Tag Archives: s.l. viehl

Skellingtons in Closets

Ohkay. Confession time. I really like the Stardoc novels by S. L. Viehl.

Really!

Though it’s more of a guilty, secret love than a happy marriage.

The premise for these ten novels is that Cherijo, running away from her tyrrant father, is a brillant surgeon thrown repeatedly into space-flung adventures. She discovers that she is a genetically engineered clone experiment thing of said father–and the rediculosity begins from there.

When I’m reading these books, my brain tears in two. Intellectually, I know that the situations are over-the-top, the science is fuzzy, cataclysmic plots are cataclysmic, and what was that nonsense about pseudo-Navajo culture in book three? And I hate Reever, I don’t think she loves him. I think he’s a toad.

But I Have. To. Know.

I’m a crotchety and opinionated old biddy and books rarely keep me up all night anymore. I have to think about reading when I read, I have to concentrate and make myself sit down and set a timer for 20 minutes of reading time.

Not with my pal Stardoc! I just crack the cover and off we go! Zip!

I want Cherijo to be successful at whatever it is that she’s doing in each novel, and it’s difficult to stop reading.

And I’m not the only one who feels this way. When researching for the Reviews article that nrlymrtl and I teamed for last weekend, I looked through a bunch of comments and reviews for different Stardoc novels. Of course there were the usual occasion of gibberish, but most of the unfavorable reviews centered around the fact that Viehl had tried to kill Cherijo in book 5! Not complaining that she is a bad writer but complaining that they wanted her to write more! They were pissed because they so loved that character.

What is the mechanism about some characterizations that suck a reader in?

Part of it is that I am familiar with this world, and so it’s a lovely vacation to visit my friends there again.

Viehl is very good at distincting one character from another. Xonea would never do or say or react in the way that Squilliyp does. Viehl cannot swap one character for another. Even when Cherijo is gone and replaced by Jarn, Jarn is a distinctly different person even though she occupies the previous Cherijo body and has her surgical knowledge (fuzzy science–I already said that).

Descriptions are well-balanced between giving me sensory input and maintaining the action sequence.

I don’t know, I don’t know. I just know that Viehl is a masterful writer to be able to have me happily traipsing at Cherijo’s heels despite employing so many tricks that otherwise would completely shut down a story for me.

I would like to see her give herself over to a more robust sci-fi opera series, and let go of the telepathy character linking.

Boat Gankage Redeux

(This turned out to be a recommendation for Ken Scholes’ Psalms of Isaac series)

Took a quick break between Canticle (book 2) and Antiphon (book3) to stop in and check on my pal StarDoc, with Plague of Memory.

She’s doing alright, had to perform battlefield surgery on her hubby again, making new genetically-impossible friends, finding antidotes for inter-galactic chemical weapons, coming to terms with her multiple-personality issues… You know.

Anyway, just started Antiphon: Rafe Merrique’s boat was ganked out from under him! How rude!

I had to look this up, too. Antiphon is the response from the, uh, audience, I guess, in a ritual, most familiarly as done in a Catholic or Orthodox Mass. Head Priest Guy says “blah blah something” and we dutiful Catholic school kids would say “blessed is the fruit of the loom Jesus.”

This makes sense to me in relation to the story. *thinks, eyes wander* There are five books to the series: Lamentation (grief over a tragedy), Canticle (a hymn), Antiphon (or “response”), Requiem (a mass for the dead), and I don’t know what the fifth will be titled.

I’m NOT giving you any spoilers because the surprises in the stories were so delightful to me. They cover fantastical archaeology, I guess you could say, with a Medici-like family pulling political strings, he’s got the Great Schism complete with Pope and Antipope thing goin’ on, a Mighty Weapon, a pee-and-see pregnancy test… The world and its history keep getting bigger and deeper with every chapter. The characters grow and change, become People in my mind, not just characters. The old people are old with cricks in their bones, and the adolescents are adolescent with their shyness and impulsively dumb ideas.

I’m trying to think which is my favorite character, but they’re all so unique and interesting. In Lamentation I wanted to make cookies for Neb but now in Antiphon he scares me a little. Winters is utterly real. And if I ever meet that Ria chick I’m going to bust her face open. Characters that were in the “good guy” column are in the “bad guy” column later, and then back again. They’re all just folks, with conflicting motives.

So. I’m going to return to Rafe and see how he’s doing, and what gives with those dudes stealing his boat. How rude.

