My life in books

Another year, another Darkover anthology. This year's edition arrived at a most opportune moment, when I was sick with a truly vicious cold and much in need of comfort reading.

Realms of Darkover is exactly what one should, by now, expect - a collection of short stories set in the familiar world created by Marion Zimmer Bradley, with all sorts of variations on the themes of first contact and the coming of the Terrans, how to cope with laran, the workings of renunciates and Guild Houses, a scattering of chieris and perhaps some of the other non-human races found on Darkover, and a few stories that break out into other areas.

I enjoyed all of the tales in this volume, particularly Diana L. Paxson's "Housebound," and Barb Caffrey's "Fiona, Court Clerk in Training," both of which feature protagonists seen in earlier collections.

Light fun reading.

Hastur Lord (pub. 2010) credited to both Bradley and Deborah J. Ross, but published a decade after Bradley's death, is one of the weakest of all the Darkover novels, at least in my opinion. Ross has said that she worked from a disorganised draft Bradley had produced after suffering several strokes, and that she believed Bradley had intended it as a rewrite of The World Wreckers. Certainly, after the sense of a new age coming that Ross gave us with the Alton Gift, it was rather disappointing to go back to a time well before those events, for no discernible reason.

It introduces (retroactively) a few new characters who will be important in the novels set during the era of Mikhail Lanart-Hastur's term as Regent - notably Francisco Ridenow and Kierestelli Storn - and sets up the beginning of the next major conflict between Terrans and Darkovans, but the main plotline is totally unnecessary, and relies on a great deal of out-of character behaviour on the part of both Regis Hastur and Danilo Syrtis.

First, the important stuff. It's set about ten years after the events of The World Wreckers, and about fifteen years before the events of Exile's Song. The Terran Empire is going through a major sea change in structure, leadership and philosophy. Now called the Terran Federation, it seeks to end the days of protected planets. As Lew Alton, still the Darkovan Senator, says in a message to Regis:

You will undoubtedly hear propaganda about how the new Federation will extend autonomy to all member worlds, increase interstellar cooperation, and promote free trade—all the persuasive phrases that people want to hear. Even people on Darkover. Don't fall for it, Regis. This whole process is a power grab by the Expansionist party. They want free access to developing worlds, and they've as much as admitted that their goal is to bring an end to what they call special privileges and protected status.

The political situation on Darkover is not promising. Between Sharra and the World Wreckers, the Comyn are nearly leaderless; those who survive are divided between those who want to become full members of the Terran Federation - led by Valdir Ridenow - and those who want as little contact as possible. The Telepath Council set up by Regis is unable to function as a governing body. If there is any real governing authority anywhere on Darkover, it is Regis himself.

On to the plot. The dying Danvan Hastur reveals that Regis has an older, illegitimate brother named Rinaldo who was shipped off to the Nevarsin monks at the age of three. Regis visits him, and despite the fact that Rinaldo is clearly the most unctuous and hypocritical creature you can imagine, oozing with jealousy and envy and spite, brings him home to Thendara and has him legitimated. Valdir Ridenow sees in Rinaldo an opportunity to mold Darkover's future. Believing that he will be able to manipulate Rinaldo, Valdir plots with him to force Regis to abdicate by holding Danilo and Mikhail - Regis' nephew and designated heir - hostage. Regis agrees, and Mikhail is freed, but Danilo remains a prisoner.

Valdir has misjudged his pawn, however. Rinaldo, seeing in his sudden accession to power the hand of God, embarks on a plan to purge sin and impurity from all of Darkover. Forming an alliance with Terran Legate Dan Lawton's wife Tiphani, a fanatical devotee of a religious group with links to the same church that was the foundation of the cristoforos, Rinaldo begins to enforce his own religious beliefs across the Domains.

He forces Regis to marry Linnea Storn - the mother of his daughter Kierestelli (who has been sent off to live with the chieri for her safety) and his unborn son Danilo - by threatening to have Danilo Syrtis killed. As his fanaticism increases, he has Comyn children taken from their families to be raised in the "true" faith. Regis finds and releases the children - a situation complicated by the arrival of Terran Spaceforce soldiers seeking to free Dan Lawton's son Felix, who has been taken from the Terran Zone by Tiphani.

Returning to Comyn Castle, he gathers whatever members of the Comyn he can find and challenges Rinaldo's kingship, but before anything can be decided, Tiphani tries to assassinate Regis and Rinaldo sacrifices his own life to save his brother. End of silly plot, press reset button but political situation remains dire.

What annoyed me the most about Hastur Lord was the total inability of all these telepaths to communicate. Regis and Danilo have spent at least 20 years together as friends and lovers, but they still doubt each other's love and haven't really talked about the fact that some day Regis must marry, and it must be someone he cares about or it's going to be pointless? Danilo still doesn't know he'll always be the one? And how is it that Regis is so blind to his brother's faults - and discounts Danilo's warnings as mere jealousy? How do they not trust each other completely after being open to each other, mind to mind, all these years? And then there's Regis' blunders with Linnea, who he's been in a relationship with before. None of this works, and that makes the book a grave disappointment, despite its solid pro-diversity stance.

Traitor's Sun (pub. 1998) - the last Darkover novel published during Marion Zimmer Bradley's lifetime - is now generally credited to Adrienne Martine-Barnes, working with notes from Bradley.

It is this novel that changes everything about Darkover. In all the novels set in "present" time to this point, one of the key themes has been how to maintain a relationship between the technologically-based, galaxy-spanning Terran Empire/Federation and the planet-bound, laran-using, low-tech culture of Darkover. There have been changes, but for about a century, this dance between independence and reliance has been a major concern for both Darkovan rulers and Terran administrators. Now everything is changing.

The novel opens fifteen years after the events of The Shadow Matrix. Hermes Aldaran, the Darkovan Appointee to the Federation Senate, wakens out of nightmare - which he quickly realises is in fact a manifestation of the Aldaran gift. Trying to focus on the details, he "hears" the leader of the Expansionist party making an announcement that he knows will pose a serious threat to protected worlds like Darkover:

“I cannot permit the functioning of the Federation government to remain at a halt any longer,” Herm heard at last. “Since it is clear that the opposition is determined to hold the legislature hostage to their own inexplicable and selfish goals, I have no choice but to dissolve both the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies until such time as new elections can be held and order restored.”

As Herm tries to determine for himself what this will mean, his thoughts reveal to the reader that much has changed for the worse over the past fifteen years. Both the living conditions and travel rights of both ordinary people and politicians have been curtailed - in fact, even Senators are only allowed one trip home every five years, for elections. All citizens are subjects of constant surveillance: "Like every other person on the planet, he was subject to constant observation. And there was nothing he could do about it, since disabling the spy eyes that watched and listened was a serious offense." Infrastructure and social and cultural programs are being ignored, while military spending is increasing: "New taxes had been passed for all member planets of the Federation, to build a fleet of dreadnaughts, great fighting ships, when there was no foe to defend against. Some worlds had protested, and even tried to rebel, and combat troops had been sent in to 'keep order.'"

Herm knows that this spells the beginning of a time of political and upheaval, perhaps even civil war, for the Federation, and that he, his family, and all of Darkover are in danger: "A handful of worlds were simmering on the edge of rebellion, and when the Premier disbanded the legislature, at least one of them would use it as an excuse to try to break with the Federation. He understood that, but he could not be sure that Nagy did."

