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Uber User
Posts: 237
Location: Grootfontein, Namibia | Wow, can't believe I've never before read this. I've just discovered the series and am smitten! Science-fantasy with some sword and sorcery at its best. I'm having some real fun with it, much like I'm sure Dave has with Barsoom  | |
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Admin
Posts: 4003
Location: Dallas, Texas | I've always wondered about that series but the 22 books have scared me off for years. | |
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Uber User
Posts: 237
Location: Grootfontein, Namibia | Yeh, me too, but some of them are only 100 odd pages. Read two today, so it's less daunting now | |
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Elite Veteran
Posts: 1031
Location: UK | Its 40 odd years since I read the first Darkover books,and they have gone into oblivion with time.I too didnt fancy catching up on a huge series.I feel guilty a bit at how I omit fantasy almost entirely,but all the books seem to come in massive brick size multi volume sets,and I dont have the time.Repeat after me,the reader's mantra-''so many books,so little time.'' | |
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Uber User
Posts: 237
Location: Grootfontein, Namibia | I just start the series, read a few books, and if I lose interest, that's the end. If not, I keep going. It's a miserable Cape Town winter, so there is ample opportunity to sit in front of our fireplace and the read the night through | |
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Uber User
Posts: 237
Location: Grootfontein, Namibia | Some silly science in The Bloody Sun:
It's located between the upper and lower spiral arms of the Galaxy, so we have to recruit enough personnel to staff a major re-routing station.
Heaven alone knows what this even means 
So far it is the book with the more mature characterization of the main protagonist. There are also pieces of lyrical bliss:
And then there was another of the Big Ships, and a growing excitement that gnawed at you so that you haunted the observation dome, searching for a red coal in the sky that grew at last to a blaze haunting your dreams. And then, after a time that seemed endless, the ship dropped lazily toward a great crimson planet that wore a necklace of four tiny moons, jewels set in the pendant of a carmine sky. | |
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Uber User
Posts: 237
Location: Grootfontein, Namibia | And yes, interest is waning off fast.
As I read the Darkover books in the order in which they were written, the quality of Zimmer Bradley's writing does improve rapidly, but now I find the stories largely repetitive. A person from Earth comes to Darkover, is drawn unexpectedly into adventure, has psychic contact with a Darkovian, usually a female in some distress, fall in love, and subsequently decides that Darkover is his true home. Even when introducing new cultures or races of the Darkover world, Zimmer Bradley commits the cardinal sin of spending too little time on them, resulting in their introduction becoming nothing more than convenience. Almost as if she felt obliged to add something different in between the patterned formalism of her stories.
Whilst the complexity of her ideas are coming a lot more to the forefront of the novels, there still remain paragraphs of clunky prose, weak antagonist and just too much angst. However, her treatment of sexuality, telepathy, culture shock and assimilation remains a highlight and I can see how this ultimately lead to the series's mass appeal and fandom following. It is these few focal points that established the series as an important body of work of speculative fiction.
Even Barbara Cartland and Louis L'Amour wrote a few memorable paragraphs.
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Marion Zimmer Bradley Darkover series