Donato Giancola and Kristen Britain

(this link will take you to information about purchasing the cover art for Blackveil)

I was able to meet Donato Giancola at Dragon*Con this year. I was, to put it mildly, overwhelmed by his art, and embarrassed myself terribly by crying at him (always with the crying!). I am a cynical and crotchety old bitch and am rarely over-impressed by much, but I was completely dumbfounded, awestruck, tongue-tied by his art and his craft. He does “old school” gen-u-wine painting, like with a brush and …paints! His subject matter tears at my heart. These mermaids that he’s working on now, good god almighty! What a sad story is going on with this series! You know those moments sometimes when you stumble awkwardly upon someone heartbroken and crying about something and you just start the waterworks, too? That’s what these moments are in, for example, “Orphaned“, and “The Golden Rose“. And goodness’ sake! His interpretation of the moment when Frodo and Sam have to put Gollum in his place in order to be able to travel safely with that wild creature… sigh. My brains went “Pop!” when I saw the cover art for MY faves staring back at me from the panels of his booth! Mr. Giancola painted the cover artwork for the Sharon Shinn Twelve Houses series, which we all devoured (Mystic and Rider, etc). He has done the cover art for the first StarDoc novel by S. L. Viehl. And a number of Barbara Hambly’s! And he did the cover art for The High King’s Tomb by Kristen Britain, which is number three in the Green Rider series. And when you take a look at that link, please note who owns the painting!

Kristen Britain’s latest Green Rider novel will be published by DAW in early 2011. Does the artistry of the cover art look familiar? Yee-haw! The Green Rider series is a Darkcargo Book Club selection, so get cracking!

Take a generous look through his artwork on his website. The prints are affordable, too, which is awesome.

The TBR Pile: Overwhelming Guilt and Anxiety.

Picked up the newest StarDoc, A Dream Called Time by S.L. Viehl, and the latest Sholan Alliance novel, Shades of Gray, by Lisanne Norman.

I am still reading Shorn, by Larissa Niec; and there are three more newish older books by Julie Czerneda waiting for me, Reap the Wild Wind, Riders of the Storm, and Rift in the Sky.

There’s a few I’ve picked up at this year’s Cons: Ending an Ending by Danny Birt, Secrets of the Sands, by Leona Wisoker and Rum and Runestones, edited by Valerie Griswold-Ford.

And shame of all shames, I am still on the second book of Juliet E. McKenna’s Tales of Einarinn series, the Swordsman’s Oath.

I found three pre-sparkly vampire novels by Barbara Hambly, Traveling With the Dead, Stranger at the Wedding, Those who Hunt the Night.

Wendy has lent me The Family Trade series by Charles Stross.

Jack McDevitt is publishing another Alex Benedict novel this fall (2 November).

There’s still the remainder of David B. Coe’s first trilogy, The Lon Tobyn Chronicle, to finish, not to mention his several others.

There’s the self-promised re-reads of the SwordDancer saga by Jennifer Roberson, and the entire Culture novels over again, Iain M. Banks.

We’re not going to talk about how behind I am on the 2009 Nebula nominees and winners.

This has all been happily interjected with House of Cards by C. E. Murphy, read on the Kindle and Star Wars #Whatever, Fate of the Jedi set–pushed straight up to the top of the pile as per the loan of the entire set in hardback from my much respected first boss.

At least I have read everything that John Steinbeck and Linnea Sinclair have ever written, so I can thankfully tick those off the list.

Permission Slips

Can I please get a permission slip to abandon my current book that I’m not enjoying (Age of Misrule, by Chadbourn) in favor of something I love and trust?

I want to revisit the Stardoc series, by S. L. Viehl. I’m on #6, Rebel Ice, but for some unknown reason, it is unavailable in any e-format. Not only that, but the PB is out of print and a used copy currently sells for $13+. (Shocking, but really that’s ok; I spent more than that on the Chadbourn.) I have a copy of #7, Plague of Memory so I’ll need ANOTHER permission slip to Skip A Book in a Series, please.

Chadbourn’s writing is really engaging, simple to read and easy to follow. His characters are all very unique and distinct from one another. The action is riveting and the scenes are panoramic. But. I’m just waiting for this story to wrap up. And waiting. And waiting. And I’m already 3/4 through. Still waiting. I think that my problem is that it is such an End of the World story that I can’t escape. I already feel like the world’s ending, with this oil spill and the islands of plastic in the oceans and the massive extinctions happening faster than we can document. I don’t need to read it in a fantasy novel. I guess.

I am looking forward to reading his new series, which you can find at www.pyrsf.com. Maybe the sword and intrigue story will fit me better.

The StarDocs are my love. I really enjoy Viehl’s writing. These are stories that I like to read just because I like to read them, no more analysis than that. They’re soap operas for me, hit the extremities of emotions in such a remote setting that I can engage in the characters’ trials fully without context to my own life.

And so, I have in my Bergen Bag: Plague of Memory in paperback, and Age of Misrule on the Kindle. What will it be, folks?