Judge (The Wess'har Wars)

by Karen Traviss

The Eqbas have come, bringing justice, change, hope to some . . . and death to many. Seeking to punish the human gethes who caused the near destruction of an ocean-dwelling race in the distant... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060882409
• Release Date: March 2008
• Publisher: Harper Voyager
• Length: 391 Pages
• Weight: 1.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 6.8" x 1.0" x 4.2"

Customer Reviews

Love this whole series

I found this book as well as the others in the series (6 books in all), to be very entertaining. They are well written with good character development. The story line is very original. I actually have read all of the books twice now and probably will read them again. I just wish Ms Traviss would continue this series or write another one. I have also read most of the Star Wars books she has written and in my opinion, Ms Traviss is an excellent author.

In the years of our dying

In the final novel in Karen Traviss' Wess'har War cycle she chooses to wrap things up by staying true to the themes of the series. This means that no one links up to the alien space ship with an iMac and saves the day. Even the protagonist of the story can't save the day, or decide if it needs saved. Instead, as with all her books, the real meat is in the characters, and how they act, what they do, and most importantly WHY they do it...or at least why they think they do it. It's hard to keep this review spoiler free, but as others have said, the story begins with the fleet's arrival at earth, but the focus stays clearly with the characters as Shan struggles with the knowledge of what's in store for earth, the alien commander struggles with the fact that thanks to infecting herself with the parasite she now has human memories (and human reactions and emotions) flooding her brain, and the main story of the earth expedition is tied up in the struggle on the ships. We don't see much of earth, but that's because it's simply not important. The whole saga has carried the theme that humans simply are not as important as they think they are, they will not be spared when the aliens see how special they are. Instead, they are treated like any of the many races and planets that have been put into balance in the past, although the Wess'har actually do it more humanely than they had on many other planets. As in past books, the emotion, suspense, and even action take place between the characters and in things left unsaid. Even after six books I find it hard to decide what to feel about Shan, and several characters weigh in on Shan and the reasons behind what Shan does, and I can't help but think Ryat, the spy, is mostly right in his view of her, but in the end even the protagonist of the story isn't special, as the author seems to point out in the book's final chapter. In the grand galactic scale of things there is no one and nothing that is special or set apart or anything else except by the views of sentient beings, and that may seem like an odd theme to take away from a series with a race that views ANY living creature as special and worthy of life and existence, but if nothing is special than everything is special. Previous reviewers and readers have wondered about the politics of the novels and whether there's a vegan agenda, a green agenda, a conservative agenda...basically, any type of agenda, and in the end the author simply holds a mirror up to the characters and lets us look long and hard. It's a series that rewards those who want to wrestle with how they feel about the characters and what they do and what their actions say about those characters, but in that we may find out things about ourselves.

Brilliant and unafraid of shocking the reader.

Tight third person narrative is tough to pull off, but exceptionally rewarding when it's successful. That most certainly is the case in Judge, the concluding novel of the brilliant Wess'har Wars series by Karen Traviss. Each character has a distinctly different background that colors their interpretation of the same events and same information. The author doesn't shove that down the reader's throat by doing Rashamon-style retellings of the same event, but rather when we see things from each character's perspectives, we get their unique insights and how they deal with incomplete information. Each character is really an individual instead of an archetype and the chemistry that arises never feels contrived, but rather flows as organically as the Eqbas technology. I have to admit that there were events in the story took me completely by surprise and made me want to curse the author for doing. That in itself is a testament to how engrossing Traviss' story has become. If you go in expecting technobabble, archetypical aliens that think and act just like humans underneath the skin, and happy endings for all the main characters, you are reading the wrong type of fiction. If you're looking for a powerful story with compelling, living characters, then read everything that Karen Traviss writes. You will not be disappointed.