Long aware that he might need an emergency exit strategy, Herm triggers the hidden programs that will enable him to leave at once for Darkover, when he realises that his gift has one more disaster to reveal - something has happened to Regis Hastur.

Herm and his family reach Darkover safely, only hours before Regis succumbs to the stroke which had incapacitated him a few days before - news which is being kept from both the populace and from the Terrans on Darkover, now commanded by Station Chief Lyle Belfontaine. Belfontaine has been plotting since his arrival to find a way to force Darkover into becoming a full member of the Federation - a change which he hoped would lead to his appointment as Planetary Governor. But now his plans are threatened by orders from Terra, announcing the closure of the spaceport in thirty days.

As the Comyn gather for Regis' funeral and burial at the rhu fead, Marguerida and Mikhail's oldest son Domenic (called Nico) discovers, purely by accident, that the Terrans have placed spies among the Travellers, that the Terrans now know of Regis' death, and that they are contemplating an attempt tp assassinate all of the Comyn during the burial procession. When Mikhail learns of this, he dispatches Herm - the least likely of his advisors to be recognised - to join Nico and continue surveillance.

Herm and Nico find further indications that the Terrans are planning some kind of intervention with the intent of destabilising Comyn rule. Mikhail calls a Council meeting, at which several members, including his own mother Javanne, question his fitness to succeed Regis - a conversation cut short by the remarkable appearance of Regis' spirit, returned from the Overworld with the aid of Varzil. Mikhail then informs the Council of the likelihood that the Terrans will attack the funeral procession on the way to the rhu fead.

The day following the funeral of Regis Hastur, the funeral procession set forth for the Rhu fead, leaving behind a group of defenders - including Lew and the telepaths of Arilinn Tower - in the event of an attack on the Castle. Mikhail and Marguerida ride with the procession, the long line of coaches carrying not the women and children of the Comyn, but armed Guardsmen, in addition to those riding openly with the procession.

The attacks come as expected. In Thendara, the telepaths, working through Lew and his gift of forced rapport, amplified by giant matrix screens embedded in the walls over the front gates, overwhelm the minds of the force arrayed against the castle, so that each soldier is faced with what he fears most. Thus made vulnerable, the Terrans - including Lyle Belfontaine - are easily taken captive by the Guardsman. The battle on the Old North Road is bloodier and more deadly. The Terrans, dressed as bandits, attack with blasters. Marguerida and Mikhail are able to protect most of the Darkovans with their combined power, but there is fighting, both with laran, and hand-to-hand, with deaths on both sides.

Afterwards, Lew and Marguerida use the Alton gift to blur the memories of the surviving Terrans, and when the last of the Big Ships finally comes to evacuate them, they leave without remembering how they were defeated. And for a time, the relationship between Darkover and the other children of Terra is ended.

The Music of Darkover, edited by Elisabeth Waters and Leslie Fish, is a rather special anthology - in addition to the stories - some new, but with three reprinted from earlier volumes in the series because of the role that music plays in them - it collects the songs that Bradley herself wrote for the Darkovan series, the original (mostly Scottish Gaelic) songs Bradley based them on, "traditional" Darkovan songs written by others, and various filksongs with a Darkovan theme. Elisabeth Waters says in her Introduction:

... this anthology started with a song: “The Horsetamer’s Daughter,” written by Leslie Fish in 1983. It was hardly her first filk song; I owned a copy of her record (and I’m talking about an LP here) Folk Songs For Folk Who Ain’t Even Been Yet, which was released in 1976.

Leslie, in addition to being a gifted songwriter, also writes fiction, so eventually she wrote the story behind the song. When Deborah J. Ross and I started working on STARS OF DARKOVER, the new Darkover anthology scheduled for June 2014, Leslie sent us “Tower of Horses.” The problem is that it is over 30,000 words long and would take up more than a third of the anthology, so I came up with the idea of slipping an extra anthology into the schedule a year early.

Fish's novella, "Tower of Horses" comes first in the anthology, and it is a good one. Set a generation after the destruction of the Tower of Hali, it is the tale of a young woman with the Hastur gift born into a family of horse-trainers. Fish presents the Ages of Chaos as a time when the ordinary working classes suffered greatly from the arrogance and excesses of the Comyn and the deadly laran weapons used in their endless wars. Free of overlordship for years after the fall of Hali, when the Comyn and their laranzus and leronis return, the people resist, and even though she has no matrix and no training, Cath is able to form a Keeper's circle with horses rather than humans, in order to protect her people, her land, and her beloved wild horses.

India Edghill's story "Right to Choose" is a variation on the story of Melora Aillard from The Shattered Chain - in this tale, the Renunciates hired to free a kidnapped Comyn woman from a Dry-Towner discover that the young woman is no victim, but a willing bride, who eloped with her lover and freely chose his chains. The story is complemented by the lyrics of a song written by Edghill's sister Rosemary Edghill, which has as its refrain:

But all who breathe are chained
For power, love, or wealth
By laran, breeding, family
By others or by self.

Vera Nazarian's "Danila's Song" is a reprint from the eighth Darkover anthology, Renunciates of Darkover (1991). It is the story of psychological healing following trauma, triggered by a song. While some things bothered me - reference to a male Keeper in a time when the Terrans have just arrived on Darkover, and a debate over whether a person can inherit two donas, or laran abilities - I enjoyed the story, although I found that I wanted to know much more about the eponymous Danila than the few bits of information Nazarian gives us.

Raul S. Reyes' "The Starstone and the Mirror Ball" begins with a whimsical premise - after unknown centuries, Terrans still love disco. When a young Ridenow explores the Thendara disco scene, the lights and music trigger threshold sickness, and the development of an unusual and feared form of laran.

In Michael Spence's "Music of the Spheres, set - at least in the beginning - in the era of the Hundred Kingdoms, a quartet of retired Tower technicians take to writing and performing music, with unexpectedly transcendent results.

"Poetic Licence" by Mercedes Lackey is another reprint, having first been published in the twelfth Darkover anthology, Snows of Darkover (1994). Set in the time of Varzil the Good, it is a light, almost comic account of a young noble with a predilection for plagarising the work of his fellow music students and the ultimate consequences of his folly.

Elisabeth Waters' "A Capella," another reprint from Snows of Darkover, features Gavin Dellaray, a minor character from The Heirs of Hammerfell, caught in the difficult position of trying to teach Capella Ridenow, the tone-deaf nedestra cousin of the King, the soprano part in his next cantata.

The final story of the anthology, also by Waters, is a comic sequel to her reprint, "A Song for Capella," in which Gavin Dellaray is hard put to produce a suitable musical program to celebrate the marriage of Capella to Lord Alton.

As for the music of Darkover, Margaret Davis, one of several musicians in Bradley's circle of companions, presents a brief account of the role Bradley and other played in the creation of several published works, including a suite of songs taken from Tolkien's work with music written by Bradley, and a record of songs from the Darkover books, written or adapted by Bradley or other musicians, and arranged by Davis and her husband Kristof Klover.

Following this account are the lyrics of the songs themselves - including all twenty-odd verses of the ballad of Callista and Hastur.

An anthology with a difference, and a most enjoyable one, especially for those who have always been interested in the songs of Darkover.


*Of the eight pieces of short fiction in this anthology, six are identifiable as being written by women.

