Careful reading of The Forbidden Tower places the start of this book right in the middle of the former. The end is well after the characters from The Forbidden Tower have returned home to Armida. Overlap doesn't really begin until toward the end.Jaelle has more excuse than Margali for being ethnocentric. True, she has been involved in several different societies on Darkover--but, after all, the diversity of Darkovan societies is based on a very small, ethnically uniform founder group. Interbreeding with nonhumans (especially chieri), and adaptations to telepathy and a harsh environment (actually several) have induced variations in language, household structure, etc. But even having lived in several different Darkovan cultures wouldn't really prepare Jaelle to adapt to what must be a VERY varied palette of cultures in the Terran Empire. Her failure to accept the normative Terran solution of an official overculture superimposed on local variations is perhaps understandable--but not less a failure for all that.Margali's more open and painful adjustment is, in a way, one she was better prepared for by her upbringing. Not only was she brought up in a Darkovan milieu, her Empire training was specifically designed to help her through such transitions. Nevertheless, she has not much less trouble with it than a native Darkovan and a Terran put together. If she manages to make it through, and with a better integrated persona at the end, it's a tribute to her honesty, strength, and flexibility. Though her family makes only cameo appearances in her biography, there's quite a bit of evidence that they gave her a good start, and she made the most of it. Of course, it doesn't help either of them that they're in delayed threshold sickness, and neither of them really grew up in a telepathic culture.The feminist elements naturally take the foreground here, but the clashes between Darkovan and Empire values are perhaps best illustrated by the failure of the Terran bureaucrats to understand the significance of Jaelle taking PERSONAL responsibility in a matter which the Terrans would consider one of professional responsibility only. Unless or until THAT issue is cleared up, there are bound to continue to be misunderstandings (and even clashes).Some afterthoughts: It may be more of a reflection of the time the book was written that the culture of the Terran Empire is represented as being so implacably homophobic. The Terrans who go 'over the wall' are not particularly more likely to escape cultural misunderstandings in homosexual than in heterosexual relationships, especially if what they're looking for is not an affair, but a long-term relationship. On a linguistic note, it's odd that the Darkovans have no word for 'technology' It looks to me as if they're making an invalid distinction here, which can perhaps be traced back to the original settlers. Of COURSE the Darkovans have technology, and not only in the 'matrix sciences'. They have felting mills, windmills, cheesemaking...all 'technology', though there's a current tendency to set aside certain highly mechanized technologies and describe them as 'technology' preeminently.In preparing for the housing of Darkovan employees, one of the reforms the Terrans might want to consider is eliminating 'Married Personnel Housing'. This is discriminatory. People should live with the same degree of privacy and community when they're married as when they're unmarried. One of the main sources of stress in Jaelle and Peter's marriage is that they're expected to share quarters during ALL their off-duty time. It's not only 'single' people who need 'room(s) of [their] own'. Compare, for example, in Sayers' Busman's Honeymoon, in which even a honeymooning couple are given their own bedrooms. Granted, it's a large house, but still... If you don't even have your own closet space, NATURALLY you're going to get on each other's nerves, even without conflicts in cultural expectations.The 'deprogramming' that's done in the Guild house shouldn't be necessary. Why are people 'programmed' in the FIRST place? Bradley often bucked and reared about people being broken to harness, but she seems to have accepted without protest the idea that ANYBODY just tamely accepts the harness, and is never chafed by it. It may be possible for some people to live their lives on autopilot. I couldn't say personally, because I'VE never been able to. But I suspect that very few people actually accept the idea of senseless customs. If they don't get answers when they first ask "Why?", most people may just stop asking...but I doubt it.I didn't actually delineate yet that this volume is divided into three 'books': I CONFLICTING OATHS; II SUNDERING; and III OUTGROWTH. When books are thus subdivided, there's a question the writer has to resolve: should chapter #s restart in each 'book', or should there be a continuous chapter numbering throughout? In this case, the practice of restarting with 'Chapter I' in each 'book' is followed. It would help, by the way, if there was a simple notation (a Table of Contents, maybe?) showing on what page the second and third 'books' begin.In terms of timing, this book begins right after the end of The Shattered Chain. Lorill Hastur is still the Regent. His son Danvan Hastur, (who is preeminent in many later books), is still a very young man...scarcely more than a child.The Shattered Chain ends with an attempt by the Renunciates to establish a way to negotiate labor and other collaboration with the Terrans. The women who were involved with this were far more than just the exchanged fosterlings Jaelle and Margali. It was also not just Thendara House. Although the misplaced Russ Montray is probably the worst possible representative of the Terran Empire (Jaelle wonders why the advanced civilization of the Terrans would send such an incompetent to Darkover--but she doesn't really catch the insulting implication that it's because, though the Darkovans care very much about the Terrans, the Terrans really don't care much about Darkover), his staff are often rather better representatives of the Empire as a whole. This volume introduces people like the head of Intelligence Cholayna Ares, the Wade Montray whose descendants will have such an impact on later history, and the Imperial Representative Allessandro Li, who isn't taken seriously because he doesn't take Darkover seriously: but perhaps should be taken more seriously than he is, because his decisions will have grave impacts on Darkover.This story also provides an opportunity to see