Showing results by author "Marion Zimmer-Bradley" in All Categories

A posthumous recipient of the World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement, Marion Zimmer Bradley reinvented - and rejuvenated - the King Arthur mythos with her extraordinary Mists of Avalon series. In this epic work, Bradley follows the arc of the timeless tale from the perspective of its previously marginalized female characters: Celtic priestess Morgaine, Gwenhwyfar, and High Priestess Viviane.

A posthumous recipient of the World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement, Marion Zimmer Bradley reinvented—and rejuvenated—the King Arthur mythos with her extraordinary Mists of Avalon series. In this epic work, Bradley follows the arc of the timeless tale from the perspective of its previously marginalized female characters: Celtic priestess Morgaine, Gwenhwyfar, and High Priestess Viviane.

She was Eilan, the daughter of a Druidic warleader and gifted with visions. In a land struggling to survive both Roman conquerors and her own people's enemies, surely fate had marked her to become a priestess of the Forest House. But first Eilan had chosen a different, forbidden path - to love Gaius, a soldier of mixed blood among the legions sent to subdue her country. So she must hide a terrible secret when she is anointed as the new High Priestess.

The cross-currents of two cultures, one male-dominated, one egalitarian, combined with the human problems of two who switched allegiances, brings into focus all the deepest questions of love and marriage, justice and injustice.  

The first book in Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Darkover series, The Planet Savers introduces listeners to the world of Darkover. Darkover is plagued with a disease called trailman’s fever, but Dr. Randall Forth has a plan. He sends a man with two distinct and warring personalities, Jay and Jason, out on an expedition to find a cure.

During the lawless Ages of Chaos, when the ruling families of Darkover ruthlessly inbred their laran-gifted offspring to gain powerful talents, a baby was born to the lord of Aldaran. This child, born on a dark and thunder-filled night, was possessed of a terrifying and uncontrolled talent: Dorilys, heiress to her father’s domain, could unwittingly call forth lightning, even while still a fretful child. 

The most dangerous matrix on all Darkover was the legendary Sharra. Embodied in the image of a chained woman, wreathed in flames, it was the last remaining weapon of the Age of Chaos that had almost destroyed civilization on the planet of the Bloody Sun.   

Romilly was an independent tomboy from a noble family, contrary to the social demands of Darkovan women. That was bad enough, but when Romilly’s father arranged her marriage to a nobleman she found repulsive, she rebelled. Disguising herself as a boy, she fled into the deep forests. Living off the land was not nearly as difficult for Romilly as for most people, for she possessed a rare and highly treasured gift — telepathic communication with hawk and horse. 

Described as “Bradley’s best novel” by Locus, The Heritage of Hastur, longest and most intricate of the Darkover books, is a brilliant epic of the pivotal event in the strange love-hate relationship between the Terran worlds and the semi-alien offspring of forgotten peoples.   

For the Hunters, the Hunt was a religion. The Sacred Prey, sentient beings collected from all over the galaxy, were literally given a fighting chance - they were allowed to choose weapons from an armory with every imaginable weapon and given time to train. Then they were taken to the place of the Hunt, where death awaited them. Those who survived until the eclipse of the red moon, however, were honored by the Hunters and rewarded with all the wealth they could desire. The trick, of course, was surviving.

The colony ship from Earth had been on its way to the Coronis colony — a flourishing mining settlement — where crews of engineers and technicians had been working for 10 years preparing the planet for settlement and studying its ecology. But disaster had struck. 

Haunted by mysterious images of hooded figures, Magdalen Lorne, chief Terran operative on Darkover, pursues a quest not only to the frozen ends of the physical world but also to the perilous limits of the spiritual world. And there she is tested by the evil sorcery of the Dark Sisterhood. 

After the flaming final days of the Ages of Chaos, when the Keeper known as Varzil the Good struggled to bring peace to the warring Hundred Kingdoms through a law called the Compact, there were still those who fought against him for their own ends. And Bard Di Asturian, the outlaw known as The Wolf of the Kilghard Hills, would go to any extreme to bring all those near him under his brutal sway. 

Jeff Kerwin spent the first decade of his life in the Spacemen’s Orphanage in the Terran Trade City on Darkover. Yet he never felt that he belonged. When Jeff is shipped back to Earth at the age of 12, he becomes haunted by dreams of the world surrounding the Terran oasis that had once been his. He is convinced that only on Darkover can he discover his true identity.   

The Darkovans are descendants of a long-lost Terran colony ship and distrust the Terrans, who have taken up residence on their planet, fearing these strangers intend to disrupt the Darkover society. Many Terrans do feel that the people of Darkover should abandon their “backward” culture and join the Terran Empire.   

Nobody alive knew how the feud between Storn and Hammerfell had begun, but that didn't stop the fighting. When Storn's men burned Hammerfell's castle, his infant twin sons were separated, and each grew up thinking himself the rightful Duke of Hammerfell. Conn, raised in the mountains by his father's paxman, continued to fight the Storns. Alastair grew up with his mother in Thendara and planned to marry his cousin, Floria. But when Conn came to Thendara to seek King Aiden's help, and the twins encountered each other, it changed all their lives.

While only women can command the power of the matrix and the secret sciences which keep Darkover from Terran hands, in most respects they are still chattels. But the Free Amazons are considered equal to men, and it is they who provide the key to the Terran-Darkover dilemma. 

Dr. Randall Forth is so desperate to discover a cure for the 48-year-fever, known as Trailmen's fever, he persuades Dr. Jay Allison to undergo hypnosis. Once hypnotized, Jay Allison becomes Jason Allison, his hidden and polar opposite secondary personality.

When a bandit gang seizes High Windward, holding the Storn family hostage, the laran powers of the oldest son Loran are the family’s only hope. Reaching out with those powers, he finds a young Terran, Dan Barron, and “overshadows” his mind, sending him on a desperate rescue mission to Aldaran Castle. 

Although Darkover was a world inhabited by humans as well as semi-humans, it was primarily forbidden ground to the Terran traders. Most of the planet’s wild terrain was unexplored...and many of its peoples seclusive and secretive. But for Andrew Carr, there was an attraction he could not evade. Darkover drew him, Darkover haunted him — and when his mapping plane crashed in unknown heights, Darkover prepared to destroy him.