Blade Dancer by S.L. Viehl
01/03/2005 . Source: Jennifer Howell 
pub: ROC. 314 page hardback. Price: $22.95 (US), $34.50 (CAN). ISBN: 0-451-45926-1. Buy from Amazon US - Buy from Amazon UK
nb: US titles may only be available from Amazon US, and UK titles from Amazon UK. check out website: www.penguin.com
SL Viehl specialises in heroines with screwed up genetics and catchy one-liners
and that particular formula hadn't let her down as yet - until 'Blade Dancer',
I'm sorry to say.
I really am loath to be disappointed in this book, not least because it kicks
off with a killer first line that sets up the first half of the book perfectly.
Tell you can read the words, 'All I was trying to do when they caught me was
bury my mother in an unmarked grave' and not want to know what happens next...!
What does happen next is for the most part punchy and engaging, with a protagonist
who's slightly tougher than normal for this author and the action quotient upped
promisingly.
It has a rather snappy title and a great construct, set in the same universe
as Viehl's previous 'StarDoc' series. Jory Rask is 7 feet tall with claws, a
star player in the slightly brutal game of Shockball on a rabidly xenophobic
Earth (Terra) and everything is going swimmingly until she's caught trying to
give her dead mother a decent burial out in the desert one night. Jory's mother,
you see, was a Jorenian alien and all Jory's years of hiding her heritage are
about to come to an end when she is immediately arrested for being an alien
crossbreed.
Stripped of everything and deported from Terra, Jory has one goal in mind: to
find the six other unwanted Jorenian crossbreeds whose mothers were sold into
slavery with her own mother. Her mother not exactly having ended up on Terra
and pregnant with Jory by choice, she's also out to find her father and then
to kill him, given half a chance.
The plot really gets interesting when Jory runs into one of the infamous Blade
Dancers, unstoppable assassins who are trained on a mysterious planet no one
can ever quite find. Once she's descended on the Jorenians to rescue her 'siblings'
(whose families are all in denial about their non-Jorenian heritage), dragging
them all off to train as Blade Dancers would seem to be an obvious next step...
There's the basis for a genuinely great book here and it would be if it were
written without making any concessions for the romance genre market. Even this
ending would work fine if the first half didn't push so far toward demanding
a more martial, uncompromising conclusion but the second half of the book suddenly
seems to remember that it can't go too far without alienating about half of
its core readership. What suffers is the structural integrity of the story as
the particularly cool concept of the Blade Dancer training is allowed to deflate
toothessly and get buried beneath a mass of cosy homilies. I wouldn't mind if
this was in the same vein as, say, 'StarDoc' or even its superior successor,
'Bio Rescue', but it's irritating when 'Blade Dancer' purports to be more about
the action side of things and then undermines everything it has just built up.
Having said all that, up until that point, it's still great fun and Jory is
tough as nails and consistently entertaining. The Jorenian alien culture is
nothing really new if you've read any of the previous 'StarDoc' books but 'Blade
Dancer' is more than capable of being read as a stand alone rather than as part
of the previous series. The dialogue is especially as snappy as usual and the
first half of the book really does make for a great read. Just don't go expecting
the pace to keep up until the end because you'll just be left with a distinct
sense of anti-climax. A disappointment in the end as far as I'm concerned, but
an entertaining one along the way.
Jennifer Howell 
|
