The book of this long, lingering July* was Karen Traviss’s City of Pearl, which Niall discussed in a series of posts. It was the first of two 2004 books we are reading here at Torque Control this year as part of the Future Classics series of the best science fiction novels written by women in the previous decade.
Niall examined the difficulty of writing aliens, especially with respect to gender; the role of humans in the context of those aliens, and the problems with the way the book presents scientists; an examination of the main viewpoint character, Shan Frankland; and a look at a few of the book’s other major themes and the way they affect the conclusion.
Continuing the post-9/11 notes, this book too had a plot thread about terrorism, by that name, in the context of moral ambiguities.
My thanks to Niall for the thoughtful examination of this book, and to all of you who joined in the discussion about it. (There’s always time to do so in future weeks… or months… or years.)
Discussion: Part I (Aliens); Part II (Environment and humanity); Part III (Characters); Part IV (Transparency)
I can’t, offhand, find any other discussions of this novel online from the last month, which is why I am not providing them for you this month. (I though I did run across another fantastical “city of Pearl” as a result: more in Jeff VanderMeer’s post here.)
* Summer, with all its life disruptions to put us in places we aren’t normally and disrupt posting habits.
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