The World Before (The Wess'har Wars)

by Karen Traviss

Book Overview

Three strikingly different alien races greeted the military mission from Earth when it reached the planet called Bezer'ej. Now one of the sentient species has been exterminated--and two others are... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060541725
• Release Date: October 2005
• Publisher: Harper Voyager
• Length: 400 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 6.8" x 1.0" x 4.2"

Customer Reviews

The World Before Series

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.

less than Traviss's best, but better than most authors can do

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

A masterful series, well conceived and expertly drawn

How to live with the consequences of your choices. This is the dilemma Traviss' characters circle in this latest installment of Wess'har series, begun in 2004 with City of Pearl and followed in 2005 with Crossing the Line. Journalist Eddie Michallat worries that by helping the Wess'har he has lost his objectivity. The Wess'ej on F'nar fear their way of life will be ruined by the arrival of their brethren from Eqbas Vhor, the titular World Before, from whom they have been separated for over ten millennia. The Isenj prime minister commits an act of political betrayal in hopes of convincing his countrymen to seek the help of the Wess'ej in rebalancing the ecology of their overpopulated world. Shan Frankland weighs the risk of an imminent restructuring of Earth's ecosystem by the Wess'ej from Eqbas Vhor. This is not the future of Star Trek's Federation, where humans act benevolently in their exploration of the cosmos. In Traviss' universe, humans are as we know them today - greedy, grasping, intolerant, and ready to kill for advantage. No longer the preeminent power in the universe, humans must now learn to accept limits to their expansion imposed from afar by a more powerful species. Besides a refreshingly candid portrait of homo sapiens, what distinguishes this series of novels is Traviss' development of character. The players grow and learn as a result of their experience and Traviss is not afraid to explore faults in her heroes, or redeeming qualities in her villains. Naval commander Lindsay, for example, once in charge of the Thetis mission and now responsible for setting off a nuclear device that results in the near extinction of the aquatic Bezer'ej, learns to deny her selfish desires for revenge and for her own death by choosing to spend the rest of her life helping the Bezer'ej to rebuild their society. Aside from a few contemporary references that don't seem to fit in the world of the 24th century (such as white boards at managerial meetings), there is little with which to find fault in Traviss' writing. This series is well conceived and expertly drawn. I don't read many books a second time, especially fiction, but these novels were worth it. I look forward to the story's conclusion and hope that Traviss has the ability to finish with as much skill and aplomb as she began.

Excellent political thriller set in another solar system

Traviss's background as a journalist and familiarity with the military adds authority to this depiction of Royal Marines and other humans interacting with four different sapient races. However, this doesn't mean this is typical military SF. There is tension, but little violence, at least by the humans. Also, as a previous reviewer noted, environmental issues are central to this series. Third in the series, this book maintains the first two books' uniformly high quality and continues the high drama of flawed individuals trying to do what's right. While the series reportedly will continue in other books, in this book it reaches a satisfying conclusion; and while reading the first two would make it easier to follow the action, Traviss gives enough backstory so that a newcomer can pick up the thread.

I wish I could give this one more than 5 stars...

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.