Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover

Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover
Marion Zimmer Bradley
DAW Books
Copyright: 1993
088675930

The back jacket blurb:

A COLLECTION OF DARKOVER STORIES WRITTEN BY MARION ZIMMER BRADLEY HERSELF!
Return to Darkover, planet of the Bloody Sun, with this collection written solely by the originator of this exotic world, Marion Zimmer Bradley, and including two entirely new stories never before in print. From the Founding to the Ages of Chaos, to the era of the Hundred Kingdoms, to the time of Recontact, travel through the history of Darkover with the writer whose work has inspired so many others to enter her world. Fight alongside the Free Amazons, master the powers of laran with those who work the matrix crystals within their secluded towers, feel the magical pull of the Ghost Wind, explore the mysteries of this long-lost colony with those who come from beyond the stars, and experience all the wonder of Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover.

Well, I found myself reading this one a lot sooner than I originally anticipated. As I'd thought, I quite enjoyed it too - though I know I need to re-read some of the full novels set in the world of Darkover now. I'd forgotten just who Dyan Ardais was, and also a lot of the finer points around Camilla, Kyria and the other Renunciates.

Some of the stories I recognized right off - though I couldn't tell you which anthologies they were from originally. Others seemed to be new to me - specifically some of the stories about Hillary. I think a couple of those were published in this volume for the first time.

Believe it or not, one of my favorite things about an anthology like this one are the various notes that begin each section. Especially for a set of short stories set in an already established world, where I can learn a few more tidbits about how that world came to be, and the author's thought processes. Seeing the origins for some of the Free Amazons, for example.

I don't know if this would be a good book for someone who's not already familiar with the world of Darkover. I suspect it, like all the other anthologies of Darkover stories, is really more for the fans who already know the world, have some favorite characters or regions and truly wish to explore more.

For myself, I'm wondering if it's now time to do a Darkover re-read. Anyone interested?

Found at the Thrift Store: Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover

Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover
Marion Zimmer Bradley
DAW Books
Copyright: 1993
088675930

The back jacket blurb:

A COLLECTION OF DARKOVER STORIES WRITTEN BY MARION ZIMMER BRADLEY HERSELF!
Return to Darkover, planet of the Bloody Sun, with this collection written solely by the originator of this exotic world, Marion Zimmer Bradley, and including two entirely new stories never before in print. From the Founding to the Ages of Chaos, to the era of the Hundred Kingdoms, to the time of Recontact, travel through the history of Darkover with the writer whose work has inspired so many others to enter her world. Fight alongside the Free Amazons, master the powers of laran with those who work the matrix crystals within their secluded towers, feel the magical pull of the Ghost Wind, explore the mysteries of this long-lost colony with those who come from beyond the stars, and experience all the wonder of Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover.

I'm pretty sure I've read most of these stories before, as they were published in a number of the Darkover anthologies that have come out over the years. Nonetheless, I don't own most of those books, so it'll be nice to have Marion Zimmer Bradley's stories collected together. I honestly have no idea of when I'm going to get around to reading this one however.

As I noted in my title, I found this one at a local thrift store, on a quick scan through their book section - something that's usually worth doing I find. I can't help but ask what your most recent thrift store/used bookstore find has been.

The Children of Kings - Marion Zimmer Bradley and Deborah J. Ross

The Children of Kings
Marion Zimmer Bradley and Deborah J. Ross
DAW Books
Copyright: 2013
978-0756408541

The amazon.com product description:

Millennia ago, the planet Darkover, a cold world orbiting a giant red sun, was settled by a lost colony ship from the Terran Federation. Alone on a new world, survivors interbred with the native chieri, psychically Giften alien humanoids. The children of these matings were Gifted with telepathy and other psychic abilities, and their descendants, the aristocratic Comyn, forged a civilization in which the arts of the mind were cultivated and cherished.

When the Terrans rediscovered Darkover, the seven Domains of Comyn struggeld to maintain their unique culture and independence, often at a terrible price. More than once, assassins and environmental saboteurs from the Terran Empire attempted to bring Darkover to its knees and erode the native culture for the benefit of the Federation -- seing Darkover as nothing more than a port of call for Terran military and trade. Eventually, a vicious interstellar war forced Federation forces to withdraw from Darkover, but Darkovans knew that it was only a matter of time before they would return.

Prince Garth Elhalyn has grown up in the shadow of his legendary grandfather, Regis Hastur, one of the greatest leaders Darkover has ever known. But he is also haunted by fear of the insanity that is prevalent in his Elhalyn family line. His world has become an unbearable counterpoint of meaningless aristocratic frivoloty and dangerous political schemes -- plots in which powerful lords attmept to use him to further their own ambitions. He tries his best to better himself through the study of languages, swordplay, and training his psychic laran with his grandmother, Linnea Storn-Hastur, Keeper of Comyn Tower. But Gareth cannot stop dreaming about a future without fame or family.

