A very short book about how Darkover was populated. A decent read but probably not too interesting unless you've read some of the series beforehand. ( )

I read this book first since it came first in terms of Darkover time, and it was enough that I didn't read another book of the series.

Darkover Landfall is a prequel written to explain how the Darkover colony came to exist. It is an important book for fans of the series to read, but it really isn't a very good book.

The story is interesting enough but the writing is fairly early Bradley, and is simplistic and a bit predictable. The feminism that is present in all her books is rather forced in this one. The story is sometimes interrupted so that characters can ponder things such as the role of women in the workforce.

In the later stages of her career, the author rewrote some of her earlier works so that the story of Darkover could be told by a writer at the peak of her skills. In a way, it is a shame that this book, the entry point to the series for many people, wasn't one of them. ( )

This was actually the first Darkover book that I read -- yes, I'm geeky enough so that I try to read series in order -- and only the fact that the series is over 20 books long convinced me to not let it be the last that I read. Darkover Landfall is the brief story of how Earthmen first crash-landed on Cottman IV, the world that they would eventually name Darkover; since the series proper doesn't start until at least a couple thousand years after the events in Darkover Landfall, and since the premise of said series largely revolves around the idea of a super-advanced, space-faring society encountering offshoots marooned in the Middle Ages (albeit with psi powers pinch-hitting for magic), Ms. Bradley can't quite escape from the aura of time-killing here. Basically Darkover Landfall struck me as a warmed-over and (necessarily) open-ended sci-fi/fantasy-dress version of Lord of the Flies; I might re-read it once I've read as many of the Darkover books as I intend to, but since I'm only on the 11th book (The Forbidden Tower), that will probably be at some indeterminate point in the far, far future. ( )

MZB is one of my favorite story tellers. This prequel that chronologically becomes "the beginning" of her Darkover series is imaginative, entertaining, and even believable. Another one Hollywood shouldn't have missed. ( )