Rediscovery (co-written by MZB and Mercedes Lackey, pub. 1993) tells the story of the rediscovery of the planet Darkover by the Terran Empire, more than 2,000 years after the original colonists crashed there. The crew of the survey ship that finds the planet try to follow basic First Contact rules, but when the flyer they send down to make an exploratory visit crashes during a storm in the Hellers, and the powerful young leronis Leonie Hastur senses their plight and sends a telepathic warning to the nearby Aldaran Comyn, that intention evaporates. Fortunately for the Terrans, crew members Elizabeth Macintosh and David Lorne have some telepathic ability, which enables Kermiac Aldaran to communicate with them. Before long, it's been verified that the Darkovans are descended from the colonists of a Lost Ship, the planet has been assigned Restricted Status - meaning a spaceport can be build if local government agrees, and limited trade may be permitted - and Lord Kermiac has granted the Terrans land to build their port near the village of Caer Donn. Lorill Hastur, Leonie's twin brother, is sent by the comyn of the other domains to investigate the situation.

There are, of course, many complications, including a secondary plotline involving Lorill Hastur, Leonie's twin brother, another Terran telepath, Ysaye Barnett, and Leonie, who is in telepathic contact with both of them during much of the novel. This ends in death for Ysaye and complete withdrawal from outside telepathic contact for Leonie after Lorill and Ysaye are inadvertently exposed to kiresith pollen intended as a trap for Elizabeth.

Meanwhile Elizabeth and David, now married and planning to remain on Darkover as Spaceport personnel, are captured for ransom by bandits while on a field trip. When the Terrans rescue them using aerial weapons that violate the Compact banning weapons that operate at more than an arm's length distance, setting off a dangerous forest fire in the process, only the Aldarans - who do not follow the Compact - remain interested in contact with humans. And so the first Terran spaceport on Darkover is built in the Hellers, at Caer Donn, and the pattern of relations between the Empire and the six Domains of the Comyn is set.

With respect to sexual politics, we see clearly the patriarchal family structure that has developed on Darkover, with occasional references to the exceptions (or escapes) to the restricted place of women in Darkovan society - life in the Towers, or life as a Renunciate (Free Amazon). Leonie lives in a secluded world where women have power as Keepers, and the Keeper of Arilinn has power at the highest levels as the representative of the Towers. But all other women must have a man to acknowledge their legitimacy or they are without any place in society. All the Darkovan women we see at Aldaran are in some way connected to, legitimated and protected by men - Lady Aldaran, Mariel, Felicia, Thyra. Indeed, the worst thing one can say of a child is that her father is unknown. And as women under the protection of a man, they cannot function as equals. Kermiac tells Elizabeth: "to tell the truth, I am not accustomed to discussing serious business with women."

Terran society, however, appears relatively egalitarian. Because the novels were not written in chronological order, in Rediscovery (written in 1993) which takes place several generations earlier than The Bloody Sun (written in 1964), the Terran Space Service is more integrated, with more women in positions of authority (Ysaye Barrett is the senior computer analyst, Aurora Lakshman is the Chief Medical Officer).

Contraception is freely available, as is abortion, at least within the Service. While sexuality in the Service seems to be a matter of personal choice, it's clear that the various planets in the Empire have varied cultural norms with respect to sexual behaviour. Ysaye comes from a culture that values monogamous marriage and frowns on contraception and abortion. On the other hand, various references are made to planets like Vainwal, where sex work is legal and attitudes seem very permissive.

One of the particularly enjoyable aspects of this novel for me is that many characters who play major roles in the saga of Darkover are shown here as they were before the events that made them crucial characters in the history of Darkover - Leonie and Lorill, but also Kadarin, and Thyra. Jeb Scott will eventually marry Felicia Darriel, and father Rafe and Marjorie Scott. Kermiac's younger sister Mariel will marry Wade Montray; their daughter Elaine will marry Kennard Alton. Elizabeth and David will stay on Darkover and raise their child Magda Lorne. In this book, written well after many of the novels dealing with the generations of contact with the Terrans, Lackey and Bradley have worked into the narrative a host of references to things to come. The narrative itself is rather on the thin side, but for the devoted fan of Darkover, the joy of seeing how it was in the beginning makes Rediscovery a book worth reading.

Thendara House (pub. 1983) is a direct sequel to The Shattered Chain - it details the events immediately following on Jaelle n'ha Melora's freemate marriage to Terran (but Darkovan born and raised) Peter Haldane, and the entrance into the Thendara Guild House of Terran Intelligence Agent Magda Lorne (known among her guild-sisters as Margali n'ha Ysabet) for six months of training and seclusion.

For both women, it is a time of self-discovery. Jaelle, who has repressed her early life in the Dry-Towns, and who has lived since then among Renunciates, finds that her relationship with Peter raises those early memories. She is faced with an internal struggle between the deep, repressed conditioning that drew her to Peter - who is slowly revealed as a domineering and potentially abusive mate - and her identity as a Renunciate - a struggle that is only exacerbated when she realises that she is pregnant. Meanwhile, Magda is challenged to question her Terran values and sense of privilege, and is brought face to face with the reality that she is more deeply attracted to women than she is to men.

In addition to struggles with conditioning and culture shock, both women are dealing with the adult onset of powerful laran - Jaelle because of the resurgence of her childhood memories, which were shut down along with her laran when she experienced her mother's death while in rapport with her, and Magda as a result of her increased contact with other telepaths, including Jaelle.

Thendara House is not only a sequel to The Shattered Chain, however. It is also part of the story of the Forbidden Tower, in which both Magda and Jaelle will play a part. For both women, the connection that leads them to Armida is Andrew Carr, now known as Ann'dra Lanart.

Jaelle, in her role as cultural consultant in Terran Intelligence, is tasked with helping a visiting Terran official, Alessandro Li. Li is a Special Representative of the Senate, sent to investigate whether Cottman Four should retain its Closed World status or be reclassified, and to make recommendations about a Legation. Li is at first very interested in finding out all that he can about the Comyn and the rumours of telepathic abilities among the Darkovan ruling class. When the wreckage of Andrew Carr's downed plane is discovered and it is learned that Carr survived the crash, Li becomes fixated on finding out what happened to him.

Meanwhile, Magda meets Andrew when, along with a number of other Renunciates, she travels to the Kilghard Hills near Armida to help in fighting a fire. While they do not know each other, she recognises him as Terran - and vice versa. She believes him to be an Intelligence agent in deep cover, and later on, when she meets Alessandro Li, she innocently mentions seeing an agent at Armida. Li makes the connection between this unknown Terran and the missing Andrew Carr, and when all other attempts to contact Carr are thwarted, he sets out alone, unaware of a severe storm coming, to travel to Armida and confront him.

When Jaelle discovers what he has done, she determines to go after him, knowing the danger he is in. Peter attempts to stop her, threatening to have her declared temporarily insane due to her pregnancy, and placed in restraints. Jaelle lashes out and Peter is rendered unconscious (though Jaelle believes she has killed him). Jaelle, in emotional turmoil and psychic distress, heads out after Li, stopping briefly at the Guild House where she tries to see Magda. Magda, unfortunately, is in a meeting with the House Guild-Mother, and doesn't learn that Jaelle was asking for her until much later. Reaching out with her untried laran, she is able to discern where Jaelle is headed and why. Coming suddenly to understand that she is in love with Jaelle, she rides out after her. Magda finds Jaelle just in time for them both to find shelter from a sudden flood, but they are trapped by the rising waters. Jaelle miscarries and once more, Magda's laran enables her to reach out for help. A rescue party led by Andrew arrives, having also found and rescued Alessandro Li. During Jaelle's recuperation at Armida, both women realise that they have grown beyond both the limitations of their respective cultures, and the oppositional renunciations that form the essence of the Guild. Possessed of powerful laran, the next step for them is to join the Forbidden Tower - thus bringing together in Jaelle and Damon Ridenow the parents of Cleindori Aillard.

