City Of Pearl [Mass Market Paperback]

A thoroughly competent and satisfyingly complex tale...which at times evokes the earlier moral fables of Le Guin...a writer worth watching. -- Locus , January 2004 (Gary Wolfe)

City of Pearl is a strong first installment and marks the debut of a writer to watch. -- Bookpage, April 2004

City of Pearl....makes the old tropes new again. Traviss handles everything with a mixture of panache and restraint....it's a bravura performance. -- Locus , February 2004 (Faren Miller)

Intensely satisfying ...what makes City of Pearl such a good read is its unsentimentality and its clear sightedness. -- New York Review of Science Fiction, January 2004

Skilful working of point of view...to lovely and often ironic effect. (An) engaging, thoughtful and sometimes uncomfortable book. -- Locus, March 2004 (Russell Letson)

Three separate alien societies have claimson Cavanagh's Star. But the new arrivals -- the gethes from Earth -- now threaten thetenuous balance of a coveted world.

Environmental Hazard Enforcement officer Shan Frankland agreed to lead a mission to Cavanagh's Star, knowing that 150 years would elapse before she could finally return home. But her landing, with a small group of scientists and Marines, has not gone unnoticed by Aras, the planet's designated guardian. An eternally evolving world himself, this sad, powerful being has already obliterated millions of alien interlopers and their great cities to protect the fragile native population. Now Shan and her party -- plus the small colony of fundamentalist humans who preceded them -- could face a similar annihilation . . . or a fate far worse. Because Aras possesses a secret of the blood that would be disastrous if it fell into human hands -- if the gethes survive the impending war their coming has inadvertently hastened.

Karen Traviss is a former defense correspondent and TV and newspaper journalist. She has worked in public relations for the government and the police and has also been an advertising copywriter and a journalism lecturer. She has served in both the Royal Naval Auxiliary Service and the Territorial Army. A graduate of the Clarion science fiction and fantasy workshop, her work has appeared in Asimov's, Realms of Fantasy, and On Spec. The author of City of Pearl, she lives in Wiltshire, England.