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Darkover (Publication Order) #27
Leroni of Darkover
A collection of tales set on Darkover, the world of the Bloody Sun, ranging from the creation of the Comyn Council to a Terran's first encounter with laran
334 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published November 5, 1991
About the author
Marion Zimmer Bradley
752 books4,720 followersMarion Eleanor Zimmer Bradley was an American author of fantasy novels such as The Mists of Avalon and the Darkover series, often with a feminist outlook.
Bradley's first published novel-length work was Falcons of Narabedla, first published in the May 1957 issue of Other Worlds. When she was a child, Bradley stated that she enjoyed reading adventure fantasy authors such as Henry Kuttner, Edmond Hamilton, and Leigh Brackett, especially when they wrote about "the glint of strange suns on worlds that never were and never would be." Her first novel and much of her subsequent work show their influence strongly.
Early in her career, writing as Morgan Ives, Miriam Gardner, John Dexter, and Lee Chapman, Marion Zimmer Bradley produced several works outside the speculative fiction genre, including some gay and lesbian pulp fiction novels. For example, I Am a Lesbian was published in 1962. Though relatively tame by today's standards, they were considered pornographic when published, and for a long time she refused to disclose the titles she wrote under these pseudonyms.
Her 1958 story The Planet Savers introduced the planet of Darkover, which became the setting of a popular series by Bradley and other authors. The Darkover milieu may be considered as either fantasy with science fiction overtones or as science fiction with fantasy overtones, as Darkover is a lost earth colony where psi powers developed to an unusual degree. Bradley wrote many Darkover novels by herself, but in her later years collaborated with other authors for publication; her literary collaborators have continued the series since her death.
Bradley took an active role in science-fiction and fantasy fandom, promoting interaction with professional authors and publishers and making several important contributions to the subculture.
For many years, Bradley actively encouraged Darkover fan fiction and reprinted some of it in commercial Darkover anthologies, continuing to encourage submissions from unpublished authors, but this ended after a dispute with a fan over an unpublished Darkover novel of Bradley's that had similarities to some of the fan's stories. As a result, the novel remained unpublished, and Bradley demanded the cessation of all Darkover fan fiction.
Bradley was also the editor of the long-running Sword and Sorceress anthology series, which encouraged submissions of fantasy stories featuring original and non-traditional heroines from young and upcoming authors. Although she particularly encouraged young female authors, she was not averse to including male authors in her anthologies. Mercedes Lackey was just one of many authors who first appeared in the anthologies. She also maintained a large family of writers at her home in Berkeley. Ms Bradley was editing the final Sword and Sorceress manuscript up until the week of her death in September of 1999.
Probably her most famous single novel is The Mists of Avalon. A retelling of the Camelot legend from the point of view of Morgaine and Gwenhwyfar, it grew into a series of books; like the Darkover series, the later novels are written with or by other authors and have continued to appear after Bradley's death.
Her reputation has been posthumously marred by multiple accusations of child sexual abuse by her daughter Moira Greyland, and for allegedly assisting her second husband, convicted child abuser Walter Breen, in sexually abusing multiple unrelated children.
(from Wikipedia)
Bradley's first published novel-length work was Falcons of Narabedla, first published in the May 1957 issue of Other Worlds. When she was a child, Bradley stated that she enjoyed reading adventure fantasy authors such as Henry Kuttner, Edmond Hamilton, and Leigh Brackett, especially when they wrote about "the glint of strange suns on worlds that never were and never would be." Her first novel and much of her subsequent work show their influence strongly.
Early in her career, writing as Morgan Ives, Miriam Gardner, John Dexter, and Lee Chapman, Marion Zimmer Bradley produced several works outside the speculative fiction genre, including some gay and lesbian pulp fiction novels. For example, I Am a Lesbian was published in 1962. Though relatively tame by today's standards, they were considered pornographic when published, and for a long time she refused to disclose the titles she wrote under these pseudonyms.
Her 1958 story The Planet Savers introduced the planet of Darkover, which became the setting of a popular series by Bradley and other authors. The Darkover milieu may be considered as either fantasy with science fiction overtones or as science fiction with fantasy overtones, as Darkover is a lost earth colony where psi powers developed to an unusual degree. Bradley wrote many Darkover novels by herself, but in her later years collaborated with other authors for publication; her literary collaborators have continued the series since her death.
