Customer Reviews

Blade Dancer

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I didn't mind the tangent universe. I liked the story. The characters were strong and convincing. The plot was well-strung, with tension and resolution in the proper places.

What I didn't like, however, was that this was just Stardoc, with names changed to protect the innocent. Rebel daughter with genetic anomolies, secret about her birth, controlling father with exact-duplicate-of-my-perfection complex, mother who talks to her after death, issues about reproduction, betrayal by some stranger she trusted the instant she met him, issues with the Jorenian "Choosing," boyfriend with that strong Jorenian morality code, what about this is sounding one bit different from the first Stardoc book? Um, well, she didn't wisecrack quite as much as Cherijo, but other than that, it was all too similar for my taste.

I bought this one, I'd probably get the next one from the library or borrow from a friend. Not one I'd recommend to anyone who had already rad the Stardoc books and was expecting something new and different from SL Viehl

In the far future, Earth belongs to the Allied League, which consists of many different species, but the inhabitants on Terra are very xenophobic. Aliens are not allowed to live there and mating with another race is a crime. The children of that mating are denied citizenship and if discovered are deported, their money and property confiscated. Jory Rask is a world famous shockball player but when it is discovered she is part Jorenian, she is kicked off-planet.

She travels to her mother's home planet but on board she meets an assassin from Reytalon who says she could go there for training as she has the moves to become a lethal BLADE DANCER. She thinks it is a fine idea once she accomplishes her mission on Joren but when she leaves she takes six other half-breeds with her, all Children of Honor whose mothers were sold into slavery but were recovered. The half-breeds were treated as pariahs but on Reytalon they are all treated as equals. Their common heritage forges a bond so strong that they become their own clan house, a fighting force that is almost unbeatable.

After reading S.L. Viehl's "Stardoc" novels, reader's curious about the Jorenian home planet and culture will find it is very different than that of Earth's. BLADE DANCER satisfies the audience's curiosity through a story line that details the philosophy that Jorenian is based on. There are many twists and turns in this stand-alone novel and there are some unexpected surprises in store for a group of half-breeds who have become a family.

Harriet Klausner

Jory was one of the finest Shockball players on Earth, until it was discovered she was half-Jorenian and kicked off the xenophobic planet. When her mother died, she gave Jory an undertaking; to go to Joren and find the rest of the half-Jorenian children who were the results of the same 'raid-and-ravage' from which she was born.

Including Jory, there are seven half-breeds. Once Jory delivers her message to them, a message of truth, the others decide to join her in her quest. Jory is off to learn how to become a Blade Dancer, the deadliest of assassins, in order to hunt down and kill the biological father that violated her mother so many years ago.

The gang is trained on Reytalon in the Tana, to become Blade Dancers, but in the midst of the tests of strength and endurance, the seven must learn to trust each other also. And even Reytalon is not immune to conspiracy and evil alliances with the warring League and Hsktskt factions. Will what these seven learn at Reytalon be enough for them to avoid the same fate of their parents?

S.L. Viehl is one of my favorite authors. Definitely lighter than most of my other fare, Viehl is always able to bring in tense, taunt situations with realistic and likeable heroines, and create a story that I can literally pour myself into.

Her worlds are extraordinary, her characters so real that I would know them on the street, her aliens imaginative and believable, and her plots thick with action and adventure.

I was introduced to Jorens in Viehl's StarDoc books, and was intrigued to see a darker side of their clannish ways in Blade Dancer. Viehl gave us a little peek at just how stubborn those big blue guys are.

If you liked the 'StarDoc' series, you will love 'Blade Dancer'. 'Blade Dancer' is a good starter book to introduce yourself to Viehl's writing also, though I promise you will be running for more of her work when you finish. Enjoy!

BLADE DANCER is, in many ways, a very fine book. It reminds me of the best qualities of that good ol' action-adventure sf. For the longest time, that area was a male-only genre, until CL Moore and Leigh Brackett proved women were just as capable as men. I rather wonder if one of the names isn't a sort of tribute to Moore's Jiril of Jory.
The action is fast and intense, and there's a lot of it, and it seems to go in a direction, rather than be merely a string of incidents. The characters are well-portrayed and one develops affection or the reverse for them. The aliens are sufficiently exotic to match the other virtues.
I had only two problems with the book, but they kept me from giving it more than three stars. **SPOILER ALERT** The first was the "Luke, I'm your father" routine, which was ancient when Lucas used it. The other was the happy ending. I do like happy endings but in this case it seems to not have been a natural development of the characters or even the universe as established earlier in the book, but appears rather like a suspiciously large rabbit being taken out of a very small hat. I'm still glad to have read the book and do recommend it, but with a caveat.

