Sharra's Exile and The Planet Savers, by Marion Zimmer Bradley

[rachelmanija]

The Planet Savers is hardly long enough to be considered a novella these days, but was MZB's first published work on Darkover. Every forty-eight years, a massive plague hits Darkover and kills eighty percent of the population. I know, I know, that makes no sense that they could have any sort of civilization under those circumstances, so I will assume that MZB was unclear about how bad it was and meant that it had eighty percent mortality but most people had a natural immunity and never got it. Or something. Sensibly, she forgets all about the plague in every subsequent book. Anyway, the reclusive non-human Darkover native trailmen get a mild version as children, so someone needs to get their cooperation so the Terrans can devise a cure.

An uptight doctor is the only person anywhere who speaks the language of the trailmen, having been raised by them when his father's plane crashed into their jungle city, but he now hates them and won't cooperate. So a psychiatrist gives him multiple personality disorder in order to produce a version of him who loves the trailmen and is dying to help out. Also featuring a Free Amazon and the first appearance of Regis Hastur. Fun but very much a first try.

Sharra's Exile is also a first try of sorts, being a totally rewritten version of The Sword of Aldones, which MZB wrote when she was fifteen and which I haven't read. Yet. It's a sequel to The Heritage of Hastur, and, as coffeeandink points out, does not have enough of the sweet true love of Regis and Danilo. It has other problems too, such as an unwieldy melding of plausible political maneuvering and purple pulpisms. One moment everyone's squabbling over the Alton inheritance, the next moment Gods are running around and people are randomly dropping dead.

Anyway, tortured, one-handed Lew Alton is back, mentally bound to the evil Sharra matrix and enmeshed in a telepathic relationship with his father that's even more fucked-up than it was before he lost his hand, if that's possible. At one point he has incestuous fantasies about his father. Eeeew! Lew/Kennard, now there's a pairing that will never be popular. Anyway, Lew's wife (yes, he sort of randomly obtains a Darkovan wife while offplanet) gives birth to a dead mutant monster baby because Sharra ruined Lew's sperm, then runs off, then Kennard charges Lew with the Alton estate and drops dead, so Lew goes back to Darkover and finds that he'd been drugged and raped while under the influence of Sharra and so had a baby golden-eyed girl with laran by a half-chieri woman (apparently the sperm problem happened later), and meanwhile he's half in love with a Keeper, and...

This is a book with lots of "ands"...

...Aaaaand the only thing that will stop Sharra is the Sword of Aldones in the Dungeon of Dread Tower of Hali, which is warded so carefully that the only way to get it is to teleport in the Terran duplicate (this is so dumb I'm having trouble explaining it, but everything in the world has a duplicate but a matrix, and Lew just happened to meet a nurse offplanet who is the duplicate of someone he knows on Darkover) so they teleport her in, and more stuff happens.

I once more must echo coffeeandink in the view that the best part of the book was Regis getting put in charge of the entire planet.

Comments

[janni.livejournal.com]

Sword of Aldones is ... well, I keep it on my mental bookshelf beside Alanna: The First Adventure to remind me just how awful a writer's work can start out, and how wonderful it can later become anyway. (Only Sword starts of far more awful than Alanna, which is at least coherent.)

I think Cherilly's Law ("Only a starstone is unique; everything else has one and only one exact duplicate ...") is silly (because why is this happening on the level of people and water fountains, but not of either atoms and molecules or buildings and cities). But I can't hate it too much, because my first sale ever was called "Cherilly's Law"--it sold to the very last Friends of Darkover anthology, and dealt with what would happen if Cherilly's doubles turned out to not only be "more alike than twins," but to be actual twins.

So I'm kinda fond of Cherilly's Law, even if it does make no sense. :-)

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Alanna also gets better as it goes along; I mean the first book, though the entire series gets much better as it goes along. It's really only the first third or so that's utterly dire.

[yhlee.livejournal.com]

For your comfort and safety, Cherilly's Law should be FLAMETHROWERED FROM LEO WITH LASERS OF DOOM disregarded/handwaved.

I *heart* Lew. :-)

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

I hate Cherilly's Law because (a) it makes no sense and (b) it enables the premise of the ABSOLUTELY AWFUL HORRIBLE DISGUSTING Two to Conquer, which I would advise you to skip except that I kind of want to see you take it to pieces.

[larryhammer]

Oo -- double feature: Two to Conquer and Dexta.

*cackles*

---L.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

What the heck is Dexta?

[larryhammer]

This.

---L.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Oh, God, is that the rape book? I vaguely remember reading the first chapter in high school, then hurling it across the room.