S. L. Viehl

Before I start talking about the book, I need to make a confession: I have mixed feelings about Lynn Viehl. I tried her Darkyn series when I was taking my urban fantasy baby steps and found it to be okay but not nearly as thrilling as other series in the genre. As a result, I wasn’t sure how I would feel about Her Ladyship’s Curse. I thought the premise of this story was intriguing but I wasn’t certain if Viehl’s writing would work better for me in a different genre. Thankfully, I show more did enjoy Her Ladyship’s Curse, though it’s not without flaws.

The good: great characters. Kit is a heroine you can immediately root for. She’s an independent orphan who disenchants magic for a living in a society that doesn’t approve of women working and that believes in magic. She’s got a brave heart and a strong mind, two traits I love in a protagonist. Kit’s also stubborn, kind, and skeptical, which made her really come alive for me. She’s got a rather interesting group of friends, including a fancy designer, a madam, and a disgraced inventor, and I want to know more about all of them.

There’s also Dredmore, a deathmage who has a keen interest in Kit. Kit is rather reluctantly attracted to him even though she thinks he’s a total fraud. To me, he came off as a high-handed jerk, though he does become more human as the story progresses. I’m waiting to see what happens in Part 2 before I decide how I feel about him.

The problematic: The worldbuilding lacked clarity. Viehl throws her readers into the world and the introduction was a bit too abrupt for me. I love being immersed in a story’s setting but I felt a bit lost with this one. It was more like drowning, which wasn’t pleasant. I didn’t have a clear sense of the history, it took a little while to realize that Toriana is the US and that Rumsen is probably somewhere near Seattle, and I generally felt quite confused about the setting for the first half of the story. I was pretty comfortable with the alternate history and the jargon by the time I hit the end of Her Ladyship’s Curse but it took far too long for me not to feel overwhelmed.

I also felt like the story ended quite abruptly. I know that this is Part 1 but I really wanted more story, to see if what would happen and to learn more about Toriana and her inhabitants. I’m interested to see the end of Kit’s story (or at least this story arc) so I hope Part 2 delivers a satisfying conclusion. Her Ladyship’s Curse is something of a tease in a lot of ways and I need some closure.

http://ireadgood.wordpress.com show less

This is one of those books you finish, and immediately haul your ass back to the bookstore to find volume 2 (and 3, and so on). I absolutely loved this book.

Dr. Cherijo Grey Veil is a brilliant, talented human surgeon. The story begins with her scouring the city slums for a pilot that will get her off Terra (Earth)—she is running from something, although the audience doesn’t know quite what it is she’s running from yet. Kind of reminiscent of A New Hope, Cherijo searches bars and show more taverns for a shuttle that will take her where she wants to go, and won’t ask questions. She finds her own personal Han Solo (minus the good looks) in an off-worlder pilot named Dhreen, who has his own bucket of bolts to fly her out to Kevarzanga-2 (aka K2), where she has put in for a position as a doctor in the colony’s free clinic. Cherijo arrives at the K2 clinic and thinks she has finally escaped the oppressive shadow of her father, Dr. Joseph Grey Veil. Unfortunately, things are never that easy. Immediately, Cherijo is at a disadvantage on K2—Terrans (humans) only make up less than 1% of the population, and she has never operated on nor studied non-Terran beings before. In an understaffed hospital filled with aliens of all sorts, this is problematic. Cherijo rises to the myriad challenges presented before her, and while she does make mistakes, she does her job with flair and a cool confidence. Along the way she has to deal with her nasty father trying to bring her home, coming to grips with a dark secret about her past, co-workers that despise and try to sabotage her, hostage crises, an epidemic of a deadly contagion that has no known origin or cure, and falling in love.

Think of it as House meets Star Trek meets Gattaca meets General Hospital.

In an insanely addictive, GOOD way.

Cherijo is a pretty cool chick. She’s smart and completely dedicated to her job. She’s a hothead and bossy and domineering, but she also is sensitive and frankly naïve. And the poor girl goes through a LOT. The strongest part of this book to me was in Ms. Viehl’s detailed and (I’m assuming) accurate medical practice descriptions. Faced with alien anatomy, communication problems and information gaps, Cherijo methodically goes about using common sense and her own Terran medical knowledge to operate on her patients. When the deadly outbreak of unknown origins grips K2 and threatens to wipe out the entire population, Cherijo’s feelings of pained guilt and desperation to find a cure are touching—I was on the edge of my seat, willing her to figure it out.

Ms. Viehl does a wonderful job of creating a large scale story with multiple characters and interwoven plotlines, and still manages to give everything good depth and complexity. Having now read books 2 and 3, I can assure you that even the smallest, most off-hand encounters have major repercussions in the future. It’s really quite impressive.

For you romance junkies out there, this book has a touching, tragic love story. Cherijo falls in love with a Jorenian (a tall, blue, sexy alien) named Kao Torin—a species that mates for life. At the same time, oddball Terran (and psychic) translator Duncan Reever won’t leave Cherijo alone, and they form a kind of love-hate relationship. I don’t want to spoil anyone, so I will leave it barebones like this. I know, I’m a shameless tease. (Psst, romance fans—there is sex!)

