My life in books

Karen Traviss has created a complex and fascinating universe in her (as yet uncompleted) Wess’har series. To this point, the series consists of:

City of Pearl
Crossing the Line
The World Before
Matriarch
Ally

The Wess’har series is not only entertaining, exciting, well-paced, character-driven writing at its best, it is also a very serious examination, from multiple viewpoints, of a host of very serious issues – personal and societal responsibility, facing consequences, the inter-relationship of living things, the ethics of pre-emptive action, the dangers of the slippery slope in trading off ethical positions for personal or practical goals, and the nature of conflict resolution being some of them.

The first novel in the series delineates the setting and the context within which these issues are examined through the actions of a number of factions: the time, in terrestrial measurement, is the late 24th century; the place, a planetary system where three planets are inhabited by five sapient species. The two species native to the system are the issenj – a technologially capable and aggressively expansionist species that has destroyed the ecology of its own world though overpopulation and urbanisation of all usable land –and the bezeri, a non-technological but socially and culturally complex aquatic species almost driven to extinction when the issenj landed on their native planet and began to destroy its ecology as well. The third species, the wess’har, have assumed the role of protectors of the bezeri, after destroying the issenj colony; they have set up their own colony on a third world in this solar system to maintain a protective presence. The fourth species, the ussi, are natives of the same planet as the wess’har and travel with them as diplomatic and communications specialists; scrupulously neutral in their relations with other species, they have established a colony on the same world as the wess’har, but also work with the issenj. Finally, there is a small colony of humans living on the planet of the bezeri – a religious settlement devoted to protecting the genetic treasury of unmodified plant and animal DNA they have brought with them from Earth.

The story revolves around several sequences of actions initiated by various members of a human exploratory party sent to find out what has happened to the human colony and to investigate indications of “alien contacts” with the colony. The human contingent consists of a number of people with very divergent aims and philosophies, representing (although not always officially) military, government, intelligence, big business, and journalistic mindsets.

The series’ primary protagonist is the human Shan Frankland, a very hard-nosed cop with an environmental agency; her professional function is to arrest people for polluting the environment; in the past, she has harboured sympathies for the eco-terrorist movement. The series’ crucial species are the wess’har, who draw no distinction between forms of life, be they intelligent or not, and who have chosen to act, in this planetary system and in others, as the protectors of natural ecological balance and the enforcers of environmentally conscious action on an interplanetary scale. Both Frankland and the Wess'har have very strong positions on thinking about the implications of what you do, taking responsibility for what you do and dealing with the consequences of your actions.At a micorcosmic and a macrocosmic level, Frankland and the Wess'har pose important questions about ethics and ecology. You may not like their answers, but you will think hard about your own.

This is SF that makes you think, and rethink, your assumptions about that is going on inside the story and in the world we live in, at the same time that it immerses you in a compelling narrative with well-realised, and realistic characters (including the aliens, in their own fashion).

I cannot recommend these books strongly enough.