I am trying to read these in chronological order and it said this was next but Regis and Rafe Scott's ages are wrong. In the next book on the list Regis is 18. In this one he has five kids and Rafe Scott is an adult. In Heritage Rafe was only 12 and Regis 15. So Planet Savers has to come after Sharra's Exile. It was a simple story with a slight twist, a very quick read. It had Regis, Lerries Ridenow and Rafe Scott but the second two were barely mentioned throughout the story. Lerries might as well not have been a character at all he was so wasted and never spoke a word. The book was actually an anthology of two stories and the last one was a mini horror which had Sybil-Mhari as Rohanna's foster sister refused entry to tower by Hastur leroni (sounded like Leonie but Leonie was only 15 when Rohanna age 13 arrived at Arilinn tower. Only other mention of a Sybil-Mhari was that she was a slut but in this she used her sexuality and position to have men killed or tortured because she got off on fear and terror and sex.

Hmm.

The Planet Savers (pub. 1958, repub. 1962) was the very first of the Darkover novels written, but it is set relatively late in the post-recontact sequence. It introduces many of the standard elements of Darkovan life - from the presence of non-human sentient life (in this case, the trailmen) to the legendary status of the Hasturs (in the person of the young Regis Hastur). There's a "free Amazon," Kyra, Jason Allison, a Terran raised on Darkover among the trailmen (especially in the books written early on, MZB often includes one or more of these transcultural people - Darkovan-born Terrans, Darkovans raised partly on Earth), Rafe Scott (a name we will hear again) and assorted other characters, both Terran and Darkovan.

What brings them together is a threatened outbreak of the 48-year fever (something MZB seems to have dropped later on) - a disease common and relatively minor among trailmen, which breaks out into the human population every 48 years, decimating them. As we are told in the largely expository first chapter, “We Terrans have a Trade compact on Darkover for a hundred and fifty-two years. The first outbreak of this 48-year fever killed all but a dozen men out of three hundred. The Darkovans were worse off than we were. The last outbreak wasn't as bad, but it was bad enough, I've heard. It had an eighty-seven percent mortality— for humans, that is. I understand the Trailmen don't die of it.”

In an attempt to stave off the next outbreak, due in five months, the Hasturs have asked the Terrans for help in finding a cure for the fever, on return for training Terran telepaths in their matrix sciences. Together, the Terrans and Darkovans have decided to mount an expedition into the territory of the trailmen, hoping to persuade them to provide blood samples that will help the Terrans synthesise a vaccine.

Unfortunately, the best person on paper to lead the expedition - Dr. Jason (Jay) Allison, displays all the signs of being a latent multiple personality. As a child, Jason was lost in the Hellers when the plane he and his father were in crashed. His father died but he was taken in by trailmen and raised among them until he was 15, when they brought him out of the Hellers to return to his own kind. Jason worked as a mountain guide for some years, then began to study medicine. At some point, the open, gregarious, risk-taking Jason began to metamorphise into Jay, a rigid, logical, scientist who no longer remembered his life among the trailmen. Persuaded that, as the only human known to have lived among the trailmen, and the only human to have survived the fever, his repressed memories are vital to the mission, Jay agrees to undergo treatment to bring out his younger self so Jason can lead the expedition.

There are difficulties of course - the Hellers are hard to traverse, they are attacked by a band of female trailmen living outside of the Nests, and there is reluctance on the part of the leader of the Nest Jason was raised in to allow volunteers among his people to risk their lives in the lowlands for the sake of humans. But Jason and Regis together persuade him, and everything ends well - for Regis, as a telepath, has figured out Jason's secret, that he is a repressed fragment of Jay Allison's personality, and he has the skill to integrate the two fragments into one person in balance.

i don't know how many readers are "left" for this book - it & its author have not aged easily for anyone it seems - I "read" the audio book edition which may have made the dual personalities of the protagonist feel awfully contrived to support the rest ? Perhaps a story like this that hinges on notions of difference may need more than one voice actor to do its characters justice ?

A well-written story. A nice intro to Zimmer Bradley.

This was a very good book about the life of two very different men and an important mission.

Trying to catch up on having somehow missed most of MZB's books growing up. I liked this one, although I was a little miffed at Jason's views about Kyla. Given what a reputation MZB has for feminist writing, I was a bit surprized at them. I did appreciate that MZB offered us a bit of a window into Kyla's experience by showing her doing twice the work of the men and being very adept at her job, even while Jason griped about her actions far more than he ever did for any of the men in the group and only ever referred to her as "girl." (Massive eyerolls abounded).

As a biologist, I also had to wince at the descriptions of humans as "the most evolved and complex form" and the descriptions of evolution, in general. But authors can't be experts in everything, and this book was published in 1958, so I suppose I should make allowances for inaccuracies and appreciate how ahead of its time this book was, with regards to female characters even for all of its flaws.

Either way, I'm excited to learn more about Darkover as I read more of these books.