In Jaelle's experiences, we see through her encounters with other Terrans and with the cultural assumptions inherent in the way life and work are structured in the Terran Zone, the sexism of the Terran culture.

From the Terrans, Jaelle must deal with having her identity elided in a way that goes against her Renunciate's oath - among the Terrans, she is no longer Jaelle n'ha Melora, but Mrs. Peter Haldane. She is Haldane's wife, Haldane's girl, even Haldane's squaw. On the other hand, she encounters men in the Terran Service who accept her competence without question and work beside her without concern that she is a woman.

However, because Peter is Darkovan-raised and (as we are reminded several times) psychosexual development is fixed before adolescence, Peter's responses in intimate relationships are more typical of a Darkovan man who has acclimatised to Terran surroundings, than of a citizen of the Terran Empire. As Peter and Jaelle embark on their marriage, we see how the patriarchalism of Darkovan society affect relationships between men and women. Jaelle herself comes to think that it is the Darkovan in Peter, not the Terran, that creates problems between them: "Maybe it is not the Terran in Peter I find objectionable; maybe it is his Darkovan side which insists I must be no more than his wife and mother of his children… other Terran men are not like that."

Jaelle faces endless criticism from Peter over her inability to behave like a good wife, in either the Terran or Darkovan sense. When she acts "inappropriately" due to culture shock or the need to preserve her sense of autonomy, he lectures her on how this reflects poorly on him:

"I'm working under Montray now, and I'm in enough trouble with him without having him think—" he stopped, but to Jaelle, surprisingly, it was as if he had spoken aloud what was in his mind; think I can’t manage my wife.

As their relationship worsens, Jaelle comes to see that for Peter, love is equivalent to possession, and that he expects her as a matter of course to see to all his needs: "...and suddenly she knew him as Magda had known him, he really believed that he could treat her as valet, comrade-in arms, personal servant, breeding-anima, and somehow repay it all just with the ardor of his lovemaking..."

Nor is Peter's sexism limited his attitudes toward Jaelle. Because her heightened laran enables her to sometimes read his thoughts, Jaelle gains awareness of how he thinks about the new head of Intelligence Cholayna Ares, and his former wife and colleague Magda.

Not fair, dammit, I spent five years setting things up so that when Darkover got an Intelligence service I'd be at its head, and now some damned woman walks in and takes over. Bad enough playing second fiddle to Magda..."

When she finally tells Peter that she no longer wants to remain married to him, he responds that he will not allow her to leave - asserting his belief that she belongs to him and cannot break their connection without his permission, despite the fact that in Terran marriages, a married woman is not property, as she is under Darkovan law.

She detected a glimmer in his mind of logical resentment; women were damned unreasonable creatures, yet a man was at their mercy if he wanted children, and how else could they have any immortality? It almost made her pity him. “Don‟t be silly, Jaelle. I‟m not going to let you divorce me, not with a baby coming. I owe it to my child at least, to protect and look after his mother, even if we‟re not getting along too well.”

Thus in the short space of a few months, the intimate portrayal of the deterioration of their relationship brings into sharp relief the glimpses we have had previously of the traditional Darkovan marriage and the attitudes that shape it.

Magda's experiences in the Thendara Guild House mirror in some ways the early years (late '60s and early '70s) of the feminist movement - in particular the use of consciousness-raising groups to become aware of - and change - internalised sexist conditioning and to examine gender roles, institutionalised sexism, and nature of the differences between male and female. The other significant themes explored through Magda's life as a new Renunciate are lesbianism and transgender issues (through the emmasca character Camilla).

As a newly sworn Renunciate, Madga is expected to go through a period of training and seclusion, during which she may only leave the Guild House with permission of on the Elders of the House. At one of the first group meetings, the Guild Mother tells her and the other trainees "... you will learn to change the way you think about yourselves, and about other women.”

During her time in the Guild House, Magda comes to realise how pervasive same-sex attraction is on Darkover - and not just among Renunciates, although same-sex relationships between women are taken more seriously in the Guild than outside it, where such relationships between women are seen as adolescent fancies or secondary relationships, insufficient to keep a woman from her primary function, to marry a man and bear children.

Men may swear such oaths. And yet for women, such an oath is always taken, it seems, as a thing for untried girls, and means only, I shall be bound to you only so long as it does not interfere with duty to husband and children…”

In this perspective, it would appear that the frequent accusations against Renunciates, that they are all lovers of women and seduce honorable wives away from their husbands, refers not to the fact that many of them are in fact lesbian or bisexual, but that they value such relationships - and indeed, all relationships between women, sexual or not - as highly, or even more highly, than they do relationships between women and men. It is not that they love women, but that in doing so they choose not to be available to men.

Through the struggles of both women to find their true selves and desires, MZB explores much of the feminist analysis and praxis of second wave feminism of the 60s and early 70s. The nature of the patriarchy, the role of cultural conditioning, attitudes toward child bearing and rearing, alternative family structures, instititionalised sexism, the effects of sexism on men, the question of living separate from men as much as possible, even the debates over the role of lesbians in the movement, all have their expression in the inner journeys of Magda and Jaelle. It would be a rare woman of that era who did not see something of her own experiences and struggles somewhere in the pages of this novel.

The Forbidden Tower (pub. 1977) is the story of the creation of the "heretical" circle of telepaths who, choosing to work outside of the Towers of Darkover, challenge the two most strongly held beliefs that underlie the Tower system - that a Keeper must be essentially asexual, and that only the members of the ruling Comyn caste have enough laran to work in the Towers.

The novel begins where The Spell Sword left off - with the clearing of the catmen and the planned union of Damon Ridenow to Ellemir Alton, and of Terran Andrew Carr to Callista Alton, formerly a Keeper of Arilinn under Leonie Hastur. Much of the main plot of the novel deals with the fusion of these two couples into a fourway bond, linked telepathically, emotionally and sexually. There are two main obstacles to this, and MZB deals with both in great detail. First, the realisation that not only has Callista been conditioned to have no sexual awareness or response, but that early in the training, Leonie performed a kind of psychic neutering on her, so that it would be impossible for her conditioning to ever be undone. Second, the painful misunderstandings and problems of culture shock brought about by the differences between Terran sexual mores and those found in a society of telepaths. In order to overcome the first, Damon must engage in the dangerous discipline of timesearch to find clues to a centuries-old tradition that could restore Callista's frozen sexuality. And only endless love and patience can overcome the second.

At the end of the novel, the four of them, fully bonded, are faced with a telepathic duel to prove Damon's right to namr himself Keeper and to direct the way his Tower will operate according to his own conscience and not the laws of Arilinn.

While largely focused on deconstructing the rigid role of Keeper and the assumption that only the Comyn can be effective telepaths, many of the Darkovan attitudes toward sexuality are clarified through the exploration of the differences between Terran and Darkovan sexual culture.

