Darkover

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Leonie Hastur has a high degree of laran, the telepathic power of the Comyn caste, and wants to be Keeper of Arilinn Tower, which will give her as much power as her twin brother Lorill, Heir to Hastur. But she has a premonition that something strange and disturbing will come from the sky and change their world forever. She is correct. Ysaye Barnett loves life on shipboard and would happily stay right there, with her beloved computers, forever.

Callista leaves the Keepers to marry Andrew Carr, and her twin sister, Ellemir, marries Damon Ridenow, creating a shared four-way bond. But the Keepers have tampered with Callista’s channels, and the foursome must navigate a tangled web of love, time travel, and prophetic dreams to challenge all the old traditions as they fight for a future of their choosing.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.