A word on the “science”—this isn’t hard science fiction. It plays fast and loose with rules, and the book takes a lot of liberties and happy coincidences concerning alien species. Interstellar travel isn’t really explained in any detail (there’s some vague notions about molecules being separated, and then restructured—not all unlike the Starship Enterprise’s transporter beams), all the aliens breathe the same air that humans do, eat similar foods, have appendages or evolutionary traits that they really don’t need (besides the fact that they look cool) …but I don’t hold this against Ms. Viehl. On the contrary, this book is more along the lines of Star Trek or Star Wars—favoring the story over any scientific technicalities. While hard science fiction is fun (albeit somewhat exhausting to read—see Dan Simmons’ Hyperion Cantos), Stardoc also manages to satisfy without all the jargon and particle physics. Good old fashioned “that could never REALLY happen but who cares I like it anyways” fun.

Notable quotes/parts: One of my favorite parts of the book is when Cherijo is held at shotgun and forced to deliver Hsktskt babies. The Hsktskt are reptilian, mercenary aliens that are merciless and deadly—and they don’t live on K2. Since there is little data on the species, the translating devices that everyone wears on the planet can’t pick up what the Hsktskt want; and naturally everyone is in a panic because the larger mercenary is pointing a gun at everyone, dragging along his comrade that is obviously in pain. Cherijo, with her no-nonsense approach to saving her patients faces down the barrel of the shotgun, tells the angry Hsktskt to back off, and figures out that the smaller alien is in labor…and then proceeds to deliver a number of lizard-like babies (which are deadly at birth too, to complicate matters further). It’s a pretty cool chapter.

Additional Thoughts: While the book might start out feeling like a more light-hearted romp into space, I should probably forewarn you that this is not really accurate. There is pain in this book, and Cherijo goes through a lot. A LOT. I was nearly in tears at the end. There is one scene in particular that seemingly comes out of nowhere and feels icky…but please trust me when I say everything happens for a reason. One thing I really appreciated about this book (and moreso in book 2) is how difficult emotions can be, and I like it when authors aren’t afraid to complicate things.

I feel like Yoda. That paragraph is ridiculously cryptic, but I don’t want to spoil anyone. See, you shall, after reading the book.

Verdict: Definitely a keeper. Buy it! I am loving the saga, and can’t wait to check out Ms. Viehl’s other work.

Full Review at:
http://thebooksmugglers.blogspot.com/2008/02/book-review-stardoc.html show less

A very good book that thrives on strong, emotional characters and complex interpersonal relationships and skirts the edges of politics and social norms to end up asking the old question about what it means to be human. Stardoc is, in fact, a medical drama in an alien setting rather than science fiction with doctors.

As far as I am concerned, Stardoc is a success in that it had a reader who did not know that there was a series (and is not terribly keen on medical dramas) wanting there to be a show more series. show less

I'm on the fence about saying I liked this book. Truly, there were a lot of things I liked. The worldbuilding, the protagonist, the plot...

And then there was the romance.

It's pretty extraordinary for me to a read a book and say, "I wish there hadn't been any sex." I'm usually totally on the side of explicit romance and sexual content, because a lot of times when reviewers criticize the sexual/romantic content of a book, they are actually talking about its (perceived) femininity. And I am not show more here for that.

But man, did Viehl really mess up with the romance. The first encounter between Kit and Dredmore read more like an assault. Viehl describes him making a "noose" out of Kit's necklace to force a kiss-- which she then gives into with absolutely zero reasoning. I love me some romance genre tropes (forced kisses! antiheros redeemed by love!), but there was literally not enough text on the page to make that kiss at all romantic for me, as a reader.

And so I carried a really bitter, confused feeling forward into the book. In a lesser novel, with a dull plot or poorly characterized heroine, I would have tossed the book aside. Sure, Kit's revealed power was a bit obvious, and the whole Anarath.. Amaranth? (wait, isn't that a grain?) whatever thing was out of left field, but the story zipped along and I liked that Kit was self-sufficient and smart ON THE PAGE and IN THE PLOT. Viehl, unlike a lot of paranormal or urban fantasy authors, did not just tell me her heroine was capable and kick-ass, she proved it too.

Well, as long as Kit was not interacting with Dredmore-- when she inexplicably just loved him. With no decent reason for that love because Viehl absolutely failed to capture the rest of the trope! The passionate, unreasonable attraction between characters, or the sense of the deep pain and loneliness for the otherwise horrible antihero, that makes a redemptive love story worth reading. Instead, Dredmore just comes across as an asshole who wants to destroy the thing he supposedly loves most (and I am very consciously using the word "thing" here, because it really does come across on that level).

AND THEN.. [spoiler alert].. the whole relationship gets retconned! A total reset and a blank slate and I just give up. I'm not likely to read any more of this series, and that is a shame. Because not all of it was bad. But I expect a hell of a lot better. show less