This edition has the same cover picture as the copy I have: but I'm still not sure it's the edition I have. The copy I have may be a first edition.The dedication is important, as with many books written in collegial genres: "For DIANA PAXSON, who asked the question which directly touched off this book; and for THEODORE STURGEON, who first explored the questions which, directly or indirectly, underlie almost everything I have written."Rereading the entire series in anything like (internal) chronological order, as I've pointed out, poses some serious problems. Part of The Shattered Chain takes place before even the events of The Spell Sword, and part of it takes place after (or at the same time as) events in this book.Dating is established by often slightingly-mentioned details. You get a better idea of what life at Armida was life in this period than in any other books in the series, and you often see bits of things that appear in other books in more detail. Thus, the very influential Valdir Alton appears in this book as a solemn 10 year old, fresh from Nevarsin, with his paxman Valentine Aillard (who himself made his debut in The Shattered Chain as the infant brother of the then teenage Jaelle).There's an odd mixture of people who are in later (according to internal chronology) books and those who are not. Valentine Aillard is mentioned in several books, and then he seems to just disappear. He wouldn't have been very prominent figure on his own (male Aillards don't get a seat in Council unless their sisters and female cousins aren't available for some reason, even if they're pure Comyn--and Valentine's father was a Dry-Towner, Jalak of Shainsa). But he does appear as a party to a funeral in this book, participating in the charming ritual wherein each mourner recalls a consoling memory of the recently deceased, with the refrain of 'let this memory lighten the grief'. I personally would have liked to know more about what became of him after that.This volume focuses mostly on the origins of the Forbidden Tower, and why it was created. The question which Diana Paxson asked was likely one of the central questions in the book, namely, how can a person who has been successfully conditioned against all human (and especially sexual) response be deconditioned? Complicated, in this case, by the fact that the Keeper who is trying to lay down her vows is an Alton, who may not be able to prevent her reflexes from killing herself and others. It's made clear in this book that the usual way the conditioning becomes unraveled is that the conditioning didn't take properly in the first place--that the child or young adult was unable to bear the burden of the training, and failed to get completely conditioned. This is NOT what happened to Callista Lanart-Alton. In her case, the conditioning was successful--but it broke down during the period of isolation and loneliness in The Spell Sword. It then slowly reasserted itself after the imprisonment ended. There's an odd coyness about what was done to Callista to ensure that her conditioning was successful. It seems to have involved hormonal alterations which prevented Callista from completely maturing sexually. But it's clearly not ONLY that. Some things did mature, and others did not: so that the adult Callista, though thin, has developed a full set of breasts: but has never passed menarche, and has never developed her menstrual cycles. But there are other issues. One is the heirship of the Alton Domain. The then-current Lord Alton was Dom Esteban. He and his wife had five children: Coryn, who died in childhood, the twins Callista and Ellemir, Domenic, and the 'baby' Valdir. There were also at least three other (nedestro) children. There may have been more--nedestro sons often get acknowledged, nedestro daughters less so (except among the Aillard and, presumably, the Elhalyns). If Coryn hadn't died, he would clearly have been the heir. But with him dead, the matter is up in the air--especially in matters like who should become Captain of the Guard. Esteban is disabled, and Domenic, though widely liked, is considered by most too young to be his father's lieutenant. The sisters are out of the reckoning by custom--but there are persistent mumbles about Lady Bruna Leynier. There's another major issue in this book, however. Since the Ages of Chaos, the training and use of telepaths on Darkover has been confined to the Towers. Damon Ridenow, who was (quite fraudulently, as it turns out) driven out from the Towers, begins to wonder whether the practices are in ANYBODY'S best interests. Varzil The Good plays the part of deus ex machina, for reasons that amount to a condemnation of the lousy archives on Darkover. And there's another loose end here. Varzil leaves an open invitation to Damon to come back for a more comprehensive meeting when Damon has become the potentially successful Keeper he has the power to become. So did he? Still waiting for an update...People in later books seem to have completely forgotten the Forbidden Tower. They find themselves having to rediscover what was discovered in this period. This is more bitter revenge on the part of the 'traditional' Towers than even they seem to have contemplated. One would like to hope that the archives of the Forbidden Tower are still there somewhere, and can be recovered...
I'm a fan of Marion Zimmer Bradley, but my affection for her rests not on the Avalon books, which I didn't care for, but her Darkover series. Darkover is a "lost colony" of Earth that falls back into a medieval society. Ruled by a psychically gifted aristocracy, after centuries it's rediscovered by a star-spanning high-tech human federation, giving the series a feel of both science fiction and fantasy. Most books in the series examine this culture clash and this book is no exception. This is a sequel to The Spell Sword, which focused on a Terran, Andrew Carr, who at the end of that book married Callista, a member of the Comyn aristocracy. The Darkover series as a whole features strong female characters, but it has enough swashbuckling adventure to draw the male of the species, and indeed this series was recommended to me by a guy (when we were in high school!)Although some books are loosely connected, having characters in common, they were written to be read independently and were written out of sequence. This makes it difficult without a guide to know what story to start with. The Spell Sword should probably be read before this book, but that short novel was written just as MZB was coming into her own as a writer, and The Forbidden Tower, which received a Hugo nomination for best novel, is a much stronger and complex book. Andrew, Callista, Ellemir, and especially Damon, are my favorite characters in the entire series. This also is the most credible book involving polyamory I've read in science fiction, dealing with many of the problems I'd see in such a relationship fairly realistically--more so to my mind than say, Robert Heinlein who also explored the subject. And this is one of the few books in the Darkover series, along with The Shattered Chain and Stormqueen!, where I can still really recall specific scenes and conversations in the book to mind even decades after my read. So this stands as one of the best books in the series.
