the gripping sequel to "City of Pearl." It continues the story of Shan Frankland, who's been infected with alien DNA, c'naatat, which makes her pretty hard to kill. She's become involved, well stranded more or less, on a double-planet system revolving around Cavanagh's Star. (How this came to pass is explained in "Pearl.")

This time out, Frankland finds herself engaged in an intricate quadrille with three other terrestrial species as well as a sea-dwelling one. Frankland, a former cop who had specialized in ecological crimes back in the UK, can't go home to Earth because of the life-extending and life-protecting c'naatat, which various interests want for obvious reasons, and would take her into custody. So she hooks up with the wess'har Aras, who also has been infected with it, and who's appointed himself the protector of the sea-dwellers. They, along with a human colony, occupy one of the double planets; the wess'har occupy the other.

While this might sound like standard space opera it's actually anything but, because the author is as much interested in her characters as she is in the action, which is far from a bad thing. And the characters, alien as well as human, are for the most part over the top. Among the aliens, the matriarchical wess'har, and you'll meet a few, have very alien ways of showing who's the alpha; the ussissi act as translators; the cities of the isenj (they want to make deals with the EU for tech) are crowded more than somewhat. As for the humans: we have Eddie, who becomes the journalist with the heart of gold; Rayat is a creepy spy; and then there's everyone's worst nightmare, the sociopathic Lindsay Neville, the commander of the original expedition to Cavanagh's, who's not wired well at all.

There's a political element to the tale as well: Ms. Traviss, who's British, imagines a future in which the European Union is a major player in the space race, with the other nations less enthusiastic about the idea that humans have contacted other intelligent species. Then too, the author has a rather Green outlook. Some readers are likely to agree with the author's ideas (humans, called gethes by the wess'har, are greedy warlike beasts who prey on the enviroment and then pray for forgiveness). Other readers may be put off. Nevertheless, the story never turns preachy. It concludes memorably and will leave you satisfied although surely looking forward to the next episode.

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent followup, October 25, 2004

By	A. Timson (Livonia, MI United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Karen Traviss's previous title, City of Pearl, was but a prelude to Crossing the Line in many ways. That's not to say that the book doesn't stand alone--it can, I believe--but Crossing the Line takes some of the plots and themes established in the first volume and explores them further.

The line in the title is both physical and metaphorical: how far will you go to acquire for king and country? How far will you go to defend yourself and your people? These questions are what the book's plot revolves around, inspired by the loose thread left dangling at the end of City of Pearl.

Traviss manages to stay fairly agnostic in her presentation; each side in the various conflicts is given a fair shake, and for the most part no side is presented as inherently more rational or moral than another. This lends a degree of credibility even to those parties I didn't agree with, and helps to make the conflicts more believable.

As before, we are given aliens who are more than reshaped humans. This is one of Traviss's strong suits: creating understandable-yet-alien cultures and behaviors. A key part of both of her books, it is these aliens that are at the heart of the books, as they--not the reactionary humans--are really the ones driving the plots. It is they who make this book shine, and make the book stand out from the rest of the pack.

Though the ending of Crossing the Line will leave the reader waiting for the next installment, it's simply another iteration of how nothing ever ends neatly--the basic premise of the book, in a way, as Crossing the Line's plot started as cleanup on City of Pearl's hanging plot thread. I have no qualms in saying that Crossing the Line is an excellent read from an author whose work is worth seeking out.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An amazing follow-up & a writer to watch, January 14, 2005

By	James A Gilmer (Lansing, MI United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

CROSSING THE LINE is the latest in her Wess'har Wars universe and is the follow-up to her first book CITY OF PEARL which was published in early 2004.

Though it forms the middle of a trilogy the book stands well enough on its own as we are once again introduced to characters from the first book such as Environmental Enforcement Officer Shan Frankland, a disturbingly complicated protagonist whose past gets a deeper look in this sequel.

Aras, an alien of the Wess'har who has been infected with a bioweapon that has made him a near immortal warrior for the wess'har, and a subject of embarrassment now that the war he fought is long over, also returns.

Traviss deftly weaves a series of plots together while touching on matters of spirituality, government, ecology, sociology, and ethics. Traviss' first obligation seems to be to the plot, her second to the characters, and she leaves her soapbox at home in favor of spinning an entertaining read.

The action takes place on the world of Cavanagh's Star, sight of the war which saw Aras destroy the settlers from the alien Isenj race and wipe their cities from the planet when they threatened the ecological balance of the world's native sea dwelling and technically unadvanced sentient race.

This time the story concerns itself with the subject of the title as the main characters are forced to consider and cross moral and ethical lines as human settlers and military reach the colony world of Cavanagh's Star.

Yet Traviss doesn't dwell on those decisions, instead she pushes on and tells her story, leaving the reader to try to piece together any deeper meaning. Though her novels have been compared to Le Guin's thanks to her ecological slant, the universe that Traviss writes is a pragmatist's one and her characters range the full spectrum leaving no clear heroes or villains.

Just as we begin to get a feel for Shan Frankland, her past as a police officer and the violent means she employed to achieve her ends are revealed. The stoic Aras, who suffered horribly at the hands of the Isenj as a POW and who through the middle of the book seems more human in his thoughts and feelings then Shan, is revealed as the alien he is in mind and body when he is confronted with a threat to the ecology of the world he is charged with protecting.

While readers looking for a more literary style of writing ala Le Guin or a dose of the New Weird as delivered by Charles Stross or China Mieville may be disappointed by Traviss' straightforward prose style, there is a depth to her work in the strength of her story and characters.

CROSSING THE LINE stands on its own but is best read as part of the series which wraps up with next year's THE WORLD BEFORE. Readers can also catch up with Traviss in her Star Wars novel REPUBLIC COMMANDO: HARD CONTACT out now.