Darkovan society is to some degree polyamorous, and despite the strongly patriarchal nature of family relationship, women appear to have some sexual autonomy, but on strict class lines. As well, women must be discreet, and if unmarried, must be careful about pregnancy. The greatest shame seems to lie in bearing a child who has no acknowledged father. Some of the contradictions are shown in this account Ellemir gives to Callista about her sexual experience:

“It was that winter,” said Ellemir. “Dorian begged me to come and spend the winter with her; she was lonely, and already pregnant, and had made few friends of the mountain women. Father gave me leave to go. And later in the spring, when Dorian grew heavy, so it was no pleasure to her to share his bed, Mikhail and I had grown to be such friends that I took her place there.” She giggled a little, reminiscently. Callista said, startled, “You were no more than fifteen!” Ellemir answered, laughing, “That is old enough to marry; Dorian had been no more. I would have been married, had Father not wanted me to stay home and keep his house!” Again Callista felt the cruel envy, the sense of desperate alienation. How simple it had been for Ellemir, and how right! And how different for her! “Were there others?” Ellemir smiled in the darkness. “Not many. I learned there that I liked lying with men, but I did not want to be gossiped about as they whisper scandal about Sybil-Mhari—you have heard that she takes lovers from Guardsmen or even grooms—and I did not want to bear a child I would not be allowed to rear, though Dorian pledged that if I gave Mikhail a child she would foster it. And I did not want to be married off in a hurry to someone I did not like, which I knew Father would do if there was scandal."

There is some indication, however, that the circumstances in which women may engage in pre- or extra-marital sex are partly for the convenience of men. There is a reluctance among Darkovan women to engage in sex during pregnancy. As Callista explains, “Biologically, no pregnant animal desires sex; most will not endure it. If your women have been culturally conditioned to accept it as the price of retaining a husband's sexual interest, I can only say I am sorry for them! Would you demand it of me after I had ceased to take pleasure in it?”

While a man may take a concubine or mistress at his pleasure, and it is expected that he will do so if his wife is unavailable or unable to provide sex, it is considered not quite proper if he brings into the household a woman who is not acceptable to his wife. The kinswoman of one's wife is traditionally one of the more acceptable choices in such circumstances.

"This is our custom. If you were one of us, it would be taken for granted that my sister and I should… should share in this way. Even if things were — as they should be between us, if there was a time when I was ill, or pregnant, or simply not… not wanting you… It is very old, this custom. You have heard me sing the Ballad of Hastur and Cassilda? Even there, even in the ballad, it speaks of how Camilla took the place of her breda in the arms of the God, and so died when he was set upon. It was so that the Blessed Cassilda survived the treachery of Alar, to bear the child of the God…”

There is also a sense that men's desire should not be allowed to go unfulfilled, and that women are responsible for seeing to this when they arouse a man's sexual interest.
In both The Spell Sword and The Forbidden Tower, Callista tells Andrew that she is responsible for the fulfilment of desire he feels toward her. “I have been taught that it is… shameful to arouse a desire I will not satisfy."

Despite the suggestion of some choice in sexual expression, it is also clear that women, like children must always be under wardship - except, of course, for the Keepers. Women in the Towers are under the wardship of their Keepers - at one point, Leonie states that it is her responsibility to find suitable marriages for women who have given oath to her as Keeper and have worked in the Tower (this does not include young women who are sent to the Towers for a few years training in the use of laran) if they later choose to leave. Women outside the Towers are seen always as under the authority of father, husband, brother, or other kinsman.

The Heritage of Hastur (pub. 1975) and its immediate sequel, Sharra's Exile (pub. 1981) are in some ways the heart of the Darkovan cycle - they mark the end of the Comyn and the sociopolitical structure of Darkover as it was and, as Regis Hastur comes into his own, the beginnings of a new Darkover (which would be penned, not by Bradley, but by her successors Adrienne Martine-Barnes and Deborah J. Ross from outlines and notes).

The Heritage of Hastur details the events surrounding Regis' coming of age, amid the unleashing of Sharra, the powerful matrix we saw before in The Winds of Darkover. It is also a key part of the ongoing conversation about the position of Darkover within the Terran Empire. In all these strands of the narrative, the one common theme is responsibility for and abuse of power. In a sense, the true heritage of Hastur - and all Comyn are called the children of Hastur - is a heritage of extreme privilege and power, and its potential for abuse, as much as it is a heritage of responsibility. As Danvan Hastur acknowledges, "In the far-back days, we were given power and privilege because we served our people, not because we ruled them. Then we began to believe we had these powers and privileges because of some innate superiority in ourselves, as if having laran made us so much better than other people that we could do exactly as we pleased."

As the novel opens, relations between Terrans and Darkovans have once more grown tense, and the key issue is the Compact - an agreement banning all long-distance weapons that holds sway throughout the six lowland Domains. The Empire has technically agreed not to allow such weapons to be taken out of the Terran Zone in Thendara, but Terran officials do not really take the agreement seriously, or enforce it rigorously, and they have allowed the sale of range weapons in Alderan territory - realising that the compact exists to protect all Darkovans from the devastating matrix weapons - like Sharra. Again, this conflict adds to the themes of responsibility, power and abuse that inform all the narrative strands of the novel.

This narrative focuses on two young men - Regis Hastur and Lewis Alton - whose circumstances and experiences are in some ways counterpointed, but in other ways parallel. Regis is the grandson of Danvan Hastur (and great-grandson of Lorill Hastur), heir to the most powerful family on Darkover, the hereditary Regents of the Crown - a vital role, as many of the Elhalyn, hereditary Kings of Darkover, have been incompetent or even mad in recent generations. But Regis doesn't want to be the de-facto ruler of Darkover, he longs for the stars. Unlike the Comyn he is destined to lead, he appears to be almost completely lacking in laran - testing indicates he has the potential, but that it has been blocked from normal development.

Lew Alton is also the heir to a powerful Domain, but unlike Regis, he has had to fight to be recognised. He is the son of Kennard Alton (last seen as a boy in Star of Danger) and Elaine Montray, who is half Terran, half Darkovan, but of the outcast Aldaran Domain, who Kennard met and fell in love with on Earth. Although Kennard married Elaine di catenas - the most formal style of marriage - the Comyn refused to acknowledge his marriage and Lew has always been treated by most as a bastard, carrying both the barbarian blood of the Terrans and the traitor's blood of the Aldarans. In order to have his son declared as his heir, Kennard was forced to prove before witnesses that Lew carried the Alton Gift of forced rapport by forcing rapport on him - an act that might have killed Lew if he did not in fact have the gift. Only in the Towers, where Lew proved to be a powerful and skilled matrix technician, has he felt truly welcome, although he has won some degree of acceptance among the Guards, where he serves as an officer and his father's second - the Altons being the hereditary commanders of the Guard.

The events of the novel do in fact begin in the Guard, where Regis is beginning his duties as a cadet, where Kennard is Commander and both Lew and Kennard's cousin and childhood friend Dyan Ardais - the Lord of that Domain - are officers, as is Regis' brother-in-law (and Lew's cousin) Gabriel Lanart-Hastur. Also in his first year as a cadet is Danilo Syrtis, son of a minor Comyn house whose older brother was paxman and sword brother to Regis' father - both of whom were killed by bandits carrying Terran weapons.

As new cadets, Regis and Danilo initially become friends, but are driven apart by the actions of Dyan. As cadet master, he has the power to make any cadet's life a living hell, and when Danilo refuses his sexual advances, Dyan uses not only his official power but also his laran to torment the young man. At the same time, Dyan attempts a gentle seduction of Regis - the difference in his approach to the two being that he sees Regis as a social equal and Danilo as a social inferior. Before too long, Danilo has rejected Regis' friendship and, driven to desperation by Dyan's action, draws a knife on Dyan and is sent home in disgrace.