What do You think about The Forbidden Tower (1994)?
One of the brilliant aspects of good fantasy is how it takes real world issues and re-examines them in a different milieu The Forbidden Tower examines themes of duty, desire, masculine and feminine, tradition versus modernity, the past versus the future, family ties, what it means to be from a different culture plunked into one completely alien, and of course sexuality. Oh and the use/abuse of psychic talents.With such themes, a writer could be easily bogged down and the characters suffer. The late Marion Zimmer Bradley was a genius when it came to blending such disparate elements, and in The Forbidden Tower her brilliance truly shines. This isn't an easy read, but it was a book that was easy to get lost in. And much like my beloved Pern, Darkover is a fully-actualized world that could actually exist somewhere.Damon, Callista, Ellemir and Andrew felt like real people with real issues. They were perfectly imperfect, making mistakes and learning from them. There were no bad guys as such, for even the one morally questionable character, had a compelling reason for his behaviour.Funny, how most newer books still lack that sense of timelessness a lot of older books still retain. The Forbidden Tower could've been written now. It feels just that fresh. Granted, the one huge minus is the lack of diversity, which while I'm willing to forgive in this instance, would be absolutely INEXCUSABLE now. On the other hand, there is Cholayna Ayres in later Darkover novels. That's sadly better than still too many books these days.
—TheFountainPenDiva
The second in this little series of Darkover books (following The Spell Sword), my cover has a gloriously inappropriate picture of a naked woman. In the snow.This series is interesting for the way it links to the Renunciates mini-series (Shattered Chain and Thendara House), and for the way it mirrors the Renunciates' exploration of femininity in its discussion of masculinity. The Forbidden Tower is less an adventure than Spell Sword, written later, and spending more time with the interior lives of the characters.I find these Darkover books written later tend to be a bit looser than they should be, and could do with a bit of an edit. But I really like this little series for the way it mirrors MZB's own discussion of marriage, relationships and sexuality. NB it has sexy bits.
—dogpossum
This was, to me, the most disappointing of the Darkover novels I have read. I may be being unfair; many of the other novels refer to the events in The Forbidden Tower, so much so that they assume the quality of myth in the Darkover canon. The characters are quite prominent in other novels as well—all of this may have combined to make my expectations higher than they should be.The novel tells the story of four friends, Damon, Andrew Carr (a Terran), and twin sisters Elli and Calista. They begin the novel on their way home—Andrew and Damon have rescued Calista from the Catmen, who abducted her (these are the events of another novel which I have not read). Calista and Damon both have been in a Tower, which the Darkover series reader will recognized and an institute where some Darkoverans go to refine and control their telepathic skills. Those in charge are, in the time, women and virgins, the belief being that only virgins are strong enough handle the stresses placed upon their bodies by the psychic stress of working in the Tower.The excitement and the drama of the other Darkover tales aren’t there; with the exception of a psychic battle won at the very end by Damon and Calista, there is very little going on beyond Calista trying to recover from what has been done to her in the Tower. The four friends begin doing psychic work to help people basically in their own home; this is “Forbidden,” and, although they do not build a physical Tower, their mental energies are so strong that they build a “Tower” in the “Overworld.” If this sounds cheesy, it is—and bear in mind that I am a HUGE Bradley fan. This is simply Bradley at her worst. The plot is not as engaging as ANY of her other novels, there are a number of non-sequetirs and other things that don’t make sense in terms of the world Bradley has created with other novels, and the entire reason for the “climactic” battle at the end rests on a plot inconsistency. Supposedly Damon killed a traitorous relative named Dezi with his psychic power; Damon did not. Dezi used his psychic power to “teleport” away (something no other character has ever done on their own in any other Darkover novel, another way in which this novel is inconsistent with the other twenty something books in the series) but Dezi materialized in something solid, killing himself instantly. The people who accuse Damon claim to “know” he is guilty of murder because the “monitor” the telepathic world, but they don’t “monitor it” well enough to know that Dezi essentially killed himself. Worse, Damon doesn’t even defend himself or claim innocence, which he is—instead, he places himself and the rest of his friends, including his pregnant wife, in mortal danger, to fight this psychic battle with his accusers.To be honest, it’s as if Bradly wrote part of the novel, put it in the drawer for a while, came back to it and finished it without rereading the part she’d previously written. The book is that sloppy.I really, really wanted to like this book. I do realize that it’s a relatively early book from a time when Bradley was still learning her craft, but many other, better the Darkover novels were written prior to Forbidden Tower and she was only a few years away from writing her masterpiece, Thendara House.Maybe it’s unfair because, prior to this, I read Exhile’s Son, her last book, which was top flight. Certainly, this book doesn’t stack up next to the best of Bradley—it is by far the least successful of the Darkover Saga. I would recommend it to no one except those determined to read every novel in the cycle (as I am; I’m, I think, five away; I’m up over 20, anyway). Skipping this wouldn’t even cause you to miss any key information about the history of Darkover, as the key events are summed up much more interestingly in other novels (which may be another source of my disappointment, because the recaps make the tale seem more engaging than it is). I'm stunned to see that this novel was nominated for a Hugo. Either '77 was a thin year for Fantasy or this was a "F**k Up" award, Bradley being nominated for an award she should have received from a prior novel, much as the National Book Award Toni Morrison should have won in '77 for Son of Solomon wasn't awarded until 1988 and was give to Beloved instead. Another example would be Paul Newman getting an Academy Award for Color of Money, a clearly inferior movie, because he should have won a number of other times, and the award for that film clearly wasn't for that film but for a corpus or a career. Again, I'm stunned that Bradley's worse novel was so honored.
—Chuck
