The Planet Savers, The Sword of Aldones (original 1962; edition 1984)

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 into a medieval society. Ruled by a psychic aristocracy it is later rediscovered by a star-spanning high-tech human federation after centuries, giving the series a feel of both science fiction and fantasy. The 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. Part of the difficulty of knowing what to read, and in what order to read comes from that. The Planet Savers (1962) and The Sword of Aldones (1958) are two of the earliest novels MZB ever published, the first two published in the Darkover series, even though chronologically they come late. The Sword of Aldones was first conceived in MZB's teens in fact, and feeling the story deserved a more mature treatment, she rewrote it and it was published as Sharra's Exile. That's a much better book, and you should read it instead. The Planet Savers is short and entertaining, but barely indicates the potential of the series at its best. You get more a glimpse of that in the included short story, "The Waterfall," written about 15 years after The Planet Savers, after Marion Zimmer Bradley had greatly improved as a writer. As a Darkover fan, I'm happy to have The Planet Savers and "The Waterfall," but by no means is this the place to start reading the series and the novels included in this edition are among MZB's weakest books and not representative of the series at its best. ( )

I read "The Planet Savers" as part of another edition, so this is just about "The Sword of Aldones." This is a story that was later re-written, and yes, the later version is much, much better. This isn't surprising because this was one of the first stories written for the series, and a lot of concepts hadn't yet been gelled, and MZB's writing of course improved in a big way later on. It was, nonetheless, an excellent read, which I'd still recommend to any Darkover fans. MZB knows how to keep us reading! My edition also has an essay by MZB about Darkover at the back, which is pretty interesting. ( )