In Star Rider humans have differentiated into different strains, jaks and dreens. Narrator Lone, or Jade as she becomes, is a Jakalowar (jak.) Along with her dog-ancestried mount Hinx she can teleport easily across space. This is an ability which seems to be mixed in with a sort of telepathy/awareness called jink. All jaks are searching for the lost planet of Doubleluck, finding which would make their fortune. Jade is dogged by Big Jak, who knows where Doubleluck is and wishes to stop her finding it. He traps her but they are attacked by dreens and Jade is imprisoned, without Hinx, on a planet called Gibraltar. Separation from a mount normally makes a jak go mad but Jade manages to stay sane. This middle part of the novel is tonally somewhat at odds with what came before and what is to come. Eventually Jade persuades a dreen mount to let her jink, escapes, finds Hinx again and heads for old Earth where she uncovers Doubleluck inside a mountain. She is chased there by the dreens, whose leader Rulon wants to force her into marriage but who are eventually overcome in a sort of space battle and Jade then reveals to the victorious jaks her ability to jink to other galaxies, a jak goal for millennia.


The twists and turns of the story don’t seem to follow much logic and the text is occasionally embellished with unusual syntax which either I got used to as the novel progressed or, more likely given my attention to the minutiae of text, Piserchia tended to forget about. Neither are the characters very memorable; Piserchia’s focus is more on ongoing plot, with the occasional feminist aside. I would hazard Star Rider is not among the best SF from the 1970s. ( )

Weird stuff. Took me a bit to get into it - the language is purposefully a bit odd, and the setting is (also purposefully) radically different from any usual setting for a mimetic piece of fiction. The author doesn't do infodumps, which is great but of course means you need to pick up pieces to build the picture of the world.

Anyway, I ended by liking it a lot; I like the main character and her toughness and I like the endgame resolution which gives no ideological quarter but doesn't descend into a pitched bloody battle. When I see the Women's Press Science Fiction badge on a book I always reckon it's worth picking up, because they're always at least interesting, normally very good, and sometimes astounding. ( )