A new (to me) Darkover novel about the divide between the rulers of the Hundred Kingdoms as to the cost of laran weapons vs. traditional military weapons. Coryn is selected to work in a tower due to his laran abilities but it's a long-term plan by Damien Deslucido to become king of all the kingdoms, displace Hastur rule, and aided by his nedestro brother Rumail.
There are a lot of moral questions that mirror the use of nuclear and biological questions in our own world. Damien has no restraints to using bonewater, clingfire, or lungrot as well as his armies to conquer surrounding territories. He also has the ability to deceive truthspell which is used to determine the truth of a person's words. It is an ability unique to his family, bred by laran, but inconceivable to the other Comyn.
This book is more philosophical than some of the others, but it raises important questions. There are also glimpses of future events on Darkover. I'm rereading these in chronological order, not in publication order as I did before, but I remember some of what is coming from those previous reads. Anyway, it's a good read in an enthralling world. ( )

A late written collaborative story to fill in timeline. I thought I would see recurring characters, especially since there was an Edric and two redheaded Rockraven twins which was confusing but with a different king and notes that it is 100 years after Allart. The book was long and very detailed and quite good. ( )

It was good, but 2 things nagged at me about it.

1. A big deal seemed to made about how Taniquel had been told her tele-powers weren't worth training, and that she had been told that with the intent of marrying her off, like there was some kind of sexism there. Basically that the woman that test her for laran lied.

While Darkover clearly has a very sexist culture, it's always been made clear that even girls who are destined for an arranged marriage (i.e not worth keeping at a tower forever, or being keeper) could be trained and work there for years before leaving, and usually were. In fact, even keepers sometimes left to marry.

So why lie? There's no motivation.

Even worse, the woman that had tested her and apparently lied to her, was shown throughout the whole book to be intelligent, kind, and trustworthy. So, there better be some kind of betrayal or something in book 2 or I'm going to be mad.


2. Belisar being killed. What the fuck? seriously. Um, I kind of read with the intention of good triumphing over evil. If I wanted to read something cynical and crapsackworld I've got authors/series for that. Sure, Belisar was on the bad guys team, but he was young, and just following his dad's orders. It'd be treasonous to do otherwise.

HE WAS KILLED FOR THE FUCKING GENE HE CARRIED? WTF WTF WTF.
and it was all useless anyway cause Rumail lived.

Plus, all the Comyn are srsly inbred. It's probably floating around in some other people too. ( )

So I re-read The Forbidden Tower a few weeks ago and thought, this is great, maybe I should read more Darkover. With hindsight, that may have been a mistake. The Forbidden Tower is the best Darkover book by a fair margin. The Fall of Neskaya, on the other hand - well, let's just say that I'd read it before I couldn't remember a thing, and that was probably a blessing.

The writing is bad - not in the typical Marion Zimmer Bradley "struggling with the grammar of the English language" sort of way, more in a "This sounds like it was written by a 14-year-old girl sort of way. I couldn't bring myself to actually care for any of the characters (with the possible exception of Marguerida when she went off to join the Sisterhood of the Sword). The description of use of nuclear weapons was quite good (though doesn't come anywhere near Charlie Stross's take on this theme in Merchant Princes 5 and 6). Beyond that, the book has no redeeming features, and it's no surprise it took me a month to read. Towards the end I was skipping whole pages.

Difficult decision ahead: do I go on to read books 2 and 3 of the Clingfire Trilogy or do I just drop it? ( )

Hmm. OK, still reasonably amusing. I did not buy the bit at the beginning where Ross wrote about how MZB had told her the story of what was to happen in these books, and I doubt anyone else will. It was quite unnecessary, and rather patronizing: she's dead! Of course she didn't write the damn book! ( )