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A review by wazbar
The Dancers of Noyo by Margaret St. Clair
adventurous
mysterious
reflective
fast-paced
3.5
Dancers has definite, deliberate through lines with St Clair's other novels the Sign of the Labrys, the Dolphins of Altair and the Shadow People (which I would say otherwise do not overlap with each other very much). This, and being St Clair's last novel, gives it the character of a kind of summative work.
However, a couple of different things make it less effective than her others. One is that it's much more of a return to pulp form than her other works, and this makes the events feel very assorted and disconnected.
Furthermore, the pulp figure of the Canny Man of Action as a narrator-protagonist is in conflict with St Clair's own thrust as an aquarian/new age/wiccan writer. It requires the people who appear to be her own contemporary hippies to be cast as the conservative social order that needs to be shaken up with a new spiritual epiphany. Maybe that's more deliberate than I'm giving it credit for, but it came across confusedly to me.
However, a couple of different things make it less effective than her others. One is that it's much more of a return to pulp form than her other works, and this makes the events feel very assorted and disconnected.
Furthermore, the pulp figure of the Canny Man of Action as a narrator-protagonist is in conflict with St Clair's own thrust as an aquarian/new age/wiccan writer. It requires the people who appear to be her own contemporary hippies to be cast as the conservative social order that needs to be shaken up with a new spiritual epiphany. Maybe that's more deliberate than I'm giving it credit for, but it came across confusedly to me.