Somehow, I've always assumed I was the only one who ever read this book. The thing I remember best is that all the women are bald to keep from having jealousy over who has the best hair. So true. ( )

Sci-Fi is not my thing and quite a weak book compared to Ms Susann's other books ( )

This review includes some spoilers.

I read this entirely because, when I was a young teen, I tried to buy it from a Friends of the Library book sale and was told that I couldn't. A librarian talked to my mom, and my mom told me I couldn't read it until I was thirty. I was determined to read it before then, but unfortunately forgot about it. Better late than never, right?

All right, moving on to the book. As a science fiction novel, Yargo is mediocre. As a science fiction romance, it is completely terrible. As a statement about feminism...well, I'm not entirely sure what it was trying to say. Yargo is probably at its best as an adventure story, but sadly that was only a small portion of the book.

Janet Cooper is an ordinary American woman. When she was younger, she longed to be a famous actress and to marry a handsome and romantic man. Instead, her dreams were shot down by her mother and, eventually, David, her fiance. David is a good man, a perfect future husband, although he's not as passionate as Janet would have preferred. Still, she considers herself lucky.

Then, while on a trip to her beloved childhood vacation spot, Janet is abducted by aliens. Gorgeous aliens. All the men are tall, bald, and have amazing green eyes, and all the women are visions of loveliness. Janet soon learns that her abduction was a mistake – the aliens had intended to abduct either Dr. Einstein or Dr. Blount and had settled upon Dr. Blount. Having realized their mistake, they now have to decide what to do with Janet.

The first third of this book reminded me of a particular game, Hope: Other Side of Adventure. In that game, you play the princess in the usual video game “damsel in distress” setup. You're locked in a cell and can literally do nothing to save yourself. It was depressing, and I uninstalled it fairly quickly. Anyway, Janet reminded me of that princess. Pretty much the only thing she could do was plead to be allowed back to Earth. She spent most of her time on Yargo locked in a single room, with nothing to do but think. No daring escapes, no time spent exploring the planet, nothing.

The story became more exciting when Janet's fate was finally decided and she was loaded onto a spaceship. Things went wrong, and the Yargoans she was with finally began treating her like one of them. Then came the crazier stuff: the Venusian bee people. This was when the book's few instances of violence happened (dismemberment! near rape!). For a while, I was genuinely worried that Susann was going to include an on-page rape scene involving a crazed mutant bee prince. This part of the book was also when Susann's message about feminism seemed to be strongest, although I felt that the book's ending contradicted some of the things she seemed to be trying to say during Janet and Sanau's captivity on Venus. While I thought the blossoming friendship between Janet and Sanau was fascinating, I hated that Sanau's new emotions included maternal feelings (of course because she's a woman, because no woman has ever not had warm fuzzy feelings for their children).

After that exciting and slightly horrifying middle, I was looking forward to seeing how the book would end. Unfortunately, this is where Yargo took a giant nosedive. There had been indications that Janet was fascinated by the Yargo, perhaps on the path to becoming as worshipful of him as his own people were. I wouldn't have called it romance, but that was exactly what Susann tried to shoehorn into the book's ending. Here is a summary of how Janet and the Yargo's conversations went:

Janet: (I can't stop thinking about him! I love him! Does he love me???)
Yargo: Okay, I've finished my daily chat with you so you won't feel lonely. Are you sure you're not well enough to leave yet? Wow, your human body is even weaker and more inferior than I thought.
Janet: I love you!
Yargo: ...That's nice. I pity you and have no feelings for you.
Janet: That can't be true! You love me!!!
Yargo: I do not understand love the way you do. I love my people, I love those blades of grass out there. But I do not love individuals.
Janet: You're lying. You like spending time with me. That's love!
Yargo: ...I think I enjoy spending time with you. Is that love?
Janet: YES! And also, this is love, too! [She kisses him.]
Yargo: That's love?
Janet: YES!
Yargo: Huh. It was kind of unpleasant.
Janet: ...That's okay! You like spending time with me. It's a start. You love me! I can wait.
Yargo: Yeah, I don't think you can. This is kind of awkward. You should probably go back to Earth soon.
Janet: But, but, I love you! You love me! I have faith.
Yargo: Faith in what?
Janet: That God will ensure that everything turns out all right.
Yargo: Ha ha ha ha! Seriously? That makes no sense. I'm God. The God you worship doesn't exist. You humans and your silly religion.
Janet: You blasphemer! I love you, but this is too much! [She smacks him.]
Yargo: Right. I'm going now. You have a nice life back on Earth, okay?

I hated this “romance” with a burning passion. It was awful. The colder the Yargo was towards Janet, the more convinced she was that, deep down, he loved her. I didn't think David was a great catch either, but the choice didn't have to be “the Yargo vs. David.” Janet could easily have gone back to Earth, ditched David, and then taken some time to figure out what she wanted from her life. I think the choice between David and the Yargo was supposed to be seen as a choice between a safe future and the possibility of passionate love, but it didn't work for me at all.

By the end of the book, Susann completely forgot why Janet had been kidnapped in the first place. The Yargoans had intended to give Dr. Blount the information necessary to warn Earth's leaders that nuclear testing would cause the Sun to go prenova in the near future. Nothing happened to make this danger go away, but apparently Janet's love for the Yargo was more important.