Bradley took an active role in science-fiction and fantasy fandom, promoting interaction with professional authors and publishers and making several important contributions to the subculture.
For many years, Bradley actively encouraged Darkover fan fiction and reprinted some of it in commercial Darkover anthologies, continuing to encourage submissions from unpublished authors, but this ended after a dispute with a fan over an unpublished Darkover novel of Bradley's that had similarities to some of the fan's stories. As a result, the novel remained unpublished, and Bradley demanded the cessation of all Darkover fan fiction.
Bradley was also the editor of the long-running Sword and Sorceress anthology series, which encouraged submissions of fantasy stories featuring original and non-traditional heroines from young and upcoming authors. Although she particularly encouraged young female authors, she was not averse to including male authors in her anthologies. Mercedes Lackey was just one of many authors who first appeared in the anthologies. She also maintained a large family of writers at her home in Berkeley. Ms Bradley was editing the final Sword and Sorceress manuscript up until the week of her death in September of 1999.
Probably her most famous single novel is The Mists of Avalon. A retelling of the Camelot legend from the point of view of Morgaine and Gwenhwyfar, it grew into a series of books; like the Darkover series, the later novels are written with or by other authors and have continued to appear after Bradley's death.
Her reputation has been posthumously marred by multiple accusations of child sexual abuse by her daughter Moira Greyland, and for allegedly assisting her second husband, convicted child abuser Walter Breen, in sexually abusing multiple unrelated children.
(from Wikipedia)
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September 10, 2014Let's start this with a quibble: there is obviously a dire need for a dictionary/grammar of Darkovan words. I was always under the impression that 'leroni' was a female plural. The male plural would be "laranzu'in" (where the apostrophe represents a glottal stop); the neutral plural (meaning males AND females) would be 'leronyn'.
This is an anthology, which means, pretty much by definition, that it's uneven in quality. But since the editorial decisions were made (apparently) by Bradley herself, the inequities are also heavily influenced by Bradley's OWN prejudices. She herself often argued that she was impartially choosing the 'good' over the 'poor quality'. But she was a little more self-aware than this implies. She was aware that she had prejudices against certain sorts of writing: certain themes, plots, characters, etc, which had nothing to do with some 'objective quality' of the writing.
Furthermore, her exhortations to people not to take 'no' for an answer are...well, to put it bluntly, while they're not insensitive or sadistic, they are consciously cruel. Bradley repeatedly apologizes for this, realizing that she's counseling people who are BY DEFINITION sensitive and vulnerable to be callous, persistent, and tough, and to 'improve' writing which is often MUCH BETTER than what's 'commercially viable' by adopting what my father too often called 'protective coloration': accepting and adapting societal principles which are too often deplorable, simply in order to be accepted. Never mind that the writers often had something of great (and truly novel) potential value to contribute (she implies): they should accept the standard versions. But in reality, if people won't accept it for what it IS, i believe you might as well not even bother to try.
Part of the problem is that Bradley has been coopted by this 'nothing new under the sun' drivel. Of COURSE there is nothing new under the sun. There is nothing at ALL under the sun: in the Solar System, the center of gravity is always DOWN (though local circumstances might make it appear otherwise). The center of gravity in the Solar System is INSIDE the Sun. Not in the center of the sun, but near the surface on whatever side most of the rest of the mass of the Solar System is at the time (meaning the gas giants, and particularly Jupiter). The center of gravity thus moves around, but it is always below the surface of the sun. And this is NEW KNOWLEDGE, not more than about 450 years old, since it wasn't possible to determine where the center of gravity for the Solar System WAS until it was realized what mass there WAS in the Solar System, and where the masses were located. This is, in the most literal sense, 'revolutionary' knowledge, because the word 'revolution' didn't imply massive changes until the 1453 publication of Copernicus's deathbed book.
Here on Earth, with the Earth AND the Sun under us, there are thus most DEFINITELY new things. Things change, and they really change, and the differences matter. Before Copernicus, the celestial revolutions still occurred: but nobody knew HOW they occurred, or successfully defined things in terms of them. In anthropology (which it's evident Bradley had no respect for), there are stories that are FAR different than the stories the Ancient Greeks told--and seeking out the analagous and ignoring the differences does NOT contribute to understanding.
