Customer Reviews

The January Dancer

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

 

 

No question that the plot of The January Dancer has promise. A whiz-bang opening that consists of a spaceship crew discovering the remains of an abandoned and massive pre-human city, and escaping with an artifact with sentient qualities, hooks the reader early on. The unfolding of the remainder of the tale uses the device of a beautiful female harp player listening to the tale of the the artifact (the Dancer) being spun by a grizzled and scarred spacefarer.

As the story unfolds, the dedicated sci-fi reader will find many familiar way marks along the road: battles in space, a corp of highly trained super agents (the Hounds), competing empires, detailed descriptions of the physics of space travel, and a moderately twisty ending. Good ingredients, but does the final product thrill your literary palate, or leave you reaching for mouthwash? Depends on your tastes. Here are some of the flavors you'll have to choose from among.

If you like a story that is thoroughly embellished, and leisurely, you'll enjoy the book. Lengthy descriptions of local civilizations, local cuisine, local customs pervade this book. Fifty pages might be devoted to a civil war that in the end has no detectable relevance to the outcome of the story. If you get pleasure from the meticulous construcion of well fleshed out extraterrestrial civilizations and are patient with pace, you'll enjoy Michael Flynn's creation. If you prefer stories that are spare in detail and long on action, you'll conclude, and rightly so, that The January Dancer consumes roughly twice as much printer's ink as would be needed to tell the story coherently.

Two personal comments. First, I found Flynn's writing style to be a bit on the sonorous and ponderous side; florid is not too far a reach. Some people love their stories told with a baritone voice and in language that borders on flowery: if so, you'll love the telling of this tale. If you like your stories lean and muscular, I suspect you'll struggle with The January Dancer. Secondly, male/female relationships in this book fit in the caricature realm. Cold and hormonally driven, there was no more romance in Flynn's descriptions of lovers than there is in an exercise in planetary orbit mechanics. I'm sure there's not a Worst Wrought Romance category in Sci-Fi lit, but The January Dancer would be a contender.

Michael Flynn is one of those rare writers who can pack big themes into smallish books; create something new while alluding to classic influences; and entertain the reader on every page. The dust jacket describes this novel as space opera, and very entertaining space opera it is, but it is much more. The pleasure of reading the book is greatly enhanced by glimpses of history, art, language, culture, religion and technology, that suggest that the universe described has substance much greater than what is necessary for the rousing chase/shoot-em-up yarn that this is. I am frankly puzzled by the reviewer who put this book down, and considered the characters shallow. I couldn't put it down, and I found the characters, while deliberately archtypical, were also interesting and sometimes sympathetic. The names alone were entertaining. The relationship and history between Little Hugh and Handsome Jack, and the brutal civil war on New Eireann, a small subplot in this book, is more interesting than many whole books I have read and enjoyed. This book was easily as creative as Elfenheim, and a lot more fun. When I brought January Dancer back to the library, I picked up The Wreck of the River of Stars, and I am going to start reading it today.

. . . which does not disappoint.

"The January Dancer" is classic space opera. It is a wonderful tale, well told, about a priceless artifact the the many and varied people, organizations, and governments who desire it. The characters are real, flawed -- and believable. The mystery is tightly wound with a classic surprise -- and very satisfying -- ending. Honestly, it left me wanting more!

Other reviewers have noted, correctly, that the sheer number of characters is overwhelming. I, too, found myself occasionally referring to the list of the Dramatis Personae in the beginning of the book. But this did not lessen my enjoyment of the story. Many novels of broad scope and grand vision have similar lists, for similar purposes.

This is a dense, tightly written book. It's not "light reading". It is for the serious lover of "story" and is told as one. I found the setting of the Scarred Man and the Harper extremely effective.

Not for the faint of heart, but certainly well worth the effort.

Very highly recommended.

Evidently, some people have limited patience with a Myth/Tall Tale style. The inside jacket flap cites E.E. (Doc) Smith and Cordwainer Smith as stylistic touchstones, but while I see Cordwainer here I really fail to see the Doc. In fact Flynn's writing in this novel goes beyond Cordwainer Smith in the opposite direction and almost crosses into R.A. Lafferty territory. And while Doc Smith entirely disregarded any FTL issues (not a much of a criticism as it might seem given the era in which he wrote) Flynn uses a very interesting take on the Krasnikov Tube to explain his characters using FTL.

As one of the more positive prior reviews has mentioned, there are so many ideas here that a weaker writer could spin a dozen stories or even novels out of them. The ending came as really a surprise despite the fact that (WARNING, WILL ROBINSON) thanks to the product description for Up Jim River I had accidentally absorbed some major spoilers.

I loved the Tall Tale style, which reminded me of a toned-down Lafferty, and the way Old Earth crept into the mythology and language - reminding me of Cordwainer Smith's Mansonyaggers (Menschen-Jägers.)

The characters had a mythological aura to them, which if handled right as with The January Dancer, enhanced my enjoyment of them.

