Customer Reviews

City of Sorcery

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is the third in the mini-series focusing on the Renunciates, within the larger Darkover series. It features the characters that have developed within the previous two novels, Jaelle, Magda, Camilla, and the Terran Cholayna. This novel is much more action packed than the previous two had been, with a fraught and perilous journey across mountains, facing dangers both natural and supernatural, in search of a mythic city mentioned in obscure legends--the city of sorcery.

This novel takes place seven years after 'Thendara House', and Jaelle and Magda are full-members now of the Forbidden Tower. They've both been fully trained in the use of their Laran, and their abilities have grown considerably.

If you've enjoyed the other two books in this series-within-a-series, 'Shattered Chain' and 'Thendara House,' you will love this one--it's definitely the best, and it truly delivers on the potential of the other two. If you've missed the first two, you'll still enjoy this one on its own--Bradley makes sure to provide recaps of relevant past events and relationships, allowing a new reader to dive straight into this story. But, there's no question, if you already know and love these characters from their previous adventures, you'll be even more deeply engaged in this great story.

All right, I adore the Free Amazons of Darkover, I admit it. City of Sorcery finishes off the Free Amazon trilogy, which is my favorite of the Darkover books. The first reading, however, left me flat. I mean, I either love or am incredibly disappointed by an MZB book; this was the first that I would classify being in middle ground. But a year or two later I reread the trilogy and the book had improved greatly. A few years later, a rereading, and I found myself enjoying this tremendously. Characters meet their destinies in a very satisfying way. Jaelle's life story comes full circle to fit snugly into Darkover continuity. The whole is accomplished by remarkable mountain-climbing narrative (don't read this on a chilly day!) with a slew of familiar and new characters rounding out the almost completely-female cast. Although melodramatic, hinting of the worse MZB books, the style manages to remain clear and easy-reading, not too syrupy, and not nearly as all-out explanatory as MZB's latest Darkover books are. If you like Darkover, Free Amazons, Jaelle, Camilla and Magda... you'll warm up to this one.

This book, along with The Shattered Chain and Thendara House, explores the nature and source of feminine power and how little it is encouraged in western culture. Magda from Earth, and Jaelle of Darkover, the major characters, discover their differences and similarities and their strengths and weaknesses and their power as women. Their adventures take place on Darkover, a planet where a woman can choose a very traditional path or a non-traditional one, with nothing in between. The characters and plot are compelling and surprising, evoking the full range of human experience, in all its tawdriness and glory.

A Terran Mapping and Exploration aircraft crashed on the other side of the mountain range that circles the planet. It was presumed there were no survivors and the plane lost. It was presumed so until Alexis Anders walked back into Thendara unscathed, but without her memory. Cholayna, the Head of Terran Intelligence on Darkover, called in Magda Lorne to help her figure out what happened. Magda Lorne, a legend in the Intelligence field, is not simply an intelligence agent, but rather someone who was raised on Darkover from childhood and possesses the "laran" psi power that would allow Magda to see into Anders' mind and find out what happened to Anders. Magda is more than an intelligence agent, she is a woman who has "gone native" and is a member of the Order of Renunciates, an organization that gives women another choice of what they can be in this incredibly patriarchal society.

What Lorne finds in the mind of Alexis Anders shouldn't be possible. By all accounts, there is nothing on the other side of that mountain range. Nothing. Satellite photos show nothing, and it is common knowledge on Darkover that nothing can survive over there. Yet, the mind of Alexis Anders reveals the existence of a hidden city deep in the mountains, a city where there are women of power who are wearing robes. This may not seem too exceptional (except for a city existing where one shouldn't exist), but from the previous novels which feature Magda Lorne, we know that in a couple of instances using her "laran" Magda has encountered strange women wearing robes on the spiritual plane who have called themselves the "Dark Sisterhood". She originally dismissed this because there was no confirmation that what she thought she saw was real, but with this additional confirmation from Anders, Magda believes there truly is a Dark Sisterhood.

When Alexis finally regains her memory, she secretly commissions a guide to find this hidden city. Magda figures out what is happening and that Alexis is attempting something that she does not truly understand, Magda, along with her freemate Jaelle (another character we are familiar with by this point), and a couple of other women (including Cholayna and Camilla) try to track Alexis before she can find the city (or die trying to find the city).

"City of Sorcery", at its heart, is an adventure story, or perhaps a kind of "holy grail" story. The women are all chasing this mythical story, and there are Darkovan legends about this city, but nobody truly believed it could be real. It becomes something of a holy quest against impossible odds. This wasn't a story I expected to be that good (my expectation was that this would be one of the weaker Darkover novels), but it was. This is some excellent storytelling by Marion Zimmer Bradley, and just when she gets to the part of the quest where the story begins to drag, she changes direction and brings it on home and it is fresh and exciting again. This novel was a surprise for me, but a pleasant one. The Renunciate trilogy ("The Shattered Chain", "Thendara House") are some of the strongest of the Darkover novels that I have read, and I can only hope that Magda Lorne and the consequences of this quest will appear in the later Darkover novels (or short stories).