One of the best exercises of this sort of thing is a demonstration we once had in an ethnomusicology class. The teacher played a Bach choir, and then a cacophonous, dissonant chant. The catch? The singers were the EXACT SAME individuals. It was not that they didn't understand the Bach music (at least as well as other performers), it was that they were trying to achieve something else ENTIRELY with their own music.
The stories in this anthology, thus, represent not the 'best', but rather what Bradley PREFERRED out of the hundreds (possibly thousands) of stories, solicited or unsolicited, which Bradley received continuously whether she was planning anthologies or not. This must be borne in mind, and if it's not, it's not Bradley's fault: she's quite up front about it.
Note that there's a (more or less) chronological bibliography (by internal dating, NOT by publication date) in the prefatory material.
Stories:
(1) Introduction (see above for comments)
(2) Building (A fairly insulting account of how the Comyn Council came to have the customs it developed)
(3) The Ferment (Bradley argued that she was always looking for new ways to use laran. In this case, the adolescent heroine uses laran to control the workings of yeast. Which raises the question--does Darkover have yeasts of its own, or did the first ship bring some strains of them, as well?)
(4) Wings (Orain (from Hawkmistress!) is tested for laran as a child: and learns more about whether it matters if he has laran or not)
(5) The Rebels (Varzil the Good fascinates people, and they try to imagine his youth. In this story, Varzil gets a taste of forced empathy, when he travels with 'bandits' as if he was one of them.)
(6) A Dance for Darkover (A Darkovan expatriate returns because she's the only heir to her Council Seat (meaning she's either an Aillard or an Elhalyn, because she has a living brother). She finds herself in a Grass Dance situation)
(7) There Is Always Someone (Ann'dra Carr is sought out by a former friend from Earth, who fears he is in danger)
(8) Reunion (One of the things people find most troubling about the Comi'i Letzi'i is that they do not allow their sons to live in the Guild House after they pass the age of 5 (bear in mind the difference in year length--a five-year-old Darkovan is closer in physical age to a Terran of 7 years). This is not in the Oath, but is more a matter of custom. But there IS a renunciation of male family in general (?including brothers? This isn't clear). And there is often a renunciation of links to female relatives, as well. In Darkovan society, where one is often emotionally closer to foster-kin than to biological relatives, this would be a little less stressful--but it still causes problems (for example, if biological kin are not raised together, how will they become inured against incest?). In this case, a child meets his grandmother for the first time, to the confusion of everybody.)
(9) A Way through The Fog (There tends to be an assumption that only Comyn have laran. This has always been an absurd assumption, of course: since all human Darkovans are descendant from the original ship personnel, which was very small, it's most likely to be an Island of The Color-blind sort of situation. The laran-gifted must arise in EVERY family, and although the towers select for certain defined 'gifts', there will always be new variants and combinations arising. In this case, it's a sort of homing talent.)
(10) The Gods' Gift (An ordinary child becomes the victim of a supposed destiny when a Lord's son dies rescuing him)
(11) The Speaking Touch (During Project Telepath, a psychometrist comes to join the Project)
(12)The Bargain (A woman deals with an inept husband, and begins to establish Council Right for Elhalyn women)
(13) The Witch of The Kilghard Hills (It develops that the position is held, not by an immortal, or by a familial heir, but by election by the spirit of the shrine).
(14) The Gift (A twin who thinks he has no laran discovers a version of the MacAran Gift)
(15) Invitation to Chaos (A quarrel about whether Keepers should have seats on Comyn Council)
(16) The Keeper's Peace (Using characters from Stormqueen!; Renata of Aldaran fosters the son of two of her former circle members)
(17) Food for The Worms (Set in the Dry Towns. The Dry Towners are even more addicted to revenge than people in the Domains. Why shouldn't people try to FIX wrongs, rather than take revenge for them? If they can prevent the original injury, revenge will become unnecessary)
(18) Childish Pranks (To begin with, NOBODY deserves to suffer. If children are playing pranks, it's most likely that they have imbibed the violent tendencies of their society. More violence is going to make things WORSE, not better. In this case, the ringleader is caught in a booby-trap from more warlike times)
(19) Cheryllis' Law (The title in the book has the apostrophe in the wrong place. The person who formulated the law was named CHERYLLIS. The conceit of this story is that even identical twins are rarely Cherillys doubles: but in this case, they are. They are also bound by a Corsican Brothers sort of link, so that what happens to one also happens to the other.)
