Dance of Knives
Donna McMahon
Tor, 416 pages
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Dance of Knives is set in a twenty-second century North America drastically altered by rises in sea levels,
catastrophic earthquakes, plague pandemics, and the draconian social engineering of the United States, which sought
to solve the problems of poverty and crime by massive relocation of inner-city residents. The city of Vancouver
is a microcosm of these changes, with its drowned harbor, quake-ravaged Downtown area, enormous population of impoverished
American refugees, and many gangs and tongs that control both drugs and industry. It's also a vital example of
recovery, for it's still a busy seaport, and the headquarters for the various industry Guilds which are gradually
rebuilding the economy of the Pacific Northwest.
Into the chaotic environment of Downtown comes Klale Renhard, a young Fisher Guildmember tired of her life on boats
and looking for something new. Klale, who's a natural optimist and inclined to be overconfident, has badly underestimated
the dangers of Downtown; she's all set to become a crime statistic until she's saved, inexplicably, by tong enforcer
Blade, a neurally and behaviorally altered "tool" who is more like a deadly automaton than a human being.
Blade brings Kale to the KlonDyke, a famous Downtown bar. There Klale finds a job and a place to stay, and the
beginnings of friendship with Toni, the 'Dyke's tough, capable bartender. Klale also becomes fascinated with Blade,
with whom Toni has a strange connection, possibly through her mysterious, never-spoken-of past. Blade's conditioning
seems to be breaking down, revealing fragments of human personality that aren't supposed to be retained by tools;
this is extremely dangerous, since tools who decondition often go berserk. But when Klale is abducted by a powerful
enemy, only Blade can save her. In return, she becomes determined, with Toni's help, to save Blade--if her own
danger and the tong war that threatens Downtown will let her, and if the terrible secrets Blade carries behind
his failing conditioning don't first drive him mad.
Dance of Knives isn't, refreshingly, a Big Science Fiction Story. There are no continent-spanning conspiracies
or planet-changing events, just the very personal and local struggle of troubled human beings trying to make do
in difficult circumstances. The plot is solid, but it's the characters that carry the book--their battles with
their pasts and their shortcomings, and the difficulties that arise thereby. For the most part, McMahon does a
sharp job with these characters, rounding out even minor players, making both Toni and Blade sympathetic and complexly
real. The one (and unfortunate) exception is Klale--who, though convincingly cast as a person who's overly impulsive
and imperfectly self-aware, ultimately becomes annoying in her obliviousness to what's glaringly obvious to the
reader, and whose attraction to Blade doesn't seem adequately motivated. This makes her climax-precipitating decision
toward the end of the book less than believable--the one point where McMahon seems to have bent character to the
demands of plot, rather than vice-versa.
Overall, though, this is an entertaining novel, which also offers some thoughtful observations about social justice
and social change. The setting, believably extrapolated from present-day reality, is very fully-conceived, and
unlike many dystopian efforts, isn't unrelievedly grim: McMahon conveys the squalor of Downtown, but also its vitality,
and the darkness of her vision is balanced with clear hope for the future. There are many clever touches--cell
phones (which in McMahon's scenario really have achieved the universal usefulness the cell phone companies of today
would like us to believe they now possess) have become fashion items; curses and epithets are based on ecological
disasters. It's a promising debut, and I'll be looking forward to more of this author's work.
Copyright © 2001 Victoria Strauss
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