Leroni of Darkover

How I loved Darkover and Marion Zimmer Bradley. They were my introduction to the world of fans writing fiction in a world before the Internet made that easy.

So many wonderful authors got their start in the literary life with an MZB anthology: Mercedes Lackey, Jennifer Roberson, Laurell K. Hamilton ... I can't remember, it's been too long. I cared not about the amateur quality of some of the stories and was frequently pleased to see my favorites improve their skills and land book contracts of their very own. That meant a lot of happy reading for me!

It was very generous of Marion to open Darkover to other writers; it was sad when I discovered bad experiences had made her change her mind and shut all that down later in her life.

Today fan show more fiction and art is such a Thing that it's become frankly ridiculous when some media company sues fans for unlicensed use (as opposed to sales, mind you) blah blah blah. The fans get around that, and that's why the world has Slash Fiction today.

The world also has more Published Authors because of Marion, and for that, I salute her and her work. I will treasure these yellowed old Eighties paperbacks for the rest of my life. show less

Mili: "I may have been very very naughty."
Paul: "??"
Mili: "I'm reading Darkover again."
Paul: "Are you at least reading it in German?"
Mili: "No. And it gets worse - I'm reading Darkover fanfic, rather than the actual novels."
Paul: "Aieeeeeeee!"

Of course, the advantage of reading the fanfiction anthologies is that many of the fanfic writers have a better grasp of English than MZB ever did. (It took me a long time to realise how bad her English was as I was mostly reading her in translation when I was growing up.) And there are some really powerful stories in this anthology.

What I enjoy about Darkover is that it's a world of characters, and I get emotionally involved with it. It's not exactly high-brow literature, rarely makes me think, show more but boy does it make me feel. I remember when I was a teenager, I'd stay up late to finish a Darkover book and then whinge about having finished it because I didn't want to part with the characters. It would appear that the universe still has that appeal to me.

Well, whatever gets me through the night, I guess... show less

Marion Zimmer Bradley is famous for her Avalon books, but I'm a fan of her Darkover stories, set in an original world and a blend of science fiction and fantasy. This is one of a series of anthologies that basically are collection of "fan fiction" by other authors based on MZB's Darkover. I was impressed on reread of the first such book, The Keeper's Price. Enough I ranked it just below five stars, and was tempted to give it full marks. Not that I would argue it's deathless literature, but as a Darkover fan I loved it, and was surprised how memorable the various stories were even decades after I first read it--there were some I remembered just from the title, and no story I didn't completely enjoy.

The next five collections though still show more enjoyable, didn't impress nearly me as much. The sixth anthology, The Other Side of the Mirror, represented an uptick, but it was unusual in being a collection of novellas, not short stories, including one almost a novel by Marion Zimmer Bradley. With the next anthology, I felt it was back to status quo, and I feel the same about Leroni of Darkover. The first collection seemed mostly taken from a contest, and perhaps that pushed the quality up. So many in the contents page of the next six anthologies seemed the usual suspects, with the majority of stories included by authors who appeared in previous MZB anthologies. I thought that contributed to the sense of stories routine and safe. Yet this anthology had many new names and it didn't help. Worse was the absence of any story by MZB at all, so I didn't feel the same sense that the book was adding to true Darkover lore. And not only didn't I remember any of these stories from my read years before, it was hard to remember the stories I read early on by the time I finished rereading this book. I did like Dorothy J. Heydt's "Avarra's Children," one of the longer stories, which featured recurring characters from her previous stories in the Darkover anthologies. In fact, that was one of the pleasures of reading these anthologies one after another--some of the continuing stories, whether by returning writers or picked up by others, such as Patricia Duffy Novak's story "The Keeper's Peace" about Coryn Hastur or Roxana Pierson's "Food for Worms" about a Drytown girl with unusual laran. Otherwise, I did (rather mildly) enjoy most of the stories--but certainly wouldn't recommend this for someone not already a die hard Darkover fan. show less

I loved this when I read it over and over as a young woman. I think, now, that the writing is weak though the stories are interesting.

Read lots of Darkover in the 1980s and 90s. Recently got back into it via these themed short story collections. I like that they cover multiple eras of Darkovan history. I still have several in my unread-book stash.