(20) Avarra's Children (A group of street children fall under the influence of a woman who has chosen to personate Avarra--and the trick is to determine which ones really are already dead.)
(21) The Tower at New Skye (The argument that some members of the original starship crew/colony decided to try to prevent experimentation with laran is strange enough. But the idea that the cristoforo religion became puritanical not much more than a generation after the Landfall is downright bizarre. Father Valentine was NOT a dogmatist. It's strange enough that the cristoforos later became so judgmental. That early, it's almost incredible.)
(22) Homecoming (The mystery of what happened to Margali n'ha Ysabet after the Cleindori Affair is subject to further examination here. There's another story in this series of anthologies which deals with Margali leaving Darkover with another Renunciate in another of these collections. This still leaves matters unresolved, however, because what happened NEXT? Margali would probably have been post-menopausal by this point, and Camilla would have been nearly 70, probably. But the next generation assumed Margali had permanently disappeared. So what DID she do next?)
(23) A Meeting of Minds (A MacAran discovers what sort of animals she has a rapport with, and what preparations are needed to support the animals in question)
This is an anthology, which means, pretty much by definition, that it's uneven in quality. But since the editorial decisions were made (apparently) by Bradley herself, the inequities are also heavily influenced by Bradley's OWN prejudices. She herself often argued that she was impartially choosing the 'good' over the 'poor quality'. But she was a little more self-aware than this implies. She was aware that she had prejudices against certain sorts of writing: certain themes, plots, characters, etc, which had nothing to do with some 'objective quality' of the writing.
Furthermore, her exhortations to people not to take 'no' for an answer are...well, to put it bluntly, while they're not insensitive or sadistic, they are consciously cruel. Bradley repeatedly apologizes for this, realizing that she's counseling people who are BY DEFINITION sensitive and vulnerable to be callous, persistent, and tough, and to 'improve' writing which is often MUCH BETTER than what's 'commercially viable' by adopting what my father too often called 'protective coloration': accepting and adapting societal principles which are too often deplorable, simply in order to be accepted. Never mind that the writers often had something of great (and truly novel) potential value to contribute (she implies): they should accept the standard versions. But in reality, if people won't accept it for what it IS, i believe you might as well not even bother to try.
Part of the problem is that Bradley has been coopted by this 'nothing new under the sun' drivel. Of COURSE there is nothing new under the sun. There is nothing at ALL under the sun: in the Solar System, the center of gravity is always DOWN (though local circumstances might make it appear otherwise). The center of gravity in the Solar System is INSIDE the Sun. Not in the center of the sun, but near the surface on whatever side most of the rest of the mass of the Solar System is at the time (meaning the gas giants, and particularly Jupiter). The center of gravity thus moves around, but it is always below the surface of the sun. And this is NEW KNOWLEDGE, not more than about 450 years old, since it wasn't possible to determine where the center of gravity for the Solar System WAS until it was realized what mass there WAS in the Solar System, and where the masses were located. This is, in the most literal sense, 'revolutionary' knowledge, because the word 'revolution' didn't imply massive changes until the 1453 publication of Copernicus's deathbed book.
Here on Earth, with the Earth AND the Sun under us, there are thus most DEFINITELY new things. Things change, and they really change, and the differences matter. Before Copernicus, the celestial revolutions still occurred: but nobody knew HOW they occurred, or successfully defined things in terms of them. In anthropology (which it's evident Bradley had no respect for), there are stories that are FAR different than the stories the Ancient Greeks told--and seeking out the analagous and ignoring the differences does NOT contribute to understanding.
One of the best exercises of this sort of thing is a demonstration we once had in an ethnomusicology class. The teacher played a Bach choir, and then a cacophonous, dissonant chant. The catch? The singers were the EXACT SAME individuals. It was not that they didn't understand the Bach music (at least as well as other performers), it was that they were trying to achieve something else ENTIRELY with their own music.
The stories in this anthology, thus, represent not the 'best', but rather what Bradley PREFERRED out of the hundreds (possibly thousands) of stories, solicited or unsolicited, which Bradley received continuously whether she was planning anthologies or not. This must be borne in mind, and if it's not, it's not Bradley's fault: she's quite up front about it.
