Customer Reviews

The Sandcats of Rhyl

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The first third of the book has a very strong start, in the style that Vardeman would become known for in his 1980s fantasy and s.f. - the "freebooter" adventure type of characters, with a nice mixture of humor, rapport, and peril to establish their special skills and heroic roles. The desert planet of Rhyl is pretty neat - the scenario is not stolen from "Dune" but is rather based upon the author's fascination with the classic journeys of the early archeological explorers... the heroes trace the path of an eminent archeologist (this was written before the Indiana Jones films, too!) on a hostile and sparsely inhabited planet.

In the final third, the tone of the book does eventually become changed by focusing more heavily on one of the villain characters in order to develop one of the plot elements, but Vardeman's prose style shows an effort to try to distract the readers from the potential cliches threatening to ensnare the story at that point, and the newly introduced elements do seem necessary for the story to present an overall theme. The result is generally successful and decently satisfying. This was Vardeman's first published novel, but is pretty well-done.

The characterization of the two heroes is very fun (I actually laughed aloud at various situations in the first third of the book), along with one of the natives of Rhyl who accompanies them. Other characters beyond those three are not as distinguished, and although this framework seems generally suited to the moderate length of the novel, as the tone darkens a bit to become more serious, by the final third of the book there would seem to have been a benefit to using some rounder supporting characters - the two villains and an accompanying woman. But the scenario and titular Sandcats themselves are quite interesting, and the story does retain interesting elements to the very end. A pretty solid science fiction adventure novel. The environment of the desert planet itself is well-presented to impress readers, and the technology vital to the characters' survival there was a neat element that kept the book rooted in a science fiction vein even when civilization has been left totally behind.