Dancer of the Sixth by Michelle Shirey Crean
~The Quick Take~
Dancer of the Sixth’s decent plot is hampered by over-writing and poor editing that made it impossible for me to finish it.
~The Real Review~
I cannot finish Dancer of the Sixth.
I wish I could point to something dramatic: glaring plot holes, horrible characterization, unintelligible writing. Alas, I cannot.
Dancer survived a massacre and shed her identity to join the secretive military intelligence unit known as the Sixth Service. She’s settled in this new life when intrigue finds her: someone is coopting her shed identity. Disturbingly, this person works for another military agency. Fearing the worst, Dancer must go undercover as herself to discover what is going on.
As far as plots go, it’s punchy enough and has a complimentary hook.
The characterization is mostly there. Dancer comes on too strong, but since I also think beloved Starbuck (of Battlestar Galactica) comes on too strong, I’ll let it slide. Still, Dancer is driven, skilled, and strong, fronting attitude to hide an obviously tender center. She’s an understandable character.
Now, the writing isn’t unintelligible, but this is where things started to go sideways.
Take, for example:
With a string of oaths, the commander grabbed the first thing on his desk that came to hand and sent the gold nameplate bearing the inscription COL. H. DAVEN crashing against the opposite bulkhead.
This sentence is bad in at least three different ways:
1) The point-of-view is skewed. We’re in COL. H. DAVEN’s head right now, so what we’re reading should be what he’s thinking/doing. There’s no reason why he would think of his own full name and title on his nameplate like that. Most realistically, the sentence would read “the commander grabbed his nameplate and sent it crashing against the opposite bulkhead.”
2) This scene’s intent is to show a character explosively angry. The tone and style of the sentence is meandering. Unless there’s some reason why the POV character should feel detached (and there isn’t, because the POV character is also the angry character), those two things don’t jive. A short, explosive sentence would read much better.
3) There’s so much bloat. “With a string of oaths, Col. Daven hurled his nameplate against the opposite bulkhead” would serve us just as well. I’d even argue that “with a string of oaths” is excessive. All of the asides, like the nameplate being gold, or it being the first thing on his desk that came to hand, are utterly superfluous. The difference is 20 words—a 60% savings. I might sound pedantic, but this adds up.
Here’s another example:
Dancer pushed herself up to a standing position with both hands on the arms of her chair.
If Dancer were seriously injured, drugged, or struggling, watching her put both hands on the arms of her chair and push herself to a standing position would be dramatic.
Here, Dancer simply needs to stand. “Dancer stood,” would have sufficed. Everything else is meritless from a storytelling perspective. Which is a common theme in the writing.
I believe that Michelle Shirey Crean knows her world. I bet she had countless documents detailing the political factions, the planets in the universe, the economy, the geography and environmental climate—everything. And while I’m sure all of this was fascinating to Crean, she did not incorporate this information into the story in an engaging way.
For example, on page thirteen, Dancer needs to procure a new uniform. A solid page and a quarter follow where she ruminates on how:
the uniforms are designed and distributed
people choose the colors on their uniforms
these uniforms compare to the uniforms of other divisions
formal and informal uniforms differ
It’s page thirteen. I haven’t hit the main plot line yet, nor am I truly invested in the protagonist or her world. I’m still assessing that quintessential question of fiction: “Why should I care?”
Uniforms are not an answer.
Still, most books struggle initially, and I’ve read plenty of books that started out rough but won me over. I had hope that the compelling plot/hook, once it really kicked in, would sweep me off my feet. I mean, the thrill of, essentially, hunting herself, figuring out who that person is, why they could possibly need Dancer’s identity, and what they’re up to—it’s easy to imagine how engaging that could be.
Instead, Dancer almost immediately captures and IDs her impersonator.
Given the lack of build up to this scene, it needs special handling to land. Maybe Dancer has a specific fear about the actions of her impersonator, and cagily tries to trick them into revealing closely-held information. Maybe she’s cocky about how easy it was for her to nab the impersonator, only for them to imply that they wanted to be captured. There needs to be some information given and some uncertainty.
Instead, the impersonator is Dancer’s younger cousin and they bicker like children for ten pages. No tension is heightened, no intrigue is mounted. I have no reason to believe Dancer interacting with her cousin changed anything, and while we do glean a little of Dancer’s origin, nothing seemingly important happens.
At that realization, I knew I had to be done. Between the word bloat in sentences, the idea bloat in info-dumps, and the exposition bloat of the storytelling, it felt like I’d finish all 314 pages of the book but only have relevant plot information for maybe 100 pages. I need something a little more on-point than that.
As always with books I set aside, I have a twinge of regret. Greatness could be just around the corner, but I have too many books on my shelf to keep reading when there are this many red flags.
Public Goodreads Deets: 3.76/5 | 33 Ratings
Cover art by Richard Hescox:
