Dancing by herself

Charles R. Saunders took a long break from writing after the 1980s, focusing on his career as a journalist. Returning to the craft late in life, he started out focusing on short stories and revising his long-trunked final Imaro novel. Dossouye: The Dancers of Mulukau was his first fresh novel in decades. Unlike his character Imaro, Dossouye’s tale hadn’t come to a definite ending.

The Dancers of Mulukau follows the short story collection Dossouye (which I reviewed here). The exiled woman-warrior Dossouye has crossed the vast rainforest bordering her homeland and has emerged on the other side and back to civilization. No one here has heard of the land of Abomey, or seen any creature like her war-bull Gbo. Absent from society for so long, Dossouye must adjust to being a permanent outsider, but finds acceptance among the Dancers of Mulukau, who hire her as a bodyguard.

The Dancers are all intersex, referred throughout as s/he and hir. While coming from various ethnicities, they have formed a culture of their own, and travel between kingdoms practicing powerful magic through dance. This has lent them favoured status, but not by the Walaq, who see them as an affront against nature. Dossouye happens to arrive at a tipping point where the leaders of the Walaq decide to move openly against the Dancers, even if it upsets the delicate alliances forged in the region.

Dossouye herself remains compelling and well-drawn; there is something arresting about the way Saunders writes about her. However, the nature of the story means we don’t get to stay with her for some portions and I really felt that absence. It’s not a bad problem to have, but The Dancers of Mulukau also suffers from following an impeccably-crafted short story collection. Many of the same things that made those short stories great is still here, but with a duller edge, the exploration of cultural practices overshadowed by a larger supernatural conflict that ends up grabbing ever larger aspects of the story.

The Dancers of Mulukau is thematically weaker than Dossouye, but that was also a hard book to live up to. The beginning and end of Dancers are still satisfying, but something is lost with the focus on earth-shattering battles and conflicts between deities when compared to the laser-focus on personal repercussions found in the short stories found before. We still get a bit of it in Dossouye’s conversations with a Dancer and love interest Ukenge, but not as much as I would have liked.

I still liked this novel a great deal, and it does close the loop on any lingering questions left by Dossouye about the woman herself. It’s a worthy ending for the character and I’m thankful that Saunders returned to writing about her one last time.