It was a very strange feeling, slipping into a book that I've read so many times in the past, especially since I don't really re-read books these days.
It's been seven years since the last time I "set foot" on Darkover, and even longer (I guess... almost twenty years?) since the time this books were my absolute everything, the other universe in which I spent so much time and that shaped my way of thinking about so many things (I was barely a teenager, everything I chose to read at the time ended up being quite formative, one way or another).
Really, this is a perfect YA book even though it's really not meant to be a YA book: both Regis and Lew are teenagers (or at least very teenager-y in their way of thinking and acting), every emotion is OH SO INTENSE and OH SO RAPIDLY MUTABLE, the struggles they face are very much relating to identity and one's position in the world. Really, I don't blame my teenage self for liking them so much (though I had to wonder if they really were the right books for me at the time - if the fact that I liked them so much meant that I found a mirror in the pages, or if it's what I read at the time that informed my view of the world).
This is not a bad book. It is also not a great book. The writing is repetitive and verbose, the characters are shallow beneath a facade of highly introspective depth, EVERYTHING HAPPENS IN SUCH LITTLE TIME THAT IS CLEARLY UNBELIEVABLE.
And yet, I was in a certain mood this day, a teenager-y mood maybe, and coming back to this felt like being back with your old friends, and sated a certain need for angst that had been weeling inside me. The adult I am now wish there was a little more subtlety there, but I guess you can't have everything.

(also, IS MASTURBATION NOT A THING ON DARKOVER? I mean, when they were working on Sharra and Lew ended up having RAPE DREAMS because of all the pentup sexual energy that he COULDN'T POSSIBLY EASE because Thyra wasn't tower trained... what about a little self love man? Come on!)

Simplement brutal!! La millor mostra, de lluny, de la sèrie Darkover i de l'habilitat de Zimmer Bradley. Per alguna cosa és l'autora que el va fer gaudir de la ciència ficció

Boring.

I picked this one up as it was acclaimed to be one of Bradley's best Darkover novels. The book flip-flops between two perspectives, that of Regis Hastur and Lew Alton. It's a little jarring because Hastur's is written in the third person while Alton's is written in the first. No matter, because the book was incredibly boring. I almost DNF'd it, but pushed through to see if it would get better. It didn't.

The book isn't terribly written, it just doesn't have a lot to it. There's a plot, there are some twists, there is a peak and denouement, but none of them captured or engaged me.

Two story lines combining into one very well-written novel: the coming-of-age story of Regis Hastur and his relationship with Danilo Syrtis (important characters from many of her books); and the tragic one of Lew Alton and the Sharra matrix. Not for the faint of heart, that one. Overall, it's about political power caught up in one ruling caste, pitted against a powerful Empire (ours, of course), and the people that affects. Throw in one mysteriously twisted character who wants the power by any means necessary, and you've got fire.
It's still not my favorite of hers, but I forgot that it was this good.

5 star - Perfect
4 star - i would recommend
3 star - good
2 star - struggled to complete
1 star - could not finish

in omnibus format

Another good book in the series. Crammed full of tension and detail. Some familiar characters liked and disliked. I have been reading this series since the first of January and the pile doesn't seem to have gotten any smaller which is very happy making when each book is finished with the feeling..."I want more".