Meanwhile, Kennard has asked Lew to travel to Aldaran to investigate the situation with respect to Terran weapons there, under the pretext of visiting his Lord Kermiac and his other Alderan kinfolk. When Lew, who has seen Dyan in action before, witnesses the public disgrace of Danilo and senses what was behind Danilo's reaction, goes to Kennard in protest, his father will not listen to him. Lew leaves for Aldaran, but with a heart filled with anger and disgust at the abuses of power he has witnessed. Arriving at Castle Alderan he is welcomed into the family as the grandson of Kermiac's sister Meriel. Here he meets his cousin, Kermiac's son Beltran, Kermiac's wards, Thyra, Marjorie and Rafe Scott, and the mysterious Raymon Kadarin, and is drawn into their plan to recreate the old pre-Compact matrix sciences, using the Sharra matrix. As he works with Kadarin and the others, training them to be a working circle, he and Marjorie begin to fall in love, despite the fact that Lew has determined that Marjorie is the one best suited to serve as the circle's Keeper.

Regis, having completed his first year of training, travels to visit his sister; en route, he stops at Danilo's home, where the two renew their friendship, and Regis, learning what really happened to him, swears to make it right. On his return to Thendara, despite being ill with threshold sickness, a malady that often strikes telepaths whose laran has awakened, he confronts first his grandfather and then Kennard with the knowledge of Dyan's abuse. Kennard, reading his mind and the images he carries from Danilo's mind, is shocked, but accepts Dyan's guilt. He also realises that Danilo is a catalyst telepath, a rare gift thought to be extinct, and contact with him can stimulate latent laran - and that contact with Danilo is what has woken Regis' powers.

With the promise that justice will be done, Regis returns to Syrtis with Gabriel who is to take Regis to Neskaya for laran training and then bring Danilo back to Thendara, but they discover that Danilo has been kidnapped by the Aldarans. Gabriel returns to Thendara to report the crime. Regis promises to wait for Gabriel at his seat in Edelweiss, but instead, he pauses long enough to name Gabriel and Javanne's youngest son his heir, and sets out to find Danilo.

In Alderan, Lew is horrified when he learns that Beltran has kidnapped Danilo, particularly since he himself, having guessed Danilo's gift, had speculated about asking Danilo to join their circle and use his gift to help more latent telepaths find their powers. Kermiac chastises Beltran, and when Regis arrives, assures him that both he and Danilo are guests under his roof and will come to no harm, and will be allowed to leave when the weather is better.

Lew comes to the realisation that working with Sharra is corrupting all of them, awakening lust for power and dulling their consciences, he decides that they must return Sharra to the forge folk and find another way to bring about their goals. But when Kermiac dies suddenly, Beltran imprisons Regis and Danilo, and tries to force Lew to continue working with the Sharra circle. Marjorie rescues the three captives, and they flee Aldaran Castle. Lew and Marjorie set out to bring word of the Sharra circle to Arilinn, while Regis and Danilo head toward Thendara. Lew and Marjorie are recaptured, and Lew is drugged and, now controlled by Kadarin, returns to the Sharra circle. As Sharra rages, destroying the city of Caer Donn and the Terran Spaceport there, telepaths across Darkover feel the impact, and a force is sent from Thendara to stop the fires, no matter what. Regis and Danilo meet the party, led by Kennard and Dyan, on the road, and head back with them toward Alderan.

Marjorie convinces Kadarin to let Lew recover from the drugs, and together they decide that Sharra must be stopped, even if it takes their deaths - and the deaths of everyone in the Sharra circle - to close the dimensional gateway that fuels it. As they enter the circle and prepare to attempt it, Kennard finally reaches Lew and adds his power to theirs. The gateway is sealed, but Lew is gravely wounded and Marjorie close to death; with the strength of desperation, Lew manages to teleport himself and Marjorie to Arilinn, but it is too late for Marjorie.

Despite the closing of the gateway, the Sharra matrix remains too powerful to be left on Darkover where its power could be raised again; Kennard decides to leave Darkover, taking the matrix and Lew with him, hoping that Terran medicine can heal wounds that Darkovan psi power cannot. The Terrans, now aware of just what kind of long-range weapons the Compact was made to control, promise to do their part in keeping it. Dyan accepts responsibility for his abuse of Danilo, and names him heir to Ardais as recompense. And Regis relinquishes his dream of the stars and takes his place as the Hastur heir on the Council. Hard lessons have been learned - at least for a time.

The Heritage of Hastur is the first of the Darkover novels to deal extensively with male homosexuality. It is also the novel that many readers point to as one that embodies Bradley's personal philosophy as an enabler of the sexual abuse committed by her husband, and an abuser herself. I am going to first discuss attitudes toward male homosexuality in general as presented in the novel, and then look at the instances of sexual abuse and how they are dealt with. But first, I want to summarise certain aspects of what has been revealed so far about Darkovan attitudes toward sex in general.

Sexuality on Darkover has two aspects, social, and reproductive. Social sex is by necessity non-reproductive, as it is a great disgrace to produce a child without a father to claim it. It occurs between men, between women, and between men and women. It is common in the Towers, but is also found outside of them. It is a personal matter, and is expected to take second place to the duty of proper procreation.

Reproductive sex is heavily controlled, because a child without an acknowledged father has no place in the community. Paternity is also important, especially among the nobility, because of the role that inheritance rights play in a feudal society. In Heritage of Hastur, we learn that having at least one heir, if not more, is a legal necessity for an adult male in direct line to the overlordship of a domain.

Thus men are expected to concern themselves with having heirs, and for this they need recognised relationships with women whose fidelity can not be questioned. These relationships span a wide range of options, including a highly formal style of marriage, legal concubinage, a form of common-law marriage, and the taking of mistresses. As long as the man is sure enough of the paternity of his child to acknowledge it, the mothers are not stigmatised and the children have a place in the family and in society. The higher the social status of the woman, the more likely it is that she will be married formally to a man of equal or higher status.

Women are often married young, well before the age of 20, unless they are marked for some training in a Tower, in which case their marriages may be put off for two or three years. Man may also be betrothed, or even married, at an early age. When discussing sexuality, it is important to remember that on Darkover, adulthood arrives early - around the age of 15. At this age, Darkovans take on adult responsibilities - they start work, get married, have children, begin training in Towers or in the Guards, whether they want to or not. As Regis says in speaking of the expected actions of a Comyn son: "It's all planned out for us, isn't it, Lew? Ten years old, fire-watch duty. Thirteen or fourteen, the cadet corps. Take my turn as an officer. Take a seat in Council at the proper time. Marry the right woman, if they can find one from a family that's old enough and important enough and, above all, with laran. Father a lot of sons, and a lot of daughters to marry other Comyn sons."

Nor are matters any different for women, as Lew thinks while watching Regis' sister Javanne at a party: "Javanne was dancing again. Well, let her enjoy herself. She had been married off at fifteen and had spent the last nine years doing her duty to her family."

