Sydney J. Van ScyocRecensioni

My younger sister, being made of awesome, of course found me several of Scyoc's books recently (see my latest In My Mailbox post) that I had thought lost to time and space (thanks to a mishap during a move almost a decade ago that resulted in me losing an entire box of books). I hadn't read Sunwaifs before it was lost so I was excited to read it now.

The one thing you have to understand about Scyoc's books is that they tend to involve very little aggressive conflicts. More often then not the conflicts arise from a miscommunication of beliefs/lifestyles or lack of harmony. From the four books I've read of hers previously the most violence I've come across has been in Darkchild (Book 1 in the Darkchild Trilogy) and again that was because the people that Darkchild was sent from were a people of conquerors invading a relatively more passive race.

Sunwaifs begins at the end, sort of. Nadd is our first narrator and he begins by telling us about how he worries for the new generation. He recounts the hardships the original colonists had to endure their first years on Destiny--a planet that had seemed at first so perfect, but quickly proved itself to be anything but. His intentions is to leave a logbook for the next generations so that they may be able to avert the disaster he sees brewing. To this end he asks an...aquiantence of his for help in writing the log book. I hesitate to call them friends, or companions, because in truth the six original 'Sunwaifs' aren't really.

Each original Sunwaif has an extraordinary gift, bestowed upon them while in the womb by the radiation of Destiny's sun. This both saved them and cursed them, marking them as different in a world of dogmatic people who had given up hope and nutured their bitter, hard lives.

As the story unfolds we meet the other four Sunwaifs--Feliss, Trebble, Ronna and Herrol--and watch as each matures and wants different things. But always are they connected, by a bond they can't break no matter what.

I enjoyed this book quite a bit. I'm glad I'm reading it now, since I think the pacing and narrative style would have irritated me when I was younger and first bought it. My tastes have matured and I appreciate novels that build a world so intricately and expand about characters so deeply. The chapters alternate between Nadd and Corrie as they discuss important events and happenings during a year or stretch of years. While both have a similiar yearning undertone to their 'voices' in all other mannerisms they are different. Nadd has a faintly pessimistic quality to his narrative, as if he's resigned to the failure of the plan, but will persist anyway. Corrie is more pragmatic--believing in the force of their wills and strength of their bond to make a difference. In no way is she optimistic--even she thinks things may have been left too long.

While we don't 'hear' things from the other four's first person voice, their feelings and personalities are saturated in the narrative. Trebble who disappears now and again, Ronna who heals others, Feliss who is mischievous and inquisitive and Herrol who is steadfast and sure. You can feel the affection each feels for the others, but also the irritation that the bond forces onto them.

Definitely a book to read whether you are a teen or an adult--also a good way to begin your journey into Sydney J. Van Scyoc's worlds!

Darkchild is the first in the 'Daughters of the Sunstone' trilogy and a very intriguing beginning.

Possibly the oldest book I've read in a while (published in 1982) that I haven't read previously at least, Darkchild is told from a variety of third person POV's and slowly chronicles the coming of age of both the title character, but also the young girl who takes him in and cares for him.

A fantasy with scifi leanings is a good way to describe much of the book. The immediate environs are, for the most part, pre-industrial. The only exception to this rule are the quarters of alien visitors to the planet, the Armini, who conduct studies of the peoples and planet.

Then also you have the over-reaching menance, who are technologically advanced and use Darkchild (and others like him) to gather intel on the planet they despoit them on to see if the planet is a viable planet for exploiting or if they can leave it well enough alone.

At times I was tempted to double check the internet to make sure the author wasn't a pseudo for [author:Louise Lawrence] who wrote books of a similiar trend.

I look forward to reading the next two books in the trilogy.

Ending dropped the ball a bit. But intriguing all around.

La reina Amelyor suele pasar largos ratos ensimismada contemplando las aguas. Sus pensamientos vuelan más allá, mucho más allá de acantilado de roca en el que se yergue su estrado, al borde del inmenso océano. Ella es la única que posee el don de tocar la caracola, el instrumento mediante el cual puede convocar a los mamíferos marinos para que guíen a los pescadores y los devuelvan a puerto sanos y salvos. Pero, ahora, ese don se esta desvaneciendo y la substituta de Amelyor, su hija Nandyris, muere ahogada. Keiris, el hijo varón de la reina, quiere intentar tocar la caracola pero, en el país de Neth, ésa es una tarea encomendada solamente a las mujeres. Además, Keiris tiene otra misión trascendental que cumplir: ir en busca de su padre, quien desapareció misteriosamente, llevándose consigo a la hermana gemela del muchacho el mismo de día de su nacimiento. Tal vez ella tenga el don de comunicarse con los seres de océano.
Keiris emprende un largo viaje. Siguiendo los embrujadores acordes de una antigua canción, llega hasta unas islas perdidas, pobladas por extrañas criaturas acuáticas, se pone en contacto con las enigmáticas tribus de las Mareas, descubre el misterio de su herencia y un nuevo destino que lo llama con insistencia desde las profundidades del mar.