In a desperate attempt to remove himself completely from the restricted life of the Comyn, Gareth confesses his desire to his powerful grandmother, and with her blessing, disguises himself as a simple trader and travels to Carthon, on the border of the barbarous, warklike Dry Towns. The Dry Towns do not live under the rule of the Comyn, and no one in this isolated part of Darkover will recognize a Comyn lord.

In Carthon, protected by his guise of anonymity, Gareth overhears rumors of deadly, illegal Terran blasters being used in the barren lands beyond Shainsa -- one of the main Dry Towns. If the Federation has returned and is now arming the bellicose Dry Towners with banned technology, it will mean a disastrous conflict for the Comyn of the Domains, who have long sworn themselves to the Compact, an oath of honor that forbids the use of distance weaponry. Venturing deeper and deeper into the desert lands, Gareth stumbles upon a terrible reality no one could have suspected and he is ill-prepared to deal with.

But in fact, Gareth holds the key to protecting his world, if he can only stay alive in the deadly Dry Towns long enough to discover what it is....

The Children of Kings follows The Alton Gift and Traitor's Sun in the Darkover timeline.

Of late, I've done some muttering about the Amazon.com product descriptions. I take that back for this one. It's actually better than the back cover blurb (of course, it's also two or three times the length).

It's been a while since I've read any of the Darkover novels, and to a slight extent, that did affect my read-through of Children of Kings. Mostly because I was struggling to remember completely who the main character was in relation to all the other characters and what had happened in the previous books.

Once I got past the first hundred pages or so (and got the who's-who straightened out in my head again) I found myself almost unable to put the book down. I really liked Deborah's take on Darkover and the Dry-Towns - a place we just haven't heard a lot about before now. It's always been in the background, but not too much has been written about them or the inhabitants, aside from The Shattered Chain.

I think that about all I knew about the Dry-Towners before this book was how touchy they were about their honor. Now, they feel like a fully-fleshed out part of the whole world of Darkover. Actually, I'd love to see something written about their origins now, aside from the rumors and hints given in this book. They're just so different than the rest of the Darkover inhabitants.

Slightly an aside, but does anyone know offhand, which was the book where the Terrans and Darkovans were studying telepathic powers? I think it was a fairly early book in the recontact era, but I can't even remember the title. It's just that one of the characters from it - which I remember vaguely - was mentioned briefly in The Children of Kings, and that's made me curious about it again.

I'm also feeling the need to re-read the World Wreckers - one of the Darkover novels not in my personal collection - as the events in that book are fairly integral to the background of this one. More so than the rest of the recent Darkover books, I think.

The Children of Kings is probably not the best book to start with if you haven't read any of the Darkover novels before; for that I might suggest Exile's Song and its sequels, which introduce the word quite thoroughly and starts off the story-line for the characters and events in The Children of Kings.

Overall, a book that I really enjoyed reading.

Traitor's Sun - Marion Zimmer Bradley

Traitor's Sun
Marion Zimmer Bradley
DAW Books
Copyright: 1998
9780886778118

The jacket blurb:

The power of laran

It has been fifteen years since Marguerida Alton returned to Darkover, discovered the terrifying powers of her special laran, and fell in love with Mikhail Lanart-Hastur, heir designate to the regency of Darkover. With the proper instruction, Marguerida has has, over time, learned to control her telepathic Gift, and can even work with her unique shadow matrix.

Now Marguerida's life is more settled - though no less hectic. As the second-in-command to the aging Regent, Regis Hastur, life in Comyn Castle for Marguerida and Mikhail is far from serene.

But the current tensions on Darkover have more to do with the Terran Federation than with anything internal to Darkover. For nearly ten years, Lyle Belfontaine, the corrupt and ambitious Station Chief at Federation Headquarters in Thendara, has been pressuring Comyn Council to relinquish Darkover's Protected status and join the Federation as a full member planet. Yet this is something Comyn Council will never agree to do, for it would mean the death of their culture and the rape of their planetary resources.

But when a military coup rocks the Federation, cutting off all communication with local envoys, Belfontaine sees an opportunity to wrest by force what he has been unable to gain thorugh diplomacy and plans a violent takeover on Darkover.

Can Mikhail and Marguerida face the might of Terrann weapons with only their combined telepathic laran powers?

