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Title: Thendara House by Marion Zimm Bradley ISBN: 0-87997-857-0 Publisher: Penguin Putnam~trade Pub. Date: September, 1983 Format: Mass Market Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $3.50 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.8 (10 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: a surprisingly complex story and one of Darkover's best
Comment: "Thendara House" is a sequel, of sorts, to the previous Darkover novel "The Shattered Chain." The reason I say "of sorts" is that Bradley has always intended for each Darkover novel to work as standalone novel. The events of "Thendara House" just happen to be set after those in "The Shattered Chain" and continue the story introduced in that novel. This is a novel of the Renunciates, an order of women who have rejected society's role for them and exist as a societal alternative for women.
This novel switches between the viewpoints of two characters: Magda Lorne and Jaelle n'ha Melora. Magda, or Margali as she is called by the Darkovan natives, is of Terran heritage (and is an employee of the Terran Empire), but she was raised on Darkover since she was a child. During the events of "The Shattered Chain", Magda took the Oath of the Renunciates under duress when she was trying to rescue her former husband, Peter Haldane. By the end of that novel, she decided to honor that Oath and came to believe in it. Thendara House is the chapterhouse of the Order of the Renunciates and Magda is to spend the next six months in training at Thendara learning the ways of the Renunciates. Jaelle is the Renunciate who took Magda's oath (this is a special relationship). In order for Magda to be able to fulfill her obligations, Jaelle agreed to work at the Terran spaceport for the 6 months that Magda is at Thendara. Magda is also now married to Peter Haldane, Magda's ex-husband. Peter, like Magda, is a Terran citizen who was raised on Darkover and works for the Empire.
Neither woman truly belongs where she is. Jaelle feels alienation because she is a Darkovan working at the Spaceport and everything she is experiencing is new and different and strange to her. Her relationship with her husband is also becoming strained as she is still struggling against those gender roles she had thought she left behind when she joined the Renunciates. Magda knows that she can never truly belong to the Renunciates because she is Terran and, at least for a time, she has to hide who she really is to fit in at all.
"Thendara House" is a more complex novel than it at first seems to be. Bradley works through the ideas of belonging to a culture and what happens to those cultural transplants which are put into a new and different environment. She works with the friendships between women and the complex relationships that women can have, both casual and intimate. "Thendara House" is the best of the seven Darkover novels that I have read so far and this came as a pleasant surprise to me.
-Joe Sherry
Rating: 5
Summary: Dare to question conventional thinking...
Comment: The second in the series of stories depicting Magdalen Lorne, the Terran struggling to belong to a world in which her people are extremly distrusted, and Jaelle n'ha Melora, the native struggling against her expected duty and place in feminine society. Thrown together in the first novel, Magda and Jaelle become fast friends, the only two who do not belong anywhere and find comfort only in each other. Thendara House is the story of these women, one a native trying to work and leave peacefully with the alien Terrans, and one a Terran trying to pass successfully as a native, who discover that one cannot be what she is not, and one cannot escape that which is destined to be. Struggling to control their untrained laran (ESP), they find peace only in the crux of disaster, and finally learn that they cannot always rely on their own stregnth to survive. A must read for the Darkover fan, and ignorant "Terran" alike
Rating: 5
Summary: Womanhood
Comment: I liked the book because it struck specific cords. It speaks of love in it's many forms, but mainly it speaks of mixed loyalties. Everyone can relate to some of the events on an interpersonal base, but mainly people can go beyond the situations and relate to the feelings. The author has a brilliant writing that vividly evokes the characters feelings. It makes for good reading, especially when the reader can keep an open mind about the particular way in witch human relations are presented, non judgmentally.
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Title: City of sorcery by Marion Zimmer Bradley ISBN: 0879979623 Publisher: DAW Books Pub. Date: 1984 |
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Title: The Shattered Chain: A Darkover Novel by Marion Zimmer Bradley ISBN: 0879979615 Publisher: Penguin Putnam~trade |
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Title: The Heirs of Hammerfell by Marion Zimmer Bradley ISBN: 0886774519 Publisher: Daw Books Pub. Date: 01 September, 1990 List Price(USD): $4.99 |
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Title: Darkover Landfall (Darkover) by Marion Zimmer Bradley ISBN: 0886772346 Publisher: Daw Books Pub. Date: 01 August, 1983 List Price(USD): $5.99 |
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Title: Rediscovery by Marion Zimmer Bradley, Mercedes Lackey ISBN: 0886775299 Publisher: Daw Books Pub. Date: 01 June, 1994 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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