Book Recommendation: The January Dancer

Teylar Ta Palulukankelku · May 01, 2011, 06:22:54 AM

The January Dancer is a sci-fi novel published in 2008 and written by american writer Michael Flynn.

It takes place in a quite distant future (Maybe in 1000 years or so $:-\$ .) and the story revolves around an ancient artifact, non-human in origin, found on an uninhabited desert-planet by an expedition consisting of Freighter Captain Amos January and crew, hence the book's name, The January Dancer. There are legends among the humans of the colonial worlds in the galaxy that a stone scepter, known as The Twisting Stone due to it's uncanny ability to twist like a dancer completely undetected, was built by a pre-human civilization and hidden somewhere in the galaxy. During their expedition, January and crew finds an object matching the description of The Twisting Stone and brings it off-world. But that's not all there is to The Twisting Stone. Legends also tell of the stone having the ability to enhance the persuasiveness and charisma of it's owner, making his/her will unquestionable. Through a series of circumstances, a couple of strangers head out on an interstellar hunt for the stone, all for different reasons.

The book is told in narration, told from the perspective of a ragged middle-aged (?) man telling the story of ``The Dancer´´ to a harp-playing, red-head, gold-skinned, green-eyed, young and beautiful woman many years after the story takes place, with ``present-time´´ narrative chapters in between the chapters of the main story.

I read this book as part of an English project we had in school, so it had to be in English. Sometimes reading the book was a little difficult due to me not understanding all of the words and so i read my English-Swedish dictionary a lot, and therefore reading the book took quite a long time (I had to re-borrow it from my local library 3 times!), but it was never the case that i could not understand the context of the narrative. IMO it wasn't an amazing book, but it was still good and i recommend it to all sci-fi fans here at Learnnavi (which i guess would be about 95 % of the people here

).

Yayo · May 01, 2011, 06:30:28 AM

Quote from: Teylar Ta Palulukankelku on May 01, 2011, 06:22:54 AM
The January Dancer is a sci-fi novel published in 2008 and written by american writer Michael Flynn.

It takes place in a quite distant future (Maybe in 1000 years or so $:-\$ .) and the story revolves around an ancient artifact, non-human in origin, found on an uninhabited desert-planet by an expedition consisting of Freighter Captain Amos January and crew, hence the book's name, The January Dancer. There are legends among the humans of the colonial worlds in the galaxy that a stone scepter, known as The Twisting Stone due to it's uncanny ability to twist like a dancer completely undetected, was built by a pre-human civilization and hidden somewhere in the galaxy. During their expedition, January and crew finds an object matching the description of The Twisting Stone and brings it off-world. But that's not all there is to The Twisting Stone. Legends also tell of the stone having the ability to enhance the persuasiveness and charisma of it's owner, making his/her will unquestionable. Through a series of circumstances, a couple of strangers head out on an interstellar hunt for the stone, all for different reasons.

The book is told in narration, told from the perspective of a ragged middle-aged (?) man telling the story of ``The Dancer´´ to a harp-playing, red-head, gold-skinned, green-eyed, young and beautiful woman many years after the story takes place, with ``present-time´´ narrative chapters in between the chapters of the main story.

I read this book as part of an English project we had in school, so it had to be in English. Sometimes reading the book was a little difficult due to me not understanding all of the words and so i read my English-Swedish dictionary a lot, and therefore reading the book took quite a long time (I had to re-borrow it from my local library 3 times!), but it was never the case that i could not understand the context of the narrative. IMO it wasn't an amazing book, but it was still good and i recommend it to all sci-fi fans here at Learnnavi (which i guess would be about 95 % of the people here ).

I'm not actually a Sci-Fi novel fan but this sounds really, really cool! I love Sci-Fi movies though.

Teylar Ta Palulukankelku · May 01, 2011, 06:34:33 AM

Quote from: Yayo. on May 01, 2011, 06:30:28 AM
Quote from: Teylar Ta Palulukankelku on May 01, 2011, 06:22:54 AM
The January Dancer is a sci-fi novel published in 2008 and written by american writer Michael Flynn.

It takes place in a quite distant future (Maybe in 1000 years or so $:-\$ .) and the story revolves around an ancient artifact, non-human in origin, found on an uninhabited desert-planet by an expedition consisting of Freighter Captain Amos January and crew, hence the book's name, The January Dancer. There are legends among the humans of the colonial worlds in the galaxy that a stone scepter, known as The Twisting Stone due to it's uncanny ability to twist like a dancer completely undetected, was built by a pre-human civilization and hidden somewhere in the galaxy. During their expedition, January and crew finds an object matching the description of The Twisting Stone and brings it off-world. But that's not all there is to The Twisting Stone. Legends also tell of the stone having the ability to enhance the persuasiveness and charisma of it's owner, making his/her will unquestionable. Through a series of circumstances, a couple of strangers head out on an interstellar hunt for the stone, all for different reasons.

The book is told in narration, told from the perspective of a ragged middle-aged (?) man telling the story of ``The Dancer´´ to a harp-playing, red-head, gold-skinned, green-eyed, young and beautiful woman many years after the story takes place, with ``present-time´´ narrative chapters in between the chapters of the main story.

I read this book as part of an English project we had in school, so it had to be in English. Sometimes reading the book was a little difficult due to me not understanding all of the words and so i read my English-Swedish dictionary a lot, and therefore reading the book took quite a long time (I had to re-borrow it from my local library 3 times!), but it was never the case that i could not understand the context of the narrative. IMO it wasn't an amazing book, but it was still good and i recommend it to all sci-fi fans here at Learnnavi (which i guess would be about 95 % of the people here ).

I'm not actually a Sci-Fi novel fan but this sounds really, really cool! I love Sci-Fi movies though.

I'm glad to hear that

. If you decide to read it, i hope you'll find it enjoyable

!