Nearly every sentance seemed to throw off sparks, and if it took longer to read than the latest Neal Asher (who I love and who is compulsively page-turning) it was only because I re-read paragraph after paragraph for pure pleasure.

One of the best science fiction books I've read in the last 20 years. It's not easy reading, but the setting is wildly creative and the characters are memorable. The plot holds up throughout and the ending is exceptional. Highly recommended!

A red-haired harper walks into the Bar on Jehovah, sits down across from the scarred man, and interrupts his drinking and muttered reflections. As she skillfully strokes her harp, she "pries from his teeth" the story of the January Dancer. A brick-like stone artifact, the Dancer was discovered by a tramp freighter crew on a remote planet and moved from owner to owner, exerting subtle influence on those around it. The give-and-take between the harper and the scarred man slowly reveals their respective interests as the story moves to its several ends.

The story is skillfully told, with complex characters, clever technology, and rich planetary cultures. As the story unfolds, characters reveal themselves to the reader, to each other, and to...themselves. The author sketches an intricate future history of humankind that is filled with half-forgotten influences of old Terra. As readers learn this history, we are also acquainted with the "current" topology, politics and technology of this region of space. We see several ways it might change.

This book is highly recommended. More than stereotypical space opera, it rivals Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon The Deep for inventiveness and intrigue. After finishing this book, readers should continue with Up Jim River, which tells a different story while continuing this one. Do NOT peek at the sequel before finishing this book as this will spoil some things for you. All things should arrive in their own time.

I'm not going to attribute my enjoyment of this novel to a definite craving for good space opera science fiction, because aside from that fact, it's simply an excellent piece of story-telling set in an intriguing and original far-future universe that could host many more good novels in the future. I hope Flynn will decide to write them.

The novel's framing story is mostly set in an inn. A mysterious harper has tracked down a man for a story. As he tells the story about the Dancer, an alien artifact accidentally discovered by a starfreighter captain, we learn more about the history and ways of the United League of the Periphery, an interstellar society connected by faster-than-light highways. Between the chapters, the harper and the story-teller bicker, eat and drink, and talk --- all the while adding to the over-all picture. The author is amazingly deft at telling a fascinating story - at its most basic level a very complicated chase after the Dancer - while slowly making the reader get a more accurate view of the Periphery's history.

One odd but charming aspect of the novel is that, while it's undeniably science fiction, so many of its features resemble fantasy: not just the cliche of strangers meeting in an inn to listen to a harper and hear stories, but also the artifact's magical-seeming nature and the names of the space-highways (the Palisades, the Silk Road) and the police force (Hounds are almost super-human-seeming agents with military, detective and spy-like aspects).

Aside from the entertaining story line and the well-drawn characters, I really enjoyed the way Flynn described the Terran parts of society --- Terrans are a lower class in the Periphery, with their own ghettos on every planet, secret councils of leaders, and even their own lingo (a barely understandable jumble of several languages).

This is an excellent piece of SF, and as mentioned before, I really hope Flynn will write more stories in this universe. Four stars!

EDIT: by now, Flynn has written a new novel in this universe, Up Jim River. Haven't read it yet, but plan to, soon.

Michael Flynn creates a fascinating blend of cultures, fragmentary histories, and characters. The narrative switches between a reluctant storyteller and his audience of one, and the events that unfolded surrounding the Dancer. Musical themes flow through the narrative, and the author provides a feeling much akin to musical themes and counterpoints throughout the story.

Several of the subplots are not fully explored, and several of the premises for the story require a significant suspension of disbelief such as a complete lack of technological and scientific innovation across far-flung interstellar civilizations. Nonetheless, the quality of the characters and the mysteries that unfold in the story make this a solidly enjoyable tale. I suspect a number of friends will be receiving this as a gift in the near future. Highly recommended.

I'd like to say that I liked Michael Flynn's THE JANUARY DANCER. Instead I will say that I enjoyed many facets of the journey that was my read of this book (these include an entertaining diversion on tea, the rich background of many large, nebulous organizations/entities a la Frank Herbert's DUNE series, and novel treatment of the distant future). Rather than call the book off putting, as I did finish it, I would call it off beat. Although I am Irish, have a reasonable amount of knowledge about my heritage, and am proud of it, I have to say that author Flynn's overtly Irish motif is more harmful to the story than helpful. His wording, dialogue, the many names, etc., were either over my head, for I am not a Celtic scholar, or off the mark and thus overplayed. On a final note - in spite of the aforementioned shortcoming - I would have given THE JANUARY DANCER fours stars out of five but for its ending.

This novel has a fairly hackneyed theme which however is handled with great skill. I even put aside other books I was reading to finish this one. You may be a bit surprised, and entertained, by the characterization of "Terrans" -- their portrait and story is more in line with demographic and historical reality than is usually the case in SF. The dark tone of the book is not quite consistent with its final outcome, but this contributes to the power of the story. If you like literate space opera, and there certainly is such a thing, you should like this one very much.