"You cannot take hawks without climbing cliffs." The ironic realism of this proverb underlies Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover novels. For every gain, there is a risk; choice involves a testing of will and courage. Darkover—a stark world of inbred telepaths, forest fires, blizzards, and a precariously balanced ecostructure—is not one of the bliss-filled utopias that fill books of speculative fiction. Unlike such places, in which, it seems, consensus and good intentions pro...

[The Forbidden Tower] continues from The Spell Sword; the alien Catmen have been vanquished, though at heavy cost. Damon Ridenow and Andrew Carr marry the twin sisters Callista and Ellemir of the house of Alton. Both men are displaced persons. Andrew has given up all his ties to Earth and is feeling his way in a new culture. Damon has been denied his vocation as a Keeper, one of the highly trained telepaths who work in the Towers. The ancient science of the Comyn lords of Darkover centres rigidly upon the t...

Darkover is rather a controversial taste—like certain foods, very few people are neutral on the subject. I confess to having been hooked long ago and to reading each new Darkover book with anticipation and interest. The current offering, Sharra's Exile, is actually a major reworking of the very weak The Sword of Aldones, one of the two earliest Darkover books…. Sharra's Exile is a worthy sequel to The Heritage of Hastur, which is probably the single most popular Darkover novel. I...

[The Bloody Sun is] a telepathic wish-fulfillment fantasy written by a skilled and talented author who can make it all come alive. This is a rewritten version of an earlier book in the well known Darkover series, but it retains the same intriguing story of Jeff Kerwin, who must find and then fight for his heritage on the planet Darkover…. Jeff's self-discovery is the same journey young people must always make, yet it is told in a romantic context of secret societies, unknown ancestry, and, of ...

The name of Marion Zimmer Bradley is a guarantee of excellence. Creative imagination, strong, fleshed-out characters, compelling style, an uncanny ability to make all totally credible combine to involve readers from the first page, never releasing them until long after the last page. [Thendara House], another in the famed Darkover series, deals with conflicts—conflicts between loyalties, between personal relationships (hetero- and homosexual) between cultures, between short and long views, between pe...

Fans of Bradley's Darkover series will welcome [Two to Conquer], set "toward the end of the Ages of Chaos, during … the Time of the Hundred Kingdoms." It is the story of Bard de Asturien, the Kilghard Wolf; ambitious, a mighty warrior, but tragically flawed even as the greatest of Shakespeare's heroes: he is unable to love…. Although set on the fantastic world of Darkover, the story is about the most realistic human emotions. Beautifully written and profoundly movin...

Bradley's tales of fantasy and adventure on the planet Darkover have quietly and deservedly gained a considerable following. This latest installment [The Shattered Chain] explores an important and heretofore neglected aspect of that feudalistic culture—the role of women…. Although filled with characteristic epic sweep, the present novel is more cerebral, and the Amazons emerge with far more dignity and heroism than their pejorative name implies. As with the others in the series, no know...

[Sharra's Exile] is a direct sequel to The Heritage of Hastur and not entirely intelligible to readers unfamiliar with the earlier book…. Darkover is becoming such a complex world that the "mature" Darkover novels (beginning with Heritage) are likely to be heavy going for the reader unfamiliar with the series. For loyal Darkover readers, however, this latest work will be a feast, displaying as it does all of Bradley's great gifts for characterization, world building, and s...

The latest entry in the enormously and deservedly popular Darkover saga [Thendara House] is a direct sequel to The Shattered Chain…. This book is more uneven than the last Darkover novel, Hawkmistress!…, and hence is less than ideal as a starting point for the saga. However, Bradley's prose is up to its usual high standard, many scenes have raw power, and enormously serious questions are addressed. Roland Green, in a review of "Thendara House," in Booklist, Vo...

[In Thendara House] Bradley has pulled together characters and plot elements from four or five previous stories and has turned out another intricate and richly detailed investigation of the roles of women and men on Darkover…. With none of the heavy-handedness of Bradley's "feminist" novel The Ruins of Isis, this is thought-provoking, dramatic, and engrossing. Susan L. Nickerson, in a review of "Thendara House," in Library Journal, Vol. 108, No. 16, Sep...