For a smaller novel, this book wasn't lacking in breadth, characters and story.
An enjoyable read, and a world I would like to see more wrote about.

Interesting world-building and a variety of characters make this book intriguing. Set on a dismal world three centuries after the arrival of human colonist, Jahna comes in response to a mysterious demand from the current inhabitants. VanScyoc does an excellent job of creating a miserable culture, split between the pious settlers and the strange mutations born of them. With only a few paragraphs, VanScyoc can tell what other authors take pages to tell. She does an excellent job of creating tension and mystery, keeping you with the story until the end.
My qualm is the ending. Despite finding out what the big mystery is, the story ends with a feeling of incompleteness , as if there ought to be a sequel or at least, an epilogue. Additionally, VanScyoc used the stock aboriginal character – the grass-hunt dance-to-drums native that appears in much of the action-adventure pulp stories of the 60s and 70s – which makes sense as this was published in 1974. Still, this was a tiresome trope then and it hasn’t improved any.
While I enjoyed the world she built and the mystery (and science) used for the plot, it was somewhat spoiled for due to the above. However, this is a classic vintage science fiction novel, with a female author, and worth reading for the story and the history.

Bluesong only: This is the second book of Van Scyoc’s Daughters of the Sunstone trilogy, which I have in the SFBC omnibus edition. I’ve been a fan of Van Scyoc’s fiction for a long time, and I’m not entirely sure why. Or rather, I hadn’t remembered why until I started reading this trilogy, beginning with Darkchild (see here), and now Bluesong. She was genuinely good. She built strange worlds and set stories in them that were predicated on that strangeness and yet had plots which explained the cause, and sometimes cure, of the strangeness. She was never especially popular, but I think I’d rate her one of the best female US sf writers of the 1980s. Sadly, her last novel appeared in 1991 (although she apparently had a couple of stories in F&SF about ten years ago). The Sunstone novels are set on the world of Brakrath which, although mostly low tech, was settled from another world centuries before and remains aware of them. The planet is a bit too cold to be comfortable for humans, so they hibernate during the winter. Even during the spring, the valleys would be too cold for agriculture… but for the barohnas, the female rulers of each valley, who have the power to focus and direct the sun’s rays… to defrost the land and provide sufficient warmth to grow things. In Bluesong, a young woman realises she is not one of the river people among whom she lives, runs away, and eventually ends up finding her father among the desert people… But she is actually a daughter of a barohna, and so will change into one herself. Van Scyoc draws her alien societies well, and this series is particularly good at dropping hints toward a story arc. I liked Bluesong more than Darkchild, but they’re both pretty good. Cherryh may have received more love during the 1980s, and, er, since, and was hugely more prolific, but Van Scyoc was just as good.

Thematically very similar to some of van Scyoc's other novels, and not quite as excellent as the Sunstone trilogy - but still an enjoyable coming-of-age story.
In a new land, some wish to form new and better ways of living. But others wish to bring the old ways with them. Dara's sister makes a drastic choice to avoid submitting to old customs - but Dara herself tries to forge a bridge between different cultures, as she herself learns about her unknown heritage - a heritage which includes communing with wild birds.
A sensitivity and effort to compassionately portray differing points of view lend depth to a simple story.

This book was really a huge disappointment. I've read (nearly?) all of VanScyoc's published work, and her 'Darkchild' trilogy is one of my all-time favorites. Admittedly, this was one of her first novels, but it's really just not very good.
The protagonist, Tollan Bailey, is an Earthman who lives in a place where labor unions have made sure that everyone has a cushy position and works very little for a comfortable life. He's not happy with this, because he has a "Protestant Work Ethic."
A random lottery sends him to a planet on a supposed assignment, which he is expected to treat as a vacation. Instead, he takes the job seriously, and ends up trying to solve the problem on a stagnant alien culture.
The problem here is not just the unoriginal theme of "Ingenious Earthman to the Rescue!", or that the "alien" culture functions only as a clunky allegory of our society, or the weird bashing of labor unions and artistic personalities (ok, we need them, but they have to be kept in check), but the character of the protagonist.
The whole time, I was like, "whoa, this guy needs some anger management classes!" His immediate reaction to anything is to lose his temper. (whether he's winning a contest or having his luggage searched in a routine customs check, he's always about to assault someone.) And the book treats this as normal. It's never even acknowledged, let alone addressed. He's crazily, horribly sexist, with rigid ideas about gender roles. The book dismisses this as "part of Human culture" even though the Human woman who's a character in the book doesn't really fit these stereotypes. Possibly worst, the conflict in the book arises when Tollan, in an accident, kills a citizen of the planet he's visiting. Absolutely no sympathy for the victim is had by anyone - the only focus is on how unfair it is to blame him for something that was an accident. OK, fine. It was an accident. But still, how about a smidgin of empathy for another sentient being!?
Overall, it's just really a very problematic book.