Among the Comyn, sexuality and telepathy are strongly linked. Laran generally develops in early adolescence, and as Bradley constructs the physiology of psi, sexual and laran "energies" travel along the same "channels" in the body. As well, it is often mentioned that for telepaths, living in close contact is like "living with your skin off" - in a state of intimacy unimaginable among non-telepaths. It's also mentioned that telepathic men are often uninterested, or even impotent, with "head-blind" women. Telepathy both mimics and intensifies sexual bonding. As Lew says, in explaining why he refuses to marry at the command of the Comyn:

How could I tell Hastur, who was old enough to be my grandfather, and not even a telepath, that when I took a woman, all her thoughts and feelings were open to me and mine to her, that unless rapport was complete and sympathy almost total, it could quickly unman me? Few women could endure it. And how could I tell him about the paralyzing failures which a lack of sympathy could bring? Did he actually think I could manage to live with a woman whose only interest in me was that I might give her a laran son? I know some men in the Comyn manage it. I suppose that almost any two people with healthy bodies can give each other something in bed. But not tower-trained telepaths, accustomed to that full sharing.

With the exception of the cristoforos, whose attitudes toward sexuality, and particularly sexual expression between persons of the same sex are based on a remnant of Christian religious belief, Darkovans appear to have a relaxed attitude toward male homosexual expression - at least as long as the persons involved are either young, or if older, have done their duty to society by marrying and fathering children.

It was not considered anything so shameful to be an ombredin, a lover of men. Among boys too young for marriage, rigidly kept apart by custom from any women except their own sisters or cousins, it was considered rather more suitable to seek companionship and even love from their friends than to consort with such women as were common to all.

The Heritage of Hastur explores two instances of homosexual contact that may be characterised as abusive. The first, which occurs within the timeline of the novel, involves Danilo Syrtis, who comes to the attention of the sadistic hebephile Dyan Ardais while a cadet. While Danilo is not physically forced into sex, when he rejects Dyan's attentions, the older man responds with what essentially constitutes mental rape, by using his laran to infiltrate Danilo's mind - something telepaths are sworn not to do. There is a clear suggestion that Dyan has done this before, and that he has also had relationships with other young men, who may have been willing but were also under his authority as an officer of the Guard. Among his Comyn peers, his relations with consenting young men are not seen as problematic, but they clearly see his telepathic assault as wrong. In this context, it is important to remember that Darkovans are considered adult at 15, and capable of consent. By Darkovan standards, Dyan is guilty of abuse of power, but not of child abuse.

The second instance involves a single incident from the past, between 12-year-old Regis and Lew Alton, who is, as Bradley states in the text, "five or six years older than Regis." (It's interesting to note that reviewers have tended to cast Lew as ten or more years older than Regis.) Lew and Regis are foster-brothers, and Regis loves and worships Lew like the older brother he has never had. Lew is a telepath, Regis at twelve is just beginning to develop his laran. The two are out on the firelines together, in a situation of great stress.

And Regis had known Lew was afraid. He'd touched Lew's mind, and felt it: his fear, the pain of his burns, everything. He could feel it as if it had been in his own mind. And Lew's fear hurt so much that Regis couldn't stand it. He would have done anything to comfort Lew, to take his mind off the pain and the fear. It had been too much. Regis couldn't shut it out, couldn't stand it. But he had forgotten. Had made himself forget, till now.

Struggling with the simultaneous onset of puberty and telepathy, feeling Lew's distress and wanting to comfort him, Regis makes an effort to offer comfort that is both psychic and sexual in nature; Lew, not yet trained to control his telepathy, hurt and afraid and in need of comfort, responds in kind. Is this child abuse? Is Lew a homosexual pedophile? There is certainly no indication in the text that Lew has more than a minor interest in males as sexual partners; in fact, when he thinks of expressing his sexual desires, it is women he considers. Regis is the one who is drawn more to males than to females, who falls in love with Danilo. Regis is 12, Lew is no older than 18. The situation is, to my mind, ambiguous. Nor is it pictured as without consequence, for it is the intensity of the connection that causes Regis to block out the memory, and with it, his developing laran - until it is awakened three years later by the young man who will be his next lover.

It has become almost an article of faith in our society today that persons under some magic age - 16, 18, even 21 - are children, lacking in judgement and agency, incapable of freely consenting to sex. The problem is, that there is no sharp divide between childhood and adulthood and that not all people are alike or develop at the same rate. Even very young children are sexual beings, and it is not unnatural for age peers to engage in sex play. As children enter puberty, sexual interest increases, and many adolescents engage in sexual exploration. Consent is a situational thing. Can two 5-year-olds consent to "playing doctor"? Can a 12-year old consent to sexual exploration with a 13-year-old? A 15-year-old? A 17-year-old? A 25-year-old? The boundaries of free consent are fluid - at some point on this spectrum, the age range becomes too great, and issues of power and influence come into play, but at what point?

I think of my own personal experience. My first consensual sexual relationship occurred when I was 12, with a girl who was four years my senior. It was one of those boarding school romances - and anyone who tries to suggest that same-sex boarding schools are not full of same-sex sexual exploration doesn't know what they are talking about. Was my relationship fully consensual? As I look back, some 50 years later, my memories are of love, desire, longing, wanting to be with my lover as much as possible - to the best of my recollection, I was quite active in trying to seduce her, gain her affection. I was willing, and the only harm I took from the relationship came later, when my lover's parents pulled her out of school and put her into an institution because they discovered her same-sex desires.

This question of consent is particularly important for young people who are queer, because we may not always have age peers able to experiment in the ways we need to. Often we don't exactly know what we are or what we want, only that it is something different - and it may well be that the only people we can find who know what we want are older than we are, having gone through the stages of coming out to themselves that we are only just beginning. Regis' early experience with Lew may well read quite differently to such people, who have had to take different paths to owning their sexuality than most straight people do.

For my part, I read the narrative thread that deals with Regis' sexuality as a coming out story, with Regis and Danilo as a young gay men reaching an understanding and an acceptance of who they are and who they love. That's what made me love this book when I first read it, some 40 years ago, and that's still how it affects me.

Darkover Landfall (pub. 1972) is the series' origin story. In this novel, set 2,000 years before contact, a space ship carrying colonists to an established Terran colony is thrown light-years off course by some gravitational anomaly and crash-lands on an uncharted world. The survivors make attempts to repair the ship, but without the ability to recreate the technologies required, even the crew - most of whom are highly resistant to the idea of being planetbound - accept that their only hope is to build a viable colony.

The portrayal of gender roles in this novel is wildly contradictory. There are professional women among both the crew and the colonists, who perform their tasks with competence and autonomy. The society they come from has, at least technically, adopted gender equality - "Do I have to read you the Terran Bill of Rights? No law shall be made or formulated abridging the rights of any human being to equal work regardless of racial origin, religion or sex--" - although we also learn that female colonists are normally required to give up some of this equality for the good of the colony.

Women - at least women on settled planets and in space - appear to have a fair degree of reproductive freedom. Contraception is readily available - indeed, compulsory on shipboard, as FTL flight is apparently harmful to children. While abortion is at one point described as "unthinkable" due to the universal availability of contraception, when it is discovered early on that the standard contraceptives are not working, due to the effects of being on an alien planet, one of the doctors worries "... we've been relying on hormones so long that no one knows much about the prehistoric kind any more. We don't have pregnancy-testing equipment, either, since nobody needs it on a spaceship. Which means if we do get any pregnancies they may be too far advanced for safe abortions before they're even diagnosed!" Later, one of the women who finds herself pregnant feels comfortable in approaching one of the medical staff to request its termination,

However, the attitudes of the men whose viewpoints we are treated to are overwhelmingly chauvinist, to use a phrase that was in common usage when the book was written.

