Mark This Book Monday: The Wess'har Wars Series by Karen Traviss!!

Monday is back again, and this time we're gonna be feeding the mind, not the tummy, so it's time for another Mark This Book Monday feature!


Today I wanna recommend I series I discovered very much by chance, and one series I'm absolutely in love with. It's science fiction and it's also a big wake up call to make us think about where were are going as humankind, and it might sound odd since I'm talking about science fiction, but it's a big reality check.




Let me introduce you to the Wess'har Wars series by Karen Traviss. Six books, with Shan Frankland as the main character. A tough as nails female Environmental Hazard (EnHaz for short) officer with a conscience and a way to do the right thing, even if it's not by the book & ends up not being pretty. The books start with her joining a mission to Cavanah's Star, to check on a bunch of human missionaries that went beyond the stars to start a new community. There are aliens, and not your little grey men type, and their politics & customs are as alien to us as ours are to them. One of them aliens are the Wess'har, a matriarchal society that as described by Shan herself "only have two states: chilled or punching". There are six books in the series, and each one is building on the consequences of the choices of the characters in the previous books.


#1.- City of Pearl
#2.- Crossing The Line
#3.- The World Before
#4.- Matriarch
#5.- Ally
#6.- Judge


One of the best things about Karen Traviss is how real her characters feel, and how much sense their choices make according to themselves, you might like or dislike them, but you can't accuse one of her characters of being two-dimensional or unbelievable. All her characters have a real human depth, and most of the type, it ain't pretty, but that's reality for you. Her vision of humankind as a whole in this books is like a slap on the face, and if it hurts, it's cause it's real. If only we learnt the lesson and stopped behaving like self-righteous & spoiled teenagers, we'll take better care of the world we live in & learn how to deal with those different from us, not better or worse, just different, in a better way than our usual one (nuke'em all!).


One short way to define this books: a study of human nature through science fiction. Also, the fact that the main character is a kick arse female, and that the more prevalent aliens are matriarchal doesn't hurt on my liking them!