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.

The fourth book, Matriarch, is due out this time next year with the fifth book Task Force due 6 months later and the as yet unnamed finale due 6 months after that according to the author's website.


Links to all of my reviews/overview blogs can be found in this blog.