Note that there's a (more or less) chronological bibliography (by internal dating, NOT by publication date) in the prefatory material.
Stories:
(1) Introduction (see above for comments)
(2) Building (A fairly insulting account of how the Comyn Council came to have the customs it developed)
(3) The Ferment (Bradley argued that she was always looking for new ways to use laran. In this case, the adolescent heroine uses laran to control the workings of yeast. Which raises the question--does Darkover have yeasts of its own, or did the first ship bring some strains of them, as well?)
(4) Wings (Orain (from Hawkmistress!) is tested for laran as a child: and learns more about whether it matters if he has laran or not)
(5) The Rebels (Varzil the Good fascinates people, and they try to imagine his youth. In this story, Varzil gets a taste of forced empathy, when he travels with 'bandits' as if he was one of them.)
(6) A Dance for Darkover (A Darkovan expatriate returns because she's the only heir to her Council Seat (meaning she's either an Aillard or an Elhalyn, because she has a living brother). She finds herself in a Grass Dance situation)
(7) There Is Always Someone (Ann'dra Carr is sought out by a former friend from Earth, who fears he is in danger)
(8) Reunion (One of the things people find most troubling about the Comi'i Letzi'i is that they do not allow their sons to live in the Guild House after they pass the age of 5 (bear in mind the difference in year length--a five-year-old Darkovan is closer in physical age to a Terran of 7 years). This is not in the Oath, but is more a matter of custom. But there IS a renunciation of male family in general (?including brothers? This isn't clear). And there is often a renunciation of links to female relatives, as well. In Darkovan society, where one is often emotionally closer to foster-kin than to biological relatives, this would be a little less stressful--but it still causes problems (for example, if biological kin are not raised together, how will they become inured against incest?). In this case, a child meets his grandmother for the first time, to the confusion of everybody.)
(9) A Way through The Fog (There tends to be an assumption that only Comyn have laran. This has always been an absurd assumption, of course: since all human Darkovans are descendant from the original ship personnel, which was very small, it's most likely to be an Island of The Color-blind sort of situation. The laran-gifted must arise in EVERY family, and although the towers select for certain defined 'gifts', there will always be new variants and combinations arising. In this case, it's a sort of homing talent.)
(10) The Gods' Gift (An ordinary child becomes the victim of a supposed destiny when a Lord's son dies rescuing him)
(11) The Speaking Touch (During Project Telepath, a psychometrist comes to join the Project)
(12)The Bargain (A woman deals with an inept husband, and begins to establish Council Right for Elhalyn women)
(13) The Witch of The Kilghard Hills (It develops that the position is held, not by an immortal, or by a familial heir, but by election by the spirit of the shrine).
(14) The Gift (A twin who thinks he has no laran discovers a version of the MacAran Gift)
(15) Invitation to Chaos (A quarrel about whether Keepers should have seats on Comyn Council)
(16) The Keeper's Peace (Using characters from Stormqueen!; Renata of Aldaran fosters the son of two of her former circle members)
(17) Food for The Worms (Set in the Dry Towns. The Dry Towners are even more addicted to revenge than people in the Domains. Why shouldn't people try to FIX wrongs, rather than take revenge for them? If they can prevent the original injury, revenge will become unnecessary)
(18) Childish Pranks (To begin with, NOBODY deserves to suffer. If children are playing pranks, it's most likely that they have imbibed the violent tendencies of their society. More violence is going to make things WORSE, not better. In this case, the ringleader is caught in a booby-trap from more warlike times)
(19) Cheryllis' Law (The title in the book has the apostrophe in the wrong place. The person who formulated the law was named CHERYLLIS. The conceit of this story is that even identical twins are rarely Cherillys doubles: but in this case, they are. They are also bound by a Corsican Brothers sort of link, so that what happens to one also happens to the other.)
(20) Avarra's Children (A group of street children fall under the influence of a woman who has chosen to personate Avarra--and the trick is to determine which ones really are already dead.)
(21) The Tower at New Skye (The argument that some members of the original starship crew/colony decided to try to prevent experimentation with laran is strange enough. But the idea that the cristoforo religion became puritanical not much more than a generation after the Landfall is downright bizarre. Father Valentine was NOT a dogmatist. It's strange enough that the cristoforos later became so judgmental. That early, it's almost incredible.)