Ties up some loose ends, ignores others

As the conclusion to a six-book series, there's no point in reading this book if you haven't read the first five - the first trilogy is "City of Pearl," "Crossing the Line" and "The World Before" and the first two books of the second trilogy are "Matriarch" and "Ally." It's possible to read the first trilogy and then stop, or the first book and then stop, but it's not possible to start with the second trilogy or to skip a book in any of them, once started. Which is unfortunate, because like many other such series, the middle books can be a bit less interesting than the others. In this particular case, "Ally," the book that precedes "Judge," was annoying - most of the book was either the carrying out of plans that had been completely made in the book before that, or talking about plans that wouldn't be carried out till the next book - nothing new happened. Much of "Ally" also struck me as boringly indecisive - "Should I kill Rayat? Yes, no wait, no, no wait, yes, no wait, no..." and by several of the characters, "Should I go back to Earth with the Eqbas Vorhi mission? Yes, no wait, no, no wait, yes, no wait, no..." way too much of that. So, at the end of "Ally" we have several human/formerly human characters decide to go to Earth, and a couple of others decide not to. And then "Judge" starts out 25 years later, with the mission arriving at Earth - nothing about what happened in between. Of course, most of the characters on the ship were in cryo - but there were characters back on Wess'ej and Bezer'ej who lived through that 25 years - and the background characters on Earth, too. So we arrive at Earth not knowing how, exactly, Australia/Pacific Rim has handled the intervening 25 years, just that it's still only Australia welcoming the ships. We meet Den Bari - and then, pretty much, only catch glimpses of him till the very end, a rather pointless epilogue. It's not a spoiler to tell you that a couple of the military characters die in fighting, and Eddie Michellat dies in his 90's shortly after Shan gets back to Wess'ej - he was one of my favorite characters. And in a sweet touch, he gets buried in the same hilltop cairn as Black, the rat that Aras rescued back in the first book. A lot of the thread tie-ups were expected; some weren't. There wasn't enough detail about what happened on Earth - in fact, despite the length of each volume and of the whole series, there wasn't nearly enough detail about Earth at all. A few of the endings were cop-outs, but at least they were there. My four-stars really stands for a combination of a five, for managing to finish up something as unwieldy as this series to begin with and for making us care about many of the characters, and a three, for skipping so much, and for the characters who get taken care of in only a sentence or two, and for the parts that seemed unrealistically simple. Final analysis: I like Eddie and I like the ussissi characters better than I like Shan and Ade and Aras, whom we are supposed to

Slow Fade

Note: This review is meant for those who've read the previous five books in the series. If you haven't, you are are welcome to read on, of course, but I doubt you'll derive very much from what follows. --- "Judge," the sixth and last of Karen Traviss's "Wess'har Wars" series, once again surprises. As she has done before, the set-up in the previous volume, "Ally," is a misdirection for what happens here. Just when think you'll know how it's all going to turn out, just when you think you've well understood the motivations of the characters, you'll find out you're wrong. But maybe, when you've finished, you'll think that you should have seen the resolution coming. At any rate, we pick up the tale on Earth, where the alien Eqbas have arrived in order to save the planet from environmental destruction, and Shan Frankland and her two mates, the human Ade and the Wess'har Aras--all three of whom still carry the parasite that makes them virtually immortal--have come along. Maneuvering, political and military, takes place, and eventually a solution is reached. Then, in the novel's moving last section, the fates of the all the characters are revealed (it's the kind of ending Dickens might have opted for had sci-fi conventions been available to him), and all comes together beautifully, as Shan and her mates debate whether or not to have the parasite removed. Expect to tear up. I was reminded, of all things, of Tchaikovsky's Sixth Symphony, the third movement of which ends in frenzied excitement, after which the slow eleagic finale ends on a note played by the lower strings that's practically inaudible. You don't know it's over until the conductor lowers his arms, puts his baton down on the stand, and turns around to take his bow. Ms. Travis has pretty much done the same thing, the characters take their bows and leave the tale, and the last section, the epilogue, seems as if it were whispered in your ear.