The sequel to The Shadow Matrix and Exile's Song, Traitor's Sun is both connected to the previous books and a stand-alone in a sense. I'm almost more inclined to view it as a stand-alone in the world of Darkover: the book is set fifteen years after The Shadow Matrix and the main viewpoint characters are all new: Herm Aldaran and his wife, Katherine, and Dominic, the son of Marguerida and Mikhail. Even the plot lines are all new ones.

This book is signaling the end of an era in more ways than one: The changing characters, for example, and also the way the Terran Federation is falling apart, although there have been hints of that beginning in the previous books. Things are never going to be the same again, even on Darkover.

Definitely a needed book in the world of Darkover, it matches up nicely with Rediscovery in some ways - that being the introduction of the Terran Empire/Federation to Darkover, and this one being about the last days. Who knows what's going to happen next now?

Traitor's Sun winds things up very nicely, and yet at the same time leaves them open for some future date. Overall, I really liked reading this book.

The Shadow Matrix - Marion Zimmer Bradley

The Shadow Matrix
Marion Zimmer Bradley
Daw Books
Copyright: 1999
978-0886778125

Amazon.com product description:

After spending her youth in the Terran Empire, Margaret Alton returns to Darkover, the planet of her birth. There she discovers she has the Alton Gift--forced rapport and compulsion--one of the strongest and most dangerous of the inherited "Laran" gifts of the telepathic Comyn--the ruling families of Darkover. And even as she struggles to control her newfound powers, Margaret finds herself falling in love with the Regent to the royal Elhalyn Domain, a man she has been forbidden to marry, for their alliance would irrevocably alter the power balance of their planet!.

 Not the best description for this book at all, but I didn't have my copy of The Shadow Matrix handy to copy off the jacket blurb myself. The Shadow Matrix picks up more or less where Exile's Song left off, as Margaret is busy learning about the mental gifts she has and her role in Darkovan society. At the same time, Mikhail, the heir to Regis Hastur has been made the Regent to the Elhalyn Domain, the family who, historically have been the Kings of Darkover. All this causes a whole new set of problems to replace the ones solved in the previous book.

I found that even though this was a re-read of the book, it still picked me up and swept me along into the story. The characters are vivid and full of life, problems and all. There was the occasional line of dialogue that was incredibly stilted, but not too much overall.

To really enjoy The Shadow Matrix though, you really need to have read Exile's Song, as so many of the events in this book build off of what happened in the previous book. I liked it, and if you like the Darkover books, you might find yourself agreeing that these two books are the best in the series.

Exile's Song - Marion Zimmer Bradley

Exile's Song
Marion Zimmer Bradley
Daw Books
Copyright: 1996
978-0886777340

The jacket blurb:

She was Margaret Alton, the daughter of Lew Alton, the Darkovan representative to the Terran Imperial Senate, but she remembered almost nothing about the plantet of her birth, or her early and tumultuous childhood. What fleetimg memories disturbed her sleep were fragments of terror - a strange silver man and a screaming woman with hair that circled her head like a ring of fire.

Since leaving Darkover as a child, Margaret has lived her life on Thetis. Lew and her stepmother, Dotima, were gone much of the year, working in the Senate, struggling to keep Darkover safe from the all-consuming imperialism of the Terran Federation. She hardly knew her father, a brooding man who, when he returned to Thetis was prone to long bouts of drinking. At these times his normally morose and uncommunicative demeanor would take on an even darker hue...times when he seemed to look at Margaret and see someone else - someone he did not want to remember. As soon as Margaret was of age, she fled her stormy home and took refuge on University. Here Margaret, strangely uncomfortable around her peers found solace in the isolation of study. She excelled in music and was granted the position of assistant to her mentor, renowned musicologist, Dr. Ivor Davidson. This prestigious job took her to many worlds and when she and Professor Davidson were assigned to collect folk songs on Darkover, Margaret was curious and pleased.

But once on Darkover, Margaret's innocent excitement quickly waned. The world of her birth evoked long-buried memories, painful and terrifying, and she soon found herself falling deeper and deeper into a waking dream that threatened to become a nightmare. Margaret began to hear voices in her head - one voice in particular which seemed to confront her at every turn - and she wondered if she were losing her mind.

Beneath the light of the Red Sun, as Margaret slowly unraveled the veiled and mysterious secrets of her heritage, she found herself driven by a destiny more dreadful than any nightmare. For the screaming woman and the silver man were merely markers on a trail - a trail which lead into Margaret's own mind, and towards a trap which had been set for her centuries before her birth...

Although a relative latecomer in the Darkover series, this was the first book set in the world of the Bloody Sun that I'd ever read. As such, even though it's billed as being the follow-up to The Heritage of Hastur and Sharra's Exile, I found Exile's Song to be a very good introduction to the world. It lays out who the characters are, and as Margaret finds out about the world, so do we.

