Violent Stars

Lyhhrt Trilogy #2

by Phyllis Gotlieb

An interstellar alien corporation run by aliens was thwarted in its plans to exploit genetically altered slaves. Now, in an attempt to keep it's case from ever coming to court, a judge is murdered on Khagodis--the planet where the amphibious human slaves were first bred--and the man who first broke the slave ring must find a way to bring these villains to justice.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction

240 pages, Hardcover

First published March 15, 1999

About the author

Phyllis Fay Gotlieb, née Bloom, BA, MA was a Canadian science fiction novelist and poet.

The Sunburst Award is named for her first novel, Sunburst. Three years before Sunburst was published, Gotlieb published the pamphlet Who Knows One, a collection of poems. Gotlieb won the Aurora Award for Best Novel in 1982 for her novel A Judgement of Dragons.

She was married to Calvin Gotlieb, a computer science professor, and lived in Toronto, Ontario.

Reviews

[Peter Tillman · Rating 2 out of 5]

Rating: "B-" -- disappointing sequel to Flesh & Gold (98)

I liked Flesh & Gold a lot, recommended it, & was looking forward to the sequel. Well, here it is, and I had to struggle to finish it. The book just didn't make sense! And there are all sorts of extraneous
pulpy subplots. And a setup for *another* sequel. Ick.

To be fair, there are some beautifully-written parts. And it has a nice cover. And I've seen two positive reviews:

Tom Easton's Analog Oct 99): http://www.analogsf.com
and Susan Dunman's:
http://www.scifi.com/sfw/issue115/boo... [dead link]

So YMMV. But it sure didn't work for me.
[review written 2000, likely first posted at rasfw on USENET]

[Kerry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Violent Stars, published in 1999, is the second volume in Phyllis Gotlieb’s Lyhhrt Trilogy. In my view, it is as good or better than the first volume, Flesh and Gold.

Skerow, the dinosaurian Khagodi judge, Solthree Ned Gattes, the gold Lyhhrt and the bronze Lyhhrt, and the android Spartakos are all back, along with a variety of other characters from Flesh and Gold. The villainous Ix, who enter Flesh and Gold only at the end, play a much greater role in Violent Stars, and Ned is accompanied this time by a troop of intelligent macaque wrestlers. Violent Stars contains a wide collection of finely drawn characters, alien, human, and robotic. As I explained in my review of Flesh and Gold, all of Gotlieb’s aliens (and including the android, Spartakos) are effectively “human.” Some form of “humanity” is where evolution inevitably leads for Gotlieb, no matter the widely disparate origins of her alien species.

Khagodi characters, like Skerow, Kabow One-eye, and Hasso are fully human in their understandings and limitations. Gotlieb vividly imagines their day-to-day lives, including their ways of moving, sleeping, eating, and even their facial expressions, which while quite non-human, express emotions much like human emotions.

Gotlieb imagines a galactic society, where each alien species is different superficially, but each shares a basic humanity. No one alien species is dominant. Our own Solthree’s national and cultural differences are reflected on a gigantic scale in Gotlieb’s galactic super-culture.

Like Flesh and Gold, Violent Stars may be thought of as science fiction literature. The language in which the books are written is carefully constructed. Gotlieb invents a Khagodi poetic form, for example, the seh, consisting of three lines in some order, with one, three, and five syllables. Some of the seh Skerow quotes seem to me to have genuine literary value—Gotlieb, of course, was originally a poet. On the other hand, Ned and some of the other characters speak a kind of dialect rich with slang:

In his new-dog days Ned had been too easily drawn into a quick-rich bunco that left him holding the dripping bag, and Manador had found him a Shangri La, more like Devil’s Island, where he hunkered shivering for a thirtyday until the whirlwind blew off.

Gotlieb’s slang reminds me sometimes of Nadsat of A Clockwork Orange or Newspeak of 1984, it’s so dense—although never so obscure that you can’t get a good sense of the meaning.

The writing is often quite beautiful. Ned and Palma are navigating the entertainment district in Burning Moutain, a city in the hot, equatorial region of Khagodis. Gotlieb writes, “The jittering lights and fancy signs had been turned off, and the bare glaring filaments left to light the place stripped it of its orgiastic excitement and left it merely dull and shabby.”

The story is exciting and moves quickly, with subtly interwoven strands of plot. Sometimes I found it difficult to recall the overall narrative, but I don’t think this is a flaw. Violent Stars is a work of literature, and sometimes literature does take focus and concentration for a full appreciation.

[Althea Ann · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Violent Stars" and "Mindworlds" are the sequels to "Flesh and Gold" - which was one of my very favorite books last year. These were both excellent (but perhaps not quite as good as the first in the trilogy).
The first book dealt with the judge Skerow and her efforts to break up an international slave ring.
Now, in 'Violent Stars,' it appears that although the corporation that was behind it (Zamos) has been broken up, there are still elements that will take drastic action to keep the case from going to court. Skerow's husband, also a judge, is murdered, and the old gladiator, Ned Gattes, is hired on a job which gets him unwillingly involved - but, since the breakup of the criminal company that was responsible for the slaves, the economy hasn't been too great for fighters, and he needs to have some money coming in for Zella...
Plots and aliens abound in another complex sci-fi mystery...

[Dominick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another good one from Phyllis Gotlieb. This continues from Flesh and Gold but could be read independently. It's a complex weaving narrative of intrigue over clones bred for slaving purposes--and, in one instance, as a perverse sort of heritage, as one character is the cloned female offspring of a lunatic trying to create an endless dynasty of clones bred from each other. Lots of action to leaven the intrigue--indeed, perhaps too much of it, as the characters seem barely to go five minutes without facing one deadly threat or another--and some slight development of the plot about the ancient ship found on the planet Khagodis, no doubt to be resolved fully in the final volume. Great space opera.

[Falbs · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant book by a Canadian poet who has it seriously going on.