Blade Dancer is a novel set in the same universe as the Stardoc series, but with a different set of characters. Jory Rask is a championship caliber shockball runback whose mother is Jorenian and father is Terran. After receiving an urgent message from her mother, Jory returns home to find her mother dead of chicken pox. Since they are both on Terra illegally, Jory buries her mother in the desert, but is caught by Planetary Residental Commission agents and deported.

After departing Terra, Jory bribes the Captain of the liner to take her as close as possible to Jorenian territory. She meets an Alliance Major on the liner who has the tools and skills to repair her damaged knee prothesis. She leaves the liner at a Rilken outpost and takes passage on a system trade ship, where she meets Black and Blurry, a blade dancer, and gets an invitation to visit Reytalon for blade dancer training, but she first must go to Joren.

Jory has a mission to fulfill on Joren. She has promised her mother to tell her story to the other six ClanChildren of Honor. Then she will be free to find her father and kill him.

This novel is written in the same style as the Stardoc tales, but covers a different aspect of Jorenian culture. It is action oriented, depends too much on coincidence, and is fairly predictable, but the story gains and retains the reader's interest throughout the book.

Recommended for Viehl fans and anyone else who enjoys action and adventure in a SF setting.

First of all I would like to say that I own the first five StarDoc novels by SL Viehl and have nothing but admiration for her fine literary skills. However, no mater how skilled an author is I do not believe that their talent gives them license to arbitrarily make a arguably new series by gutting out the characters and perspective of the StarDoc line and slapping in new ones upon the original "world".

In short I gave this book three stars because of SL Viehl's unique talents, not because with a almost immortal character it would become hard to continue a series.

I love science fiction as an ideal- I generally hate it in practice. Too often, characters are surface, plots are ridiculously predictable, and the action is campy.
S.L. Viehl is none of these things. A friend intoduced me to the first Stardoc book and I had read them all within a week and a half.
Blade Dancer is beautifully woven - slightly predicatable in some arenas, but not enough to be irritating. The interaction between all the ClanChildren of Honor and especially the tension/attraction between Kol and Jory was wonderful. Jory's anger came out great in all her one-liners. I would have liked to see a little more depth from some of the others, but perhaps that will come with a sequel. The action sequences were well done.

Not the genre I usually read, but I loved it. Fast paced and gripping, it kept me awake turning pages all night. The voice of the heroine drew me right into the story.

Jory Rask is a shockball player. What the heck is Shockball? I have no idea, still didn't by the end of the story but it sounded a bit like American football. Except this book is set in the far distant future when the planet Terra, in a colossally xenophobic manner, won't let any aliens live there. Unfortunately for Jory her mother comes from another planet, called Joren, and therefore her daughter is a half-breed. When Jory's mother dies and her secret is discovered she is forced off the planet. She sets off to her father's homeworld on a mission to find the other six half-Jorens and tell them about their true history - that they are the result of a rape on their mothers. Jory wants to find her father too and kill him but all she has is a name. On her way to Joren she meets a "Blade Dancer", a fantastically skilled warrior who suggests that Jory enrols in training to become a Blade Dancer too.

When Jory arrives on Joren she finds that her relatives do not welcome her with open arms and neither do the other children of the rapes. She and they are forced off the planet and make their way to the Blade Dancer academy - and find themselves in a dangerous and difficult environment as they try to survive and learn to deal with a hostile world.

The story moves along really quickly. There is characterisation, plot, description and yet you never feel that it's dragging. There's a gentle love story (although neither protagonist has an ounce of gentleness!) and lots of stories of people who feel that they are unimportant learning to harness their different skills. I wasn't always entirely sure of all aspects of the plot but it was an interesting read nonetheless.

This was a really great book for the readers of Viehl's StarDoc series. The characters were truly engaging and their interaction with each other made them even more real. Unfortunately this book was not made for those who haven't read the StarDoc series. The author has concepts like the Hsktskt and Jorenian's 'shielding' others and not explaining who or what they are. Other than that, this was a really kewl book and I'm hoping to see more of the Seven Sibs in the next StarDoc book!