The Planet Savers

I was surprised how much I enjoyed this. The plot was highly improbable but interesting and nicely paced. And it made me think. Many thanks to the narrator.

Great story, and even if you're not familiar with the Darkover world, it's an enjoyable read.

I love Marion Zimmer Bradley, ever since I read the Firebrand at the age of 13, and suddenly the whole Achilles-myth made sense (his un-herioc action of draging Hector's body around Troy was due to mental illness. Read the book, the whole Trojan war will make sense).

The Planet Savers is set on Darkover, a far-away planet and home to a whole lot of her stories.
I love how she's able to marry hard sci-fi (represented by the Terrans) and high fantasy (the Hasturs come to mind imediately), create an engaging story and raise a lot of (still-relevant) sociological questions at the same time...
Like most of her stories, it's also heavy on show more (para)psychology, bit in nice, bite-size elements. show less

Early part of the Darkover series. I'm not the biggest fan of this kind of handwaving-sf that veers off into fantasy (for example, when it comes to the psychic faculties of the Hasturs), but I liked how MZB set up the main character here. The changes in POV are stylistically interesting, and the split personality theme was well done. Just a pity that in the short novella format so many other themes like racism and the hegemony of men was only touched upon, and the ending war far too rushed. I would've wanted a bit more struggle to reconcile those two personalities instead of that kitschy reunion with Kyla.

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 show more 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) is one of the earliest novels MZB ever published, one of the first two published in the Darkover series, even though chronologically in the series it came late. 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 this is among MZB's weakest novels and not representative of the series at its best. I'd start instead with The Shattered Chain or Forbidden Tower or Heritage of Hastur. show less

The Planet Savers – Marion Zimmer Bradley
3 stars
This is, as far as I can tell, the only book from the Darkover series currently available for kindle. It is a public domain book, probably because it was first published in a magazine or part of an anthology. It is a typical MZB survival story of cultural conflict involving Terrans, Comyn and the primitive Trailmen species. It’s probably part of an earlier book and the characters are not very well developed. I was surprised to find it a mildly entertaining way to spend a 4 hour plane flight.

This book contains a long short story, or a short novella, and a short story.

The longer one, The Planet Savers is based around Trailman Disease and seeking a cure. There is a longer book that covers the same issue at the same time in a lot more depth. it would also be easy to dismiss this story as a simple boy meets girl, overcomes the challenges and they all live happily every after. There would be merit in that. The thing that raises this up to 4 stars is that the challenges are very interesting, awkward and nicely handled.

The short story is rather predictable unfortunately. It's not bad, but it's entirely unsurprising and missable.

i don't know how many readers are "left" for this book - it & its author have not aged easily for anyone it seems - I "read" the audio book edition which may have made the dual personalities of the protagonist feel awfully contrived to support the rest ? Perhaps a story like this that hinges on notions of difference may need more than one voice actor to do its characters justice ?