Heritage and Exile

Marion Zimmer Bradley

Book 1 of Darkover Omnibus

Language: English

Amazon Goodreads Google Books ISBN

Adventure Fantasy Fiction Science Fiction

Publisher: DAW

Published: Mar 19, 2014

Form: Omnibus
Pages: 471
Word Count: 294029

Description:

More information to be announced soon on this forthcoming title from Penguin USA

About the Author

Marion Zimmer was born in Albany, NY, on June 3, 1930, and married Robert Alden Bradley in 1949. Mrs. Bradley received her B.A. in 1964 from Hardin Simmons University in Abilene, Texas, then did graduate work at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1965-67.

She was a science fiction/fantasy fan from her middle teens, and made her first sale as an adjunct to an amateur fiction contest in Fantastic/Amazing Stories in 1949. She had written as long as she could remember, but wrote only for school magazines and fanzines until 1952, when she sold her first professional short story to Vortex Science Fiction. She wrote everything from science fiction to Gothics, but is probably best known for her Darkover novels.

In addition to her novels, Mrs. Bradley edited many magazines, amateur and professional, including Marion Zimmer Bradley's Fantasy Magazine, which she started in 1988. She also edited an annual anthology called Sword and Sorceress for DAW Books.

Over the years she turned more to fantasy; The House Between the Worlds, although a selection of the Science Fiction Book Club, was "fantasy undiluted". She wrote a novel of the women in the Arthurian legends -- Morgan Le Fay, the Lady of the Lake, and others -- entitled Mists of Avalon, which made the NY Times best seller list both in hardcover and trade paperback, and she also wrote The Firebrand, a novel about the women of the Trojan War. Her historical fantasy novels, The Forest House, Lady of Avalon, Mists of Avalon are prequels to Priestess of Avalon

She died in Berkeley, California on September 25, 1999, four days after suffering a major heart attack. She was survived by her brother, Leslie Zimmer; her sons, David Bradley and Patrick Breen; her daughter, Moira Stern; and her grandchildren.

The people of Darkover are descendants of Terran colonists who over centuries had lost their science, turning instead to the curious technology of the matrix stones and laran, or psi, powers. During the lawless Ages of Chaos and the time of the Hundred Kingdoms, these powers were used to drive weapons that could kill from afarweapons so terrible that they almost destroyed Darkover until they were banned by the Compact. Set during the Second Age, after the Terran Empire reestablished contact, these books chronicle the pivotal events in the turbulent relationship between Terra and its semi-alien offspring. Nominated for a Hugo Award, and described as Bradley's best [Darkover] novel by Locus, The Heritage of Hastur tells the complex and compelling story of the early life of Regis Hastur, Darkover's greatest monarch. It also spins the tale of those who sought to control the deadly Sharra Matrix and tells how Lew Alton met and lost his greatest love, Marjorie Scott. Here is the showdown between those Darkovan lords who would bargain away their world for the glories of Terran science and those who would preserve the matrix powers that are at once the prize and the burden of Darkover. In Sharra's Exile, the most dangerous magical implement on all of Darkoverthe legendary Shara matrixmoves to the center of the story. Embodied as a chained woman wreathed in flames, it was the last remaining magical weapon of the Ages of Chaos. The matrix had been exiled offworld to one of the planets of the Terran Empire, in the custody of one who had suffered gravely from its use: Comyn Lord Lew Alton. But when he was called back to Darkover, he had no choice but to bring it with him. Once back, the stone's flaming image spread far and wide, setting in motion events that would forever change the seven Domains and the future of Darkover.