people we already know from the inside as they would appear to strangers. Dom Ann'dra Carr is puzzling to Margali, at least partly because she hadn't been told about the loss of the Mapping And Exploration aircraft which carried Andrew Carr, along with others who died (Mattingly is commonly cited, but there were others). Margali has few interactions with Comyn (except Jaelle, of course), until the end of the book. But she does meet some of them, on the fire lines--which Jaelle did not get to, because she was pregnant at the time. This volume also includes more development of characters from other books. Domna Rohana, it's revealed, is a major patron (matron? sponsor, anyway) of Thendara House (she supplied the thermal baths, it's said). During the course of this book, the long-frail Gabriel of Ardais dies, and the incredibly long-lived Kyril Ardais (who was about 25 at the time) becomes Warden of Ardais, despite Rohana's attempts to get him to accept a regency. Turns out Ardais would have been much better off if Kyril HAD realized his own incompetence. Later accounts describe his behavior as not only scandalous (he's considered dissolute and at least a potential rapist--which seems likely, given his behavior toward Jaelle), but also so unstable that he's later confined under house arrest, while his son takes over as Regent. Dyan Ardais himself is hardly a model of stability. About all that can be said for him is that he wasn't as bad as his father. This sort of thing always makes me wonder what ABOUT the women? Kyril's daughters are almost all fostered away. His son is sent to Nevarsin at least partly (it's implied) so that Dyan will not be raped by his own father. But what happened to Kyril's wife? How was she protected from Kyril's abuses?And for that matter, it's not really clear what happens to Domna Rohana. It's implied that she goes back to Aillard: but not to contend for leadership of that Domain, apparently. She does try to get the determinedly apolitical Jaelle to contend for leadership of Aillard--with, it seems, effectively no success. In later books, Rohana is even more sidelined. She's mentioned in the past tense mostly, even when it seems likely that she's still alive. I would have liked to have seen at least one main volume that told her own story. How DID she relate to Cleindori, for example? Cleindori was fostered at Alton (because of who her father was, it's argued). But, being nedestro, she's a likely candidate to sit in Council for Aillard, since her mother was a nedestro of Aillard. Was it never even mooted to her?One thing I've noted in all these books: when people have hallucinations, especially under the influence of kireseth, those hallucinations tend to be both clairvoyant and precognitive. The people experiencing the hallucinations seem rarely to stop and try to analyze them afterward: but someone familiar with the series can often figure out what the hallucinations indicate. Some of the images in this story clearly have to do with Cleindori's fate, for example. In many ways what happened to Cleindori is ironically clearer in the hallucinations than in any of the published volumes from after Cleindori's death.Valdir Alton is still a boy at this period: even after the formation of the Forbidden Tower, there was a period of about six years before Valdir took over. This volume lasts about six (Darkovan) months. Valdir would probably have been about 12 or 13 by the time the book ends.
As a continuation of the story of Margali/Magda, Jaelle, and a good look at both the life of a Renunciate on Darkover and at how the Terran influence is coloring the planet, it's excellent. However, the scenes with Jaelle living in the Terran enclave with Peter have...not aged well. It's laughable (at least to me) that the Terran spaceforce hundreds and hundreds of years in the future would still be obdurate enough to refer to all married women as "Mrs. Husband's First Name Husband's Last Name", and that Peter (who has very nearly as much experience on Darkover as Magda, and did manage to pass for a native for a while in the previous book) should revert to a condescending, jealous male chauvinist once he's married to Jaelle and back in the enclave. It's a dated perspective, and while I respect that MZB was writing feminist fantasy in her day and age, it's anachronistic now. And that's saying something, for a sci-fi novel!
What do You think about Thendara House (1983)?
Of all the Darkover novels I've read so far, I absolutely did not like this one. Marion Zimmer Bradley goes on and on about the same issues with the two characters Jaelle and Magdalen Lorne. Even the repetition of the routine at the Terran HQ was too much for me. I believe half of this novel can be edited out. She really had trouble with moving on with the story telling. I was interested in it when they actually left the guild house in search of Aleki, and the leronis from the Forbidden Tower. At one point, I considered to not finish the novel and just move on to the next book in the saga.
—Jimmy
Good overall, but there are so many characters I want to slap in this book. First, and constantly, Peter. Because he's a big asshole the entire time. Even when he's being nice, it's only because he's doing it to try and get his way. He's constantly manipulating Jaelle and vying for power and position. And when (view spoiler)[Jaelle struck him down and thought she killed him (hide spoiler)]
—Jordan
[These notes were made in 1984:]. The Mists of Avalon had a definite feminist bent. This has gone further into the realms of radical feminism, and depicts a society (the Free Amazons) where lesbianism is the norm, at the same time as it shows the break-up of a heterosexual marriage. Like Shirley, this is a double-heroine book, with two different personality types learning to cope with adverse situations. Magda and Jaelle, however, also have to learn to cope with each other's cultures (Magda is Terran, Jaelle Darkovan), and that for me is the most interesting side of the novel. Heaven protect us from the kind of Terran society that Bradley predicts: over-technologized, over-bureaucratized. The system comes off far worse in this book than in Star of Danger, (which is one generation further on, I think). In any case, the climax takes place (as usual) out in wild Darkovan country, Magda and Jaelle being rescued by telepaths from the Forbidden Tower. Full of imagination as it is, the polemics of this book put me off a bit in a way that hasn't happened with Bradley's other works.
—Surreysmum