-Joe Sherry

I know some people consider this finale to the Renunciate trilogy a disappointment. I don't.

If you've already come to love Magda, Jaelle, Camilla and Cholayna, you'll of course want to know more about what happened to them. And Vanessa makes a valuable addition to the group.

I've always enjoyed books about the making of a fantasy-world legend, and this finale to Magdalen Lorne's story is no exception. The reader gets to see her as a very human and somewhat flawed person, as well as the powerful "Lorne Legend."

If you're new to Darkover, I think you should read The Shattered Chain and Thendara House before reading this book (for spoiler reasons), but this one is definitely worth picking up.

Despite being a sword-and-sorcery quest in a sci-fi/fantasy setting, this is in some ways one of the most realistic books I've read. The characters, their motivations, and the interactions between character and society are vivid and ring true for me.

This is the third volume (following The Shattered Chain: A Darkover Novel and Thendara House (Darkover)) in the saga of Magdalen Lorne, Terran but born and reared on Darkover and ultimately "gone over the wall" to live as a Renunciate and a member of the "Forbidden Tower" of telepaths at Armida. It's now seven years since we last met her, and she's 34. Both she and her partner, freemate, and occasional lover Jaelle have had daughters (one each) by Darkovan men--Jaelle out of duty, because she's an heiress to the House of Aillard, and Magda because she decided she didn't want to miss out on this important female experience. But Magda is still, officially, an operative of the Terran Empire's onworld Intelligence office, and when her old superior and teacher, Cholayna Ayres, sends for her, Magda goes. A Terran female pilot, Alexis Anders, crashed while making a mapping flight over the largely unexplored mountain range called the Hellers--and, inexplicably, appeared at the gate of the Terran Zone a day or two later, with no plane and no memory of whatever had happened. Cholayna is concerned about the possibility of some unknown installation, heretofore hidden from even Terran technology, in the mountains; if some "other planetary power" has put it there, it could become a major threat to the Terrans. But even Magda's Darkovan-trained mental powers can't break through Anders's mind: her memory hasn't just been blocked, it's wiped. It's not until Anders--who insists she saw "a city" hidden among the peaks just before she crashed--takes off on an unauthorized expedition to the Hellers, with Jaelle's old partner Rafaella as her guide, that Magda and Jaelle are drawn into the search themselves. Accompanied by the aging emmasca Amazon Camilla and two Terrans, Cholayna and Vanessa ryn Erin, they set off for the Hellers, Magda troubled by dreamlike visions of what may await them.

It's not at all clear why the people responsible for Anders's mindwipe were willing to leave her with the memory of the "city" she saw, but that's the only real flaw in the plot of this epic tale of exploration, danger, loyalty, and self-searching. Magda, Jaelle, Camilla, and their Terran companions must all confront, each on her own terms, important questions of purpose, destiny, good vs. evil, and other weighty issues. The savage and difficult mountain environment and the people who live in it--from villages of bandits to the cristoforo city of Nevarsin with its huge monastery and school--are well-drawn, and the five women's expedition is equal to anything ever accomplished by female mountaineering teams on Annapurna or Everest. (Try reading Annapurna: A Woman's Place (20th Anniversary Edition) to get a factual slant on such a journey.) And the climactic encounters of the expedition with Anders and Rafaella and the mysterious women of the Hellers sends the series sliding toward fantasy, as the questions of power and evil are addressed. On the other hand, the ending is abrupt and unsatisfying, which is why I rate the book at only three stars. If you can accept the prospect of never really knowing what happens to some of these characters (most of the most important of whom are shared with the previous book), you're in for a thrilling tale of adventure and soul-searching, but if not, you may be left, as I was, wanting more.

If you like reading about Renunciates this is the book for you! In this book they have to be brave right when evil is staring them straight in the face. I thought this book was one of the best books about Darkover!!!

Having read the entire series, I find that this book is enjoyable, but not as good as the previous two books in the trilogy.

Still, it is worth the purchase and it is good to find out what happened to the main characters.

MZB rarely disappoints.

This story is the sequence of adventures of Magda Lorne/ Margali n Ysabet. A terran who join the renunciants group (you can read why and how in Shattered Chain), need to adapt herself to this new ewality, discover who she really is (read about it in Thendara house) and finally goes to search for the city of sorcery, a mistic city, where " crows" cry and dark woman help humanity trhough centuries... she has to face many fears and one dark society... discover who trust and who not trust...This book is plenty of surprises and has links to many others. Im sure you will enjoy reading it!

Excellent women story from and excellent woman writer