The Spell Sword

A fairly short book about the coming to the feudal-style planet Darkover of Andrew Carr, a Terran who has been rootless since leaving Earth. The story is told in alternating viewpoints to begin with, as we switch between Andrew and a Darkovan nobleman, Damon Ridenow.

At a fortune teller’s stall, Andrew sees a vision of a beautiful young woman in the fortune teller's crystal, and forms an instant obsession with her, arranging a transfer from his existing job to work on Darkover in the Mapping and Exploration team. When the plane he is onboard flies over the Kilghard Hills, it is caught in a snow storm and crashes, killing the rest of the crew. With little food scavenged from the wreckage, his chances of survival appear slim, until the show more ghostly figure of the woman he saw in the crystal appears to him and guides him to a waystation. Her name is Callista. She is imprisoned by unknown enemies and is being kept in a dark place where she cannot telepathically contact her family, but for some reason is able to find Andrew.

Meanwhile, Damon has been summoned by his twenty-year-old cousin Ellemir because her twin sister Callista, Keeper in training at the Tower at Arilinn, was abducted from her bed while on a visit, and the women’s father is absent at the Comyn Council. A darkness has fallen on nearby countryside, the people are suffering, and it seems an enemy has obtained one of the crystals used by telepaths on Darkover and is using it against them. Damon must contend with his own sense of inferiority, derived from being exiled from Arilinn and having to drift from one role to another ever since.

Gradually these two men with a lack of purpose in their lives are drawn together, and form romantic bonds with the two sisters. The story is a fairly well-paced action adventure, with psychic elements. It forms a prequel to ‘The Forbidden Tower’ and also to the cameo appearance of these characters in the later ‘Thendara House’ novel about the Renuniciates/Free Amazons.

The main flaws for me are firstly the infantilising of the women: despite Ellemir, for example, being in charge of the estate in the absence of her menfolk, she is continually called ‘child’ by Damon, even when he is supposed to be falling in love with her. Both women tend to burst into tears fairly easily, yet Callista is a highly skilled telepathic worker who has gone through strict conditioning against her own emotions, in order to understudy the aging Keeper at Arilinn. The author seems more comfortable in writing from the men’s point of view in this novel.

The other problem is that the use of laran, the psychic abilities of Darkovans, which Andrew discovers he shares, seems very malleable – near the end of the book, Andrew is able to do something which would surely draw surprised comment - he teleports twice - yet this is never referred to or explained and, as I’ve now discovered from reading the sequel, he never performs this feat again. show less

The Spell Sword was a bit strange for me because all of the Darkovan novels I've read previously (the Renunciates books, plus Stormqueen!, Hawkmistress! and Darkover Landfall) have focused on women as central characters. The Spell Sword has two viewpoint characters, and they're both men. This book also has less of a feminist focus: the plot is more about defeating an external enemy than the developing strengths of the characters, which in Bradley's work (that I've read) tends to involve fighting institutional sexism.

I was intrigued by the female characters, who are twins and end up romantically involved with the male leads. It's easy to see why this particular plot wouldn't allow them to be the viewpoint characters, and I liked the show more romance, but I would have liked a deeper characterization of these two women much better. show less

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. Most books in the series examine this culture clash and this book is no exception as it focuses on a Terran, Andrew Carr, exploring Darkover, crashes on the planet, and becomes involved in helping to save a member of the Comyn, the planet's aristocracy. The series as a whole features strong female characters, but it has enough swashbuckling show more 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. This short book was published in 1974, when MZB was beginning to come into her own as a writer. I might not ordinarily recommend The Spell Sword as a starting point, as it's not one of the best books in the series, but it is a direct prequel to one of the absolute best Darkover books, The Forbidden Tower, which received a Hugo nomination for best novel. (And that one I'd rate five stars.) show less

The Spell Sword took a while to pick up (as is the case with most of Bradley's novels). Earthman Andrew Carr receives a telepathic distress call from a young Keeper named Callista Lanart and, affected by her in a way that his many previous lovers did not, requests a permanent assignment on Cottman IV/Darkover to the mapping section, only to be the sole survivor when the mapping plane crashes during a fierce winter storm in the Hellers (a mountain range noted for its nasty weather). Meanwhile, reluctant near-Keeper Damon Ridenow (who was hopelessly in love with the Keeper who trained him, the "unattractive," middle-aged Leonie Hastur), en route to a kinswoman's castle, loses all of his escort party to invisible foes who prove to be show more catmen (rendered here as "cat-men;" in Rediscovery, co-written with Mercedes Lackey, they were called "catmen"). Arriving at the Alton Domain, he discovers his kinswoman, twenty-year-old Ellemir Lanart, distraught over the abduction of her twin sister, the Keeper Callista; Ellemir is even more distraught over the fact that she cannot telepathically contact her.

As one might expect, Andrew Carr survives thanks to Callista's telepathic urgings, and eventually makes his way to the Alton Domain, where his claims to have had visions and mental conversations with the spitting image of Ellemir are grudgingly believed when Damon is able to ascertain that the Terranen does indeed have laran, or psychic powers. When the Alton lord, Dom Esteban, returns with the remnants of his expedition after a successful engagement with invisible cat-men, Damon is able to construct a plan to rescue Callista from "the darkening lands" that have fallen under the sway of the laran of the cat-men. As Dom Esteban, though in his sixties still the doughtiest warrior and greatest swordsman of the Domains, has been paralyzed from the waist down, he has to resort to his laran -- the Alton Gift, whereby he may dominate another man's thoughts and movements -- to impart to the scholarly Damon his own wondrous swordsmanship. Hence the "spell sword" of the title: Dom Esteban's sword has a first-level matrix ("starstone") in its basket hilt which facilitates his taking over the reflexes and voluntary movements of whoever holds it.

The Spell Sword was OK; though a very short novel, the dense type and Bradley's uneven writing made it feel like it was at least a hundred pages longer. I have to admit that I liked it enough, despite her usual flaws (and despite the fact that Callista was a particularly pallid Ophelia, always weeping and on the verge of collapse; sure, she was under a deal of strain, but come on!), to want to read the next Darkover book (chronologically speaking), The Forbidden Tower, in the near future. show less

This is a short novella about Andrew Carr, the Terran we met briefly in an earlier book. His mapping plane crashes in a storm, and he survives only by using laran with the help of a young girl. The cat people have taken the girl, so in turn, he goes to rescue her. It's a further look at one of the indigenous species of Darkover as well as the integration of the Terrans with Darkover's people, but it's too short to go into depth.

Action. Adventure. Romance. Cat people. Good, not great. Okay, not bad. This book shows promise. I mean, I think I've got to read some other Darkover novels before I can really appreciate it. But really, a fun read.

Action. Adventure. Romance. Cat people. Good, not great. Okay, not bad. This book shows promise. I mean, I think I've got to read some other Darkover novels before I can really appreciate it. But really, a fun read.