Blade Dancer by S.L. Viehl

Science Fiction/Science Fiction Romance

Blade Dancer was our Science Fiction Book Club choice for June.  I read the book several years ago, even so I had to pull it off the bookshelf and re-read it before our meeting.  Blade Dancer is one of several side novels in the Star Doc series.   Although I never carried for the Star Doc books I liked Blade Dancer. Another member of the club agreed that the side novel was better than the series.  S.L. Viehl’s original plan was to use Blade Dancer as the lead novel for a series but something interfered and even though Blade Dancer was very successful the series never got off of the ground. 

We all process what we read differently and that really comes out in a group discussion.  In Blade Dancer the main character is Jory Rask who has both Terran and alien blood.  When she is kicked off of Terra she ends up training at Tana, the school for assassins known as blade dancers.  The story included pages of description about how you moved during a fight.  I could not picture the fights when I read the descriptions and I could have skipped over that part.  Others in the group said they got a very clear picture of what was happening and felt that the descriptions were key to understanding the story.  We were pretty evenly divided on the topic.

We alway share as much information as we can find about the author.  S.L. Viehl has an interesting background so look her up on the web and find out more about her.  She writes under several different names.  As a group we agreed that we enjoyed the book and would be willing to read other books written by S.L. Viehl.

ROC published Blade Dancer by S.L. Viehl in 2003.

I own a hardcover copy of Blade Dancer.