(22) Homecoming (The mystery of what happened to Margali n'ha Ysabet after the Cleindori Affair is subject to further examination here. There's another story in this series of anthologies which deals with Margali leaving Darkover with another Renunciate in another of these collections. This still leaves matters unresolved, however, because what happened NEXT? Margali would probably have been post-menopausal by this point, and Camilla would have been nearly 70, probably. But the next generation assumed Margali had permanently disappeared. So what DID she do next?)
(23) A Meeting of Minds (A MacAran discovers what sort of animals she has a rapport with, and what preparations are needed to support the animals in question)
January 13, 2018
I still like the novels which were written about Darkover, but the Fan-Fic anthologies tell many of the stories which were never told. The fact that Bradley chose and edited the books, along with her comments about each story is a nice touch.
July 22, 2020
5 star - Perfect
4 star - i would recommend
3 star - good
2 star - struggled to complete
1 star - could not finish
4 star - i would recommend
3 star - good
2 star - struggled to complete
1 star - could not finish
December 18, 2020
Laran, the telepathic powers, are fundamental to the Darkover world. This is a fabulous collection. A delight of short stories...
April 21, 2010
Marion Zimmer Bradley is famous for her Avalon books, but I'm a fan of her Darkover stories, set in an original world and a blend of science fiction and fantasy. This is one of a series of anthologies that basically are collection of "fan fiction" by other authors based on MZB's Darkover. I was impressed on reread of the first such book, The Keeper's Price. Enough I ranked it just below five stars, and was tempted to give it full marks. Not that I would argue it's deathless literature, but as a Darkover fan I loved it, and was surprised how memorable the various stories were even decades after I first read it--there were some I remembered just from the title, and no story I didn't completely enjoy.
The next five collections though still enjoyable, didn't impress nearly me as much. The sixth anthology, The Other Side of the Mirror, represented an uptick, but it was unusual in being a collection of novellas, not short stories, including one almost a novel by Marion Zimmer Bradley. With the next anthology, I felt it was back to status quo, and I feel the same about Leroni of Darkover. The first collection seemed mostly taken from a contest, and perhaps that pushed the quality up. So many in the contents page of the next six anthologies seemed the usual suspects, with the majority of stories included by authors who appeared in previous MZB anthologies. I thought that contributed to the sense of stories routine and safe. Yet this anthology had many new names and it didn't help. Worse was the absence of any story by MZB at all, so I didn't feel the same sense that the book was adding to true Darkover lore. And not only didn't I remember any of these stories from my read years before, it was hard to remember the stories I read early on by the time I finished rereading this book. I did like Dorothy J. Heydt's "Avarra's Children," one of the longer stories, which featured recurring characters from her previous stories in the Darkover anthologies. In fact, that was one of the pleasures of reading these anthologies one after another--some of the continuing stories, whether by returning writers or picked up by others, such as Patricia Duffy Novak's story "The Keeper's Peace" about Coryn Hastur or Roxana Pierson's "Food for Worms" about a Drytown girl with unusual laran. Otherwise, I did (rather mildly) enjoy most of the stories--but certainly wouldn't recommend this for someone not already a die hard Darkover fan.
The next five collections though still enjoyable, didn't impress nearly me as much. The sixth anthology, The Other Side of the Mirror, represented an uptick, but it was unusual in being a collection of novellas, not short stories, including one almost a novel by Marion Zimmer Bradley. With the next anthology, I felt it was back to status quo, and I feel the same about Leroni of Darkover. The first collection seemed mostly taken from a contest, and perhaps that pushed the quality up. So many in the contents page of the next six anthologies seemed the usual suspects, with the majority of stories included by authors who appeared in previous MZB anthologies. I thought that contributed to the sense of stories routine and safe. Yet this anthology had many new names and it didn't help. Worse was the absence of any story by MZB at all, so I didn't feel the same sense that the book was adding to true Darkover lore. And not only didn't I remember any of these stories from my read years before, it was hard to remember the stories I read early on by the time I finished rereading this book. I did like Dorothy J. Heydt's "Avarra's Children," one of the longer stories, which featured recurring characters from her previous stories in the Darkover anthologies. In fact, that was one of the pleasures of reading these anthologies one after another--some of the continuing stories, whether by returning writers or picked up by others, such as Patricia Duffy Novak's story "The Keeper's Peace" about Coryn Hastur or Roxana Pierson's "Food for Worms" about a Drytown girl with unusual laran. Otherwise, I did (rather mildly) enjoy most of the stories--but certainly wouldn't recommend this for someone not already a die hard Darkover fan.
