City of pearl

If you're reading this on Goodreads, you'll see I gave it four stars, and honestly, I almost gave it five, but decided not to only because of some uncertainty about the sequel. Not that I've read it, yet, because my public library, for reasons best known to certain city officials, lacks the funding to catalogue paperbacks, so every library expedition is a bit like a dungeon crawl. Does the library own the sequel? Who knows! Certainly not the Public Library! (Mr Katz, I hope to make you the number one google result for "library cheapskate." You're welcome.)

Back on topic. A lot of the SF I read is more properly space opera; it may pay some lip service to relativity, but the only physics it obeys are Newtonian. Here is SF with science behind it; undergirding it; moving it. Not the sort where a half chapter is taken up with cats in boxes and lecturing the reader, but the sort where the science is almost palpably a character in itself.

Shan Frankland is an interesting protagonist: a retirement-age civil-servant and former police officer. She's explicitly Pagan, something I would have liked to have seen more of, although there are something like five sequels to this book, and quite a bit more room for it to come up.

The other interesting thing, to me, was how much of the book was about ecology, and human (and alien) environments, environmental sustainability, and biology. More than is evident at the start of the novel, certainly. I want to say more, but am wary of spoiling.

I'm not entirely certain if this book is very good, or just very much the sort of thing I enjoy. It takes mature loners and gives them a connection which they didn't expect to find. I like those sorts of stories.

I really enjoyed reading City of Pearl. Most of the authors I read in SF/F are the F side of the genre, so whenever I come across a female SF writer it gives me an extra level of enjoyment. Julie Czerneda remains my SF powerhouse favorite, but I think Karen Traviss is now putting in a good strong bid for second place.

There were some small things I didn't quite like about the book, I'll admit--but they were fairly minor nitpicks. I'll get those out of the way first. The flow of time in the story was a little odd for me to follow sometimes; only a little after the fact, as I read through each chapter, did I start to grasp that the story was taking place across a span of months rather than days. This necessitated less focus on the development of the relationship between the primary characters than I really hoped for--and yet, that also meant a tradeoff of widening the scope out somewhat and making it broader and grander, so I'm ultimately okay with that. Also--I was vaguely distressed that there were pretty much no sympathetic characters among the scientists on the Thetis--that almost universally their only interest was to get data to get back to their employers, and none of them seemed to have their attitudes tempered by acceptance of the fact that they were visitors on an alien world inhabited by other sentient species. The only even remotely sympathetic scientist was the geologist, and he was almost a non-entity.

Nor did it really help that the most major human characters, Shan and Lin, consistently collectively referred to the scientists as "the payload". I realize that might be an accurate reflection of how military personnel on such a mission might be referring to their passengers, but just as a reader, I found it vaguely distressing. For a story where one of the big overall points is stressing understanding between the humans and the wess'har and the bezeri, understanding between the various contingents within the Thetis's own crew and passengers was surprisingly absent. I realize also that setting up the schism between Shan and the scientists was necessary to get her to where she needed to go, and I don't dispute the necessity of having the most vocal of the scientists (Rayat) going against her... but it would have been nice to see at least one noticeably sympathetic scientist who tried to support Shan and was perhaps shot down for his or her efforts.

Now, moving on to the stuff I really did like.

First and foremost... Aras was a fabulous character, and I loved the entire development of the relationship between him and Shan. I loved all the history leavened into his initial appearances, especially the hearkening back to his friendship with Ben Garrod, back when the human colony was first founded. I loved his reaction to Shan's being the first being in a very long time to touch him, knowingly and without reservation. And I loved how he wound up diving without reservation into having to share his c'naatat with her to keep her alive.

Second... I also really liked Shan as a character. Tough as nails in a way that reminded me of Ripley from Aliens; I could totally see Sigourney Weaver playing her. Refreshingly direct, not without her angst, but it's angst that she handles--which I really appreciate in a character these days.

Third... I liked all the little details of life on Bezer'ej that let the reader know that "why yes, you're on an alien world", things like a different level of gravity, a different rotational spin of the world, a longer day, a longer week. The alien wildlife. The differences between what Aras had set up in the human-compatible colony and the actual wilderness outside it.

Fourth... the various alien races. None of them too heavily sketched in (again, perhaps because of the broad scope of the story), but all of them sketched in enough to establish them firmly in the readers' minds. I liked how the bezeri communciated in color and light, how the wess'har are matriarchal and the males carry the offspring, how the isenj have built over their entire homeworld with buildings (a disturbing and cautionary detail for the humans, indeed).

Fifth... the setting up of emotional conflict, and then handling it in a clear-eyed and brisk kind of style. This came through beautifully with Lin's grieving fury at finding out that Shan might have saved her baby and chose not to. See previous comments re: appreciating a relative lack of angst. :)

And all the other little details as well... the colonists being religious and yet not obnoxiously so. Eddie turning out to be an interesting and sympathetic character. Ade being the most sympathetic of the Marines by far, and in another little hint of a reminder of Aliens, getting sweet on Shan and yet never having an opportunity to do anything about it. (Sniff. I still miss Hicks from Aliens and am still vaguely put out that they killed him off during the credits of the third movie!)

And oh my the ending: Shan beginning to change with her own c'naatat, and having to turn her back on her entire species. It'll be interesting to see how she manages to win a place among the wess'har and how her relationship with Aras will continue to evolve.

Very much looking forward to Crossing the Line, now!