Darkover is a very interesting world, being a series that's spanned several decades in writing. I know of some titles that date to the 1970's (Darkover Landfall) and I think that some of the books are even earlier than that. And the most recent book in the series just came out this past January: The Hastur Lord. It's a world that's evolved as it was written, with some very neat concepts melding both science fiction and fantasy.

Almost from the first pages of Exile's Song I really got to like Margaret and feel for her - even on this re-read of the book. She's an intelligent, strong character with a very definite set of beliefs and now she's on a planet where everyone else has some very strong ideas about her place and what she should be doing, while expecting Margaret to have all the background knowledge that she doesn't have, all resulting in some very interesting situations and conflicts.

Exile's Song is the first book about Margaret, so while things are resolved by the end of the book, there are some hints of interesting things to come in The Shadow Matrix. Which is interesting all on it's own, even in the implications of the title.

Darkover Landfall - Marion Zimmer Bradley

Darkover Landfall
Marion Zimmer Bradley
Daw Books
Copyright 1972
978-0099154105

The amazon.com product description:

Darkover, a planet of wonder, world of mystery, has been a favourite of science fiction readers for many years. For it is a truly alien sphere - a world of strange intelligences of brooding skies beneath a ruddy sun, and of powers unknown to Earth. In this new novel, Mario Zimmer Bradley tells of the original coming of the Earthmen, of the days when Darkover knew not humanity. This is the full bodied novel of what happened when a colonial starship crashlanded on that uncharted planet to encounter for the first time in human existence the impact of the Ghost Wind, of the psychic currents that were native only to that world, and of the price that every Earthling must pay before Darkover can claim for itself.

The story of the first people on Darkover, two thousand years before their rediscovery by the Terran Empire, this is the very beginning of the Darkover saga. Everything began with the crash of a colony ship so bad that there was no way it could be repaired.

Darkover Landfall is nowhere near my favorite novel in the series. In fact, I'd have to say it's down near the bottom of the list. I'd read it before, but this time, I found myself gritting my teeth at character attitudes. Thankfully it's a quick read.

The whole book is littered with assumptions that any woman who doesn't want children has been brainwashed, that women are not capable of doing the same things as men at all, and should want to have as many children as possible. Etcetera, etcetera.

While I can accept that attitude in most of the Darkover series, because it's a different culture, in this book, where the characters are supposed to be from this high-tech society where equality is mandated under the laws, it just annoyed the heck out of me.

Were we really that bad in the early 1970's that this is seen as reasonable behavior?

I like most of the Darkover books, but this one, as you can see just rubbed me the wrong way completely. Still, it was interesting to see where the culture of the rest of the series originated, and for that reason alone, the book is likely to stay on my shelves. On the other hand, it leaves a heck of a lot of unaswered questions, such as where the horses, dogs and hawks of the later books came from as it sure doesn't look as though they came with the colonists, but neither were they already present on the planet.

The Hastur Lord: A Novel Of Darkover- Marion Zimmer Bradley and Deborah J. Ross

The Hastur Lord
Marion Zimmer Bradley and Deborah J. Ross
Daw Books
Copyright: 2010
978-0756406226

The Amazon.com product description:

A never-before-published fantasy novel set in Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover universe.

The world of Darkover, a unique, isolated, and protected world, has long avoided becoming part of the technologically advanced Terran Empire. But things are about to change. Regis Hastur, lord of the most powerful of the seven Domains in Darkover, learns that the Empire is about to become a Federation, and is extending an invitation for all of the worlds to join. While the offer seems tempting to his people, Regis knows that Darkover would become little more than a military base, used for its unique planetary position, and will be sapped of its resources. He must now stop at nothing to save his world.

As far as it goes, the description above is a good one for this book, but there's a lot more to it than that. The Hastur Lord is also a book about family, duty and wisdom. The biggest problem with this book is the way it's set between other books in the series.

Because we know how the later books go, it's harder to see how the events in this book work. That was what I was finding all the way through the story. I kept going "But how come we've not heard of this character before?" and "How is this going to work out with Exile's Song and the later books?". There are a few major characters that are completely new too.

Regardless of my initial feelings towards The Hastur Lord, I did find it to be a good read, one that showed me a lot more about one of the pivotal characters in this period of Darkover's history: Regis Hastur. While not my favorite Darkover novel, it's certainly better than some of them - I'm finding this series to be a mixed bag. Some of the books are better than others. This one's pretty good, but not one of my favorites.

There is one other significant thing about The Hastur Lord: it's apparently, the last book that Marion Zimmer Bradley was writing before she died. How much of the book was her's and how much was written by Deborah Ross, I don't know, however.