All in all, this was a quick read that held my attention. I'm glad I read it, if only to satisfy my curiosity. However, I don't know that I'd ever recommend it to anyone else.

(Original review, with read-alikes and watch-alikes, posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.) ( )

Yargo by Jacqueline Susann

Even though some of the science was bit out dated; when considering the time this was written it becomes less so in some respects and stands as an entertaining if perhaps light read that had a lot of potential to go much further than it did in a philosophical sense.

I'm not even sure how I came across this novel but I own a paperback version that was published somewhere in the late 70's and after Jacqueline's death.

At the time I wasn't much of a fan of romance novels and I wasn't sure what this was going to be like so it sat in a box with some other great finds.

The book itself was written in the early to mid 50's and may have been more appropriate for that time although it seems to have some influence from much earlier works. Jacqueline cites Ray Bradbury as an influence though this story reminded me more of the work of Edgar Rice Burroughs and it's interesting to note that Bradbury cited Edgar as one of his many inspirations and early influences.

The story of Yargo itself is interesting though it seems simplistic in many a sense. Janet Cooper is your average woman, educated just enough to find a job where she might find the man who might take her out of the job and give her a happy successful family life. This is about right for the 50's perhaps just a bit off for the 70's and it seems like a good place to measure the signs of the time. Janet does not seem quite as happy as she should be and so she does what any healthy person might do at that moment and tries to recapture the magic of her past and the happiness that comes with childhood. While on her nostalgic trip that turns out to be a bust when the magic of the vacations spot has been blighted by the progress of the times and is now slipped into the mundane, Janet makes a last visit to the beach before she says goodbye to her past and that's when she is abducted by aliens.

Her kidnap is an error; since the aliens are looking to kidnap a noted scientist and contemporary of Albert Einstein. Once they discover their error their own skewed logic demands that they can not return her to her home. Their goal was to convince this great mind of the scientist that nuclear tests were causing unusual activity on our sun and would accelerate its eventual growth to nova and the demise of the solar system. This part of the plot is a bit thin but it works mostly because the story has little much to do with that other than to serve as the means to get Janet in her predicament.(This could have developed differently had Jacqueline decide to show this issue being resolved somehow.)

Yargo is a planet in some far off place and the people of Yargoians appear to be physically perfect and their leader whose name is Yargo looks a lot like Yul Brynner only much taller. The Yargoian people are a race that at best might be compared to Star Trek's Vulcan. They seem to lack passion and emotion and this becomes extremely annoying to Janet. They also have a superior attitude that leads to them telling Janet that they will have to displace her from Earth and that they don't want her on their planet so they will try to pawn her off onto the Martians. (Now that they have Janet they don't feel she has the credentials to convey the important message to Earth and they don't want her telling Earth about them. They apparently feel they could trust the scientist to convey the message without compromising Yargoian secrecy.)

From the description given; the Martians are possibly like lizards and of course Janet would have to be housed underground, that's all contingent of the Martians agreeing to take her at all. Janet's other option is to be isolated on a ship that would have all her needs and would be orbiting some safe place where she would do no one harm. This all seems a bit odd especially coming from a race that seems to set itself in such a superior position. The Martians finally agree to take Janet who would just as soon return home.

On the journey back to the solar system and to Mars they are hijacked by some strange cigar shaped craft that seem to originate from Venus, which Yargo felt was an uninhabitable planet. The Venusian's are large bee like creature who we find out at one time looked more human than insect. The subsequent adventure is a bonding mechanism for Janet and her one Yargoian friend and the push to the real plot of this story.

This book has a lot of potential and even the seeming nonsense of the two races on Mars and Venus are not all that far off for the time when the author was writing this. I'm not sure how the stories potential for growth in Janet managed to get stifled almost as much as Janet's life seemed to be stifled. The picturing of Janet's life and her feeling almost of being trapped and wondering if marriage was going to help or make things worse was a great start and even the emotionless nature of the alien race was not all that far out so it must be that the reason that the final outcome skirts all of the important issues that are raised is partially another sign of the time that this was written in. Janet has set before her a few compelling examples of what life could be like if one could jump out of the paradigm of life on Earth. Though they lack the love and emotions the Yargoian's do seem to have some extra equality among men an women. You would think that Janet would try to put those thoughts to use even if she wants to preserve the loving caring emotional side of life. Perhaps though it is fitting for this story that she might fall short of completely cutting the strings of ingrained cultural influences.

This is a well written entertaining light SFF Romance adventure that might even qualify as good Young Adult Fiction.

J.L. Dobias














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*WARNING*This isn't your average Jacqueline Susann bonk-buster! You will not be able to play name the real life star ala VALLEY OF THE DOLLS or THE LOVE MACHINE. Written in the 1950s but published after Jacqueline Susann's death in 1974, YARGO is an out there sci-fi yarn .Janet the earthling meets Yargo and goes to various planets. If you liked the last 50 pages of ONCE IS NOT ENOUGH when January goes loopy, YARGO might be for you. Otherwise only for the Jacqueline Susann completist.