August 22, 2016
Que saudades eu estava dessa série. Eu sou apaixonada por Darkover, o mundo criado pela Marion Zimmer Bradley, e quando deixaram de publicar os livros em português no Brasil, eu fui obrigada e xeretar na Amazon para descobrir o que mais tinha sido escrito, e achei um monte de Antologias.
Durante uma época, a Marion reuniu contos escritos por fãs (as famosas fanfiction) e deu um tratamento mais profissional para elas, reunindo os contos por temas e publicando os melhores em antologias. Eu comprei vários desses livros em 2016, e resolvi reler alguns para matar as saudades.
Leroni of Darkover reúne histórias onde o tema principal é o laran, o poder psíquico que os darkovanos com sangue chieri tem, esse poder pode assumir várias formas e a Marion reuniu algumas boas historias sobre o assunto.
Algumas historia que eu mais gostei foram “The Rebels” com Varzil, o Bom um dos personagens que são sempre citados nas historias, mas se sabe pouco sobre ele.
The Bargain com uma mulher como personagem principal, que tenta consertar as burradas do seu marido ignorante, e como isso acabou afetando os Elhalyns para sempre.
Food for the Worms, é uma historia sobre um laran bem diferente e um castigo bem merecido para um marido das Cidades Secas. Demais!!
Avarra's Children, achei meio confusa, mas no final acabei gostando porque tinha o meu querido Regis Hastur.
The Tower at New Skye, adoro as historias sobre a colonização de Darkover, sempre aparecem algumas coisas bem interessante sobre os costumes, e esse vai tratar do inicio das Torres e do treinamento do laran.
Durante uma época, a Marion reuniu contos escritos por fãs (as famosas fanfiction) e deu um tratamento mais profissional para elas, reunindo os contos por temas e publicando os melhores em antologias. Eu comprei vários desses livros em 2016, e resolvi reler alguns para matar as saudades.
Leroni of Darkover reúne histórias onde o tema principal é o laran, o poder psíquico que os darkovanos com sangue chieri tem, esse poder pode assumir várias formas e a Marion reuniu algumas boas historias sobre o assunto.
Algumas historia que eu mais gostei foram “The Rebels” com Varzil, o Bom um dos personagens que são sempre citados nas historias, mas se sabe pouco sobre ele.
The Bargain com uma mulher como personagem principal, que tenta consertar as burradas do seu marido ignorante, e como isso acabou afetando os Elhalyns para sempre.
Food for the Worms, é uma historia sobre um laran bem diferente e um castigo bem merecido para um marido das Cidades Secas. Demais!!
Avarra's Children, achei meio confusa, mas no final acabei gostando porque tinha o meu querido Regis Hastur.
The Tower at New Skye, adoro as historias sobre a colonização de Darkover, sempre aparecem algumas coisas bem interessante sobre os costumes, e esse vai tratar do inicio das Torres e do treinamento do laran.
September 12, 2011
As uneven as these things are, anthologies I mean, I can't bring myself to rate this higher than three stars, but this one, like the last, was better than many of the preceding, and I found the last two VERY short stories very compelling. And the much longer story that immediately preceded them very good as well. There were also a couple very good and good stories sprinkled in amongst some meh ones, but such is the way of collections.
January 21, 2019
Another anthology of stories that fill in the blanks between the novels adding to the history. It is amazing how most of them fit and do not misplace characters. Sometimes there is not quite enough information to place the story but even those are enjoyable. One confusing thing about the series is the names used repeatedly. Sometimes it feels like a jigsaw puzzle.
May 24, 2013
Perhaps the reason to read this somewhat weak collection is the story “There is Always Someone”. It isn’t a great story, but though it you can see how greatly Bradley embraced the fans of her Darkover series. Also good is “The Ferment”.
October 2, 2007
I loved this when I read it over and over as a young woman. I think, now, that the writing is weak though the stories are interesting.
Read
October 8, 2012Another enjoyable anthology. Years ago I read everything by MZB I could get my hands on. Once in a while one of them comes off the shelf for a re-read. Enjoyed all but the Trillium books.
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