Rafe MacAran, one of several POV characters, on being informed that one of the necessary personnel to accompany him on an exploratory expedition into the nearby mountains is astrogator Camilla Del Ray, protests "May I ask what for?" MacAran said, slightly startled. "Not that she isn't welcome, though it might be a rough trek for a lady. This isn't Earth and those mountains haven't any chairlifts!" Later, after learning two more women will be on the expedition, he thinks "Hell of a way to start a trip! And here he'd been, despite the serious purpose of this mission, excited about actually having a chance to climb an unexplored mountain--only to discover that he had to drag along, not only a female crew member--who at least looked hardy and in good training-but Dr. Lovat, who might not be old but certainly wasn't as young and vigorous as he could have wished, and the delicate-looking Heather." Ironically, MacAran also thinks to himself that he's "no male chauvinist."

As tenuous a concept as gender equality seems to be in this version of the early Terran Empire, it disappears completely under the supposed necessities of establishing a viable colony. Once it is obvious that there will be no way to repair the ship, restrictions on reproductive freedom are imposed based on regulations regarding government-sponsored colonies. When Camilla Del Ray requests an abortion, she is told "Surely you know that in the Colonies abortions are performed only to save a life, or prevent the birth of a grossly defective child, and I'm not even sure we have facilities for that here. A high birth rate is absolutely imperative for at least the first three generations—you surely know that women volunteers aren't even accepted for Earth Expeditionary unless they're childbearing age and sign an agreement to have children?"

Camilla's horrified reaction to being told that she must bear an unwanted child is answered by a patronising set piece that enshrines as "scientific truth" the notion that all women really want babies more than anything else.

"Camilla," Ewen said very gently, "this is biological. Even back in the 20th century, they did experiments on rats and ghetto populations and things, and found that one of the first results of crucial social overcrowding was the failure of maternal behavior. It's a pathology. Man is a rationalizing animal, so sociologists called it "Women's Liberation" and things like that, but what it amounted to was a pathological reaction to overpopulation and overcrowding. Women who couldn't be allowed to have children, had to be given some other work, for the sake of their mental health. But it wears off. Women sign an agreement, when they go to the colonies, to have a minimum of two children; but most of them, once they're out of the crowding of Earth, recover their mental and emotional health, and the average Colony family is four children--which is about right, psychologically speaking. By the time the baby comes, you'll probably have normal hormones too, and make a good mother. If not, well, it will at least have your genes, and we'll give it to some sterile woman to bring up for you. Trust me, Camilla."

Bye, bye, any pretense at gender equality and reproductive autonomy. Of course, it does make sense that a high birth rate and as much genetic diversity as possible would be vital to an isolated community's viability - but can't it be framed in some other fashion than medical authorities and legislators making pronouncements specific to women about forced repeated pregnancies? Why not a general meeting where the issues are discussed and men and women voluntarily agree to contribute as fully as possible to the production of a genetically diverse base population?

Another aspect of sexuality that is a common theme in the Darkover novels is that of polyamory, whether it be the open sexuality of the Towers or the custom of legal concubinage that develops among the Comyn families. In Darkover Landfall, it is the influence of the hallucinogenic pollen from the kirseeth flower that causes several instances of sexual play between multiple partners. However, by the end of the novel, the need for a diverse gene pool means that people are beginning to form polyamorous families and women are bearing children by several men.

Over the course of the series, we see that there are several different views of homosexuality on Darkover. The largest source of homophobic sentiment appears to be found in the teachings of the Cristoforo religious sect. In Darkover Landing, we meet the originator of the Cristoforos, Father Valentine Neville, a Catholic priest of the Order of St. Christoper of Centaurus. In the novel, Father Valentine participates in group sex with six other men while under the influence of kirseeth, and in the fog of recovery, murders the other men because he can't face the enormity of his sin.

The events of Darkover Landfall set the stage for the kind of society that will develop over the next two thousand years on Darkover. The importance of children, the tendency toward polyamorous relationships, the sacrifice of female autonomy to the needs of community survival, the use of matrix jewels to enhance psi ability, relationships between human and non-human inhabitants of the planet - all these will be seen again throughout the series.

The Winds of Darkover (pub. 1970), which takes place a few years after Star of Danger, begins the tale of Sharra that will be continued much later in The Heritage of Hastur and Sharra's Exile. Though we never really learn exactly what Sharra is - goddess, half-sentient rogue matrix, metaphysical psi focus, or something even stranger - it is a powerful force that was once worshipped by the forge-folk (yet another of the many non-human peoples of Darkover) and it plays a large part in the resolution of the novel.

The book opens with two apparently unrelated events. First, Terran Dan Barron, the high-tech version of an air traffic controller, makes a serious error in which a major crash is narrowly avoided only by the skill of the pilots. Decertified from his former position, he is given a chance to redeem himself when the Lord of Armida asks for Terran assistance in setting up a warning system using telescopes to watch for fire and bandits. What Barron has not said - because he can't understand it himself - is that he has been having involuntary visions of places and thing he has no context for, including a chained woman wreathed in flames. As it happens, one of his guides to Armida is Lord Valdir's foster-son Lerrys, aka Larry Montray. Lerrys picks up on some of Barron's visions and is prompted to offer him a knife, thus firming a bond of brotherhood between them.

Meanwhile, in the high Hellers, the bandit leader Brynat Scarface has succeeded in his siege of the ancient castle of Storn, forcibly wedded the Lady of Storn, and seeks to solidify his position. The Lord of Storn, blind from birth and thus incapable of mounting a defence, is nonetheless a powerful telepath, and after warding himself against all physical harm, has entered a trance. He is able to communicate with his younger sister Marietta, urging her to escape and travel to Carthon. He is also able to enter Barron's mind, and plans to take over his body and meet Marietta in Carthon. In fact, it is his efforts to build the necessary link with Barron - who Storn views as a legitimate target for a psychic invasion that would be unthinkable if directed at any Darkovan - that have been causing Barron's visions.

Long story made short - Marietta escapes, Storn overshadows Barron, they meet in Carthon. Finding no help there, they head to Aldaran. While the Lord of Aldaran offers no help, they meet Desideria, a powerful telepath trained to act as a Keeper, who upon learning that there are still forge-folk who worship Sharra at Storn, offers to help them by focusing the energies of the worshippers through Sharra to fight Brynat and his men. On the way to Storn, Barron regains control but upon figuring out what is happening, agrees to help Marietta and Storn of his free will. They defeat Brynat, take back Storn, and it seems very likely that there will soon be a double wedding - Barron and Marietta, Desideria and Storn.

This story is essentially self-contained, with only a few links to other installments in the Darkover series. The presence of Larry Montray in the opening sequences - and the brief mention of Valdir's foster-daughter Cleindori - place the story on the timeline. And we will see a much older Desideria in The World Wreckers. The most important element is the introduction of Sharra.

From time to time in the Darkover series, we are told that the women of the Hellers are not as sheltered as women of the lowlands. Here we see Marietta as a strong woman, competent in riding, capable of travelling by herself between Storn and Carthon without suffering insult. While we could argue that Desideria's independence comes from her status as a telepath with the power and skill of a Keeper, Marietta's actions suggest that at least some women of higher class - especially those who are unmarried and take part in the management of their family's estates have certain freedoms to act, and the confidence and experience to do so when needed.