Incredibly thin characters, no sense of place or pace, confusing and ultimately pointless plot, and a deus ex machina conclusion. Three arcs are followed. Two involve characters quarantined on an alien planet, supposedly uninhabited but so untrue it's not clear why the backstory wants to claim people thought so. Of those two arcs, one follows two indistinguishable humans with some odd disease serious enough to quarantine but having little effect beyond spots before the eyes. The other arc is about a bird-like alien who quickly and quite unbelievably for a member of a space-faring race reverts to an unthinking predator. The third arc follows a native female humanoid who for some reason begins to connect with an ancient race of energy-controlling slave masters. There's also some shambling humanoid remnants who are gradually dispatched by the bird-alien or the female native, but no one cares about them, and flutes that when played resurrect those ancient energy beings. Nonsense all the way. Finally, there's a frequently jarring use of the oddest nouns as verbs, e.g., a plaza is described as "untouched by the breezes that had janitored the mesa top."

I didn't really know what to expect when I started reading this book, but I was pleasantly surprised. This is a great and original fantasy tale that is definitely worth reading.

Merely Ok.

Un hombre y un extraterrestre con forma de pájaro son exiliados debido a que contrajeron una enfermedad para la que no existe cura.
En la colonia descubren restos de una antigua civilización y otras cosas que no recuerdo porque dejé de prestar atención.

Horrible...

This book is three volumes in one: Darkchild, Bluesong and Starsilk. It is set eons in the future, when humankind has left Earth to populate other planets, scattered far and wide. Such a long time has elapsed that humans have evolved differently on the new plantes, to adapt to new environments. Brakrath was a planet not really suitable for settlement. Humans only landed there by accident, stranded for what they thought would be a brief while, that stretched out into centuries. In the meantime, they found a way to survive the harsh environment and built a culture around a few women invested with tremendous power- the very power of the sun. A power drawn to warm the valleys and extend the growing season but also very dangerous to wield. Over hundreds of years they have found ways to exist peacefully in a difficult place. But then a hostile alien race drops a child on their planet, a child whose mind has been programmed to collect information, a child who appears totally innocent, who gains the trust of his hosts so he can learn everything about them- and let their planet be exploited by the highest bidder. In his wake enormous changes are coming to Brakrath, as the inhabitants face their first offworld contact in centuries.

These stories are complex, with very real characters who inhabit an entirely unique universe, well imagined in every detail. They grapple with enormous dilemmas, facing emotional turmoil, trying to make sense of their lives and the new changes happening to their once-isolated planet. Each of the stories has wide-reaching implications, yet they're told from a very personal perspective that makes them so engaging. It's a fascinating trilogy, with unexpected complications at every turn. I was full of anticipation to the very last page.

DogEar Diary

Van Scyoc is a wonderful 'creator of new worlds'! No cliches here. A compelling read. Have minor quibbles with some details but overall she is an excellent standout of a SF author.

Daughter's of the Sunstone, as a series, follows several different main characters on the same planet, a world in which women rule in the form of sun-gatherers over each of many valleys and raise daughters to gain the ability to also gather sunlight to rule their own valleys upon adulthood. Darkchild starts the series at a time where the introduction newcomers to the planet disrupt and call into question the traditions and ways of the indigenous population.

As science fiction goes, I can see that many might consider this a slow moving work, but the depth of character and attention to detail in a completely unique world (at least so far as I have read) make this volume worth some attention. The narrative reminds me of McCaffery, and any novel with a strong female protagonist will always find favor with me, but the seamless switching between the points of view of the main characters is something that is a rare and welcome treat as I usually find such to be annoying at best and completely disruptive to the story line at worst. Darkchild draws you in to the drama of one family and Bluesong and Starsilk pull you through a mystery that begins on page one and crescendos to a satisfying end.

Last time I checked, this book was out of print, but I found a lovely copy at a used book store and it's well worth the hunt.

Humanity is scattered and isolated throughout the stars. And on each world, they grow different and strange. This is a story about one of those worlds, and what happens when a boy is dropped out of the sky to be taken in and adopted.
Except he is a "cultural recorder". He will be retrieved and his memories used to prepare the world for exploitation.

A coming of age novel set on a distant world where youngsters undergo a rite of passage out on the sea. Nuela is about to find out her world is far larger than she could have imagined. I enjoyed the story a lot and have fond memories of other books by this lady. Older style scifi that is starting to date but retains charm.