Rating: 
Summary: Entertaining
Review: Viehl is an excellent writer. She creates real worlds, and real characters. Having moved into a new culture to be a teacher, a culture composed of at least 8 different cultures, all evolving rapidly, I easily identified with the primary character, Cherijo, as she pursues a professional career on a new planet, teeming with some 200 different species and cultures. Trying to serve the medical needs of 70,000 beings, ranging in size from a snail to a wooly mammoth, is an incredible challenge. This challenge takes what could be a somewhat boring premise- a novel about medical practice in the future- and turns it into a roller-coaster ride of a book, difficult to put down. Then Viehl adds in a number of suprises, up to the very end, as you try to discover just who Cherijo really is.I write of the characters as they are human, because Viehl does such a good job of creating her characters. Science Fiction is sometimes accused of being technology driven- you slap a few people (or species) into a standard plot, throw in a few gimmicks, and you get instafiction. But all good science fiction has been character driven- with just a few things changed to help us understand one possible future, and our possible present. Viehl does this excellently, helping us undersand what it means to be human. And in a genre that often downplays the role of women and minorities, Viehl is to be commended for highlighting both- I don't read much science fiction where the hero is a female Native American.
Rating:
Summary: A lot of fun!
Review: Aside from a slightly slow beginning (hence the four - it's really a 4.5) StarDoc is nothing but sheer scifi adventure. In the words of the immortal Furby, "Big fun!" The first-person POV is something you don't often see in SF, and I love "hearing" Cherijo's asides and thoughts. She's smart, funny, kind of naive, and generally likable - and if you're willing to suspend disbelief, she will take you on a roller coaster ride you won't soon forget. Most of the quibbles I've seen are coming from scientists and mathematicians (hmmm...) and I say forget them. This book is not focusing on perfecting technology - it's focusing on telling a story. The science contained within is classic SF galaxy-hopping stuff and it worked just fine for me. The nitpickers are just that: nitpickers. They're better off reading the "hard" sci-fi that focuses so intently on creating plausible, "good" science that it leaves the story with no soul. StarDoc, with its attention to character and humor, is like turning on the AC on a 110-degree day. Now that I've picked up my paycheck I'm definitely off to get the next book in the series. Hooray for Cherijo!
Rating: 
Summary: Medic To the Stars
Review: Stardoc is the first novel in the Stardoc series. Cherijo Grey Viel is a physician and surgeon and has discovered an awful secret about her arrogant and manipulative, but brilliant, father, Doctor Joseph Grey Veil. To escape from him, she finds a position as a physician at the FreeClinic Trauma Center on Kevarzangia Two (K-2), but she has to find non-scheduled transportation to the planet if she is going to evade her father. She discovers Dhreen in a bar, the Slow Lazy Sax; she thinks he is too young to pilot a star shuttle, but the bartender notes that his species stay young looking longer than humans. When she introduces herself, Dhreen thinks she looks too young to be a qualified physician and surgeon, but a bar fight soon gives her a chance to demonstrate her competence in emergency medical techniques. Dhreen takes her money and tells her to be on his shuttle, the Bestshot, in four hours. He tells her to look for the ugliest hunk of junk in the port ... and he isn't kidding. When she arrives on K-2, Cherijo reports to the FreeClinic and is told that she has an orientation presentation in two hours. She requests a tour of the facility before the orientation and soon meets the FreeClinic's incompetent slackard, Dr. Phorap Rogan, who quickly becomes irritated at her gung-ho attitude and walks off the job, leaving her stuck with his patient queue. Now she is responsible for treating any patient that comes in for treatment before the end of the current shift, but she has never treated a non-human sentient before. Moreover, Rogan tells the other physicians that she does not need a diagnostic analyzer and so she has to work without its database. She gets plenty of experience that day in rapid diagnosis and treatment, making a number of minor mistakes. She spends that first day in a confused haze, but survives with the assistance of the friendly nursing staff. She relates to the other, non-human, doctors well, but has problems with the FreeClinic's Chief of Staff, Doctor William Mayer. He is gruff and abrupt as well as highly skeptical about her abilities. On the other hand, she makes a friend of her Admin mentor, Ana Hansen. However, her relationship with the Chief Linguist, Duncan Reever, is mostly adversative, for he gives her the creeps, but is also strangely attractive. She also makes other friends in her housing area as well as at work. After the first day in the trauma center, Cherijo comes home to find that Jenner, her Tibetan Temple Cat, is not in the apartment. Before she can go out to look for him, Jenner is brought home by Alunthri, a Chakacat, a talking, but technically nonsentient, species. Cherijo and Jenner become friends with Alunthri and, later, adopt Alunthri when its owner dies. Cherijo also is introduced by a neighbor to a pilot friend, Kao Torin, and becomes romantically involved. Since Kao is a Jorenian, a rather overlarge humanoid alien, this bothers some of the more xenophobic Terrans in the community. This novel is soft science fiction, for the astronautical details are filled with errors, but the human -- and alien -- relationships are fairly well done. There is a touch of stereotyping, but the author tries to let the characters lead the plot. The author is also fond of the wheels within wheels style of plot yet does give fair warnings and does not resort to deus ex machina solutions to problems. However, the author seems to overemphasize the difficulties of implementing some of these solutions, possibly based on personal experiences. This novel is not great science fiction, for too much is derivative. The Sector General series, for example, is only a recent example of xeno-medicine tales. Moreover, the central medical problem in this novel is very similar to that of a recent Slonczewski novel and the concept actually antedates both works. However, some interesting medical concepts are mentioned in passing and the sociological structures are noteworthy. Nonetheless, the crux of the story is the relationship between Cherijo and Reever. Recommended for Sectory General fans and anyone else who enjoys tales of medical and surgical emergency practice in a SF setting, with a touch of romance.
Rating:
Summary: Putting the Science Back into Science Fiction
Review: What an excellent book! This novel combines a fast-moving, refreshingly
original plot with strong, well-defined characters and fascinating
science-fictional ideas to create a wonderful sci-fi adventure! However,
the aspect of the book I think I enjoyed the most was the
xenobiology. The author has a medical background, and she puts it to
good use, creating fascinating aliens and grippingly realistic hospital
scenes. It always annoys me to no end whenever an author falls victim
to what I call the "pointy ear syndrome" -- when the author's "aliens"
aren't really aliens at all, but human beings with a few cosmetic differences
(a la the different pointy-eared alien races on Star Trek. "Look! That
otherwise perfectly normal human being has pointy ears! Obviously he must
be an alien!" T.V. shows do it for practical reasons -- i.e., their
budget, the fact that they're working with human actors, etc -- but books
have no excuse except for the author's paucity of imagination). Stardoc's
aliens are actually *alien*! Physically, her alien races are wonderfully
weird, with a whole spectrum of different physiological characteristics --
and it all makes logical, medical sense (at least as far as this medical
ignoramus can tell). Even more delightfully, the aliens are sociologically
different too, with distinct, original cultures for each race.
This is universe-building par excellence! On another level, this story was just plain fun -- romance, adventure,
intrigue, and medical plagues. There were two or three plot points that
were slightly contrived, but they nevertheless moved the action of the
overall story along, so that's a forgivable flaw. And the secrets that
are revealed at the end of the novel turn much of what we think we know
on its head, and those plot points are revealed to be not so contrived
after all. All in all, this is a superb first installment in a series that I know I'm
going to be reading as long as the author cares to write it!
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