Exile's Song [Paperback]

Marion Zimmer Bradley (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: DAW; Advance copy edition (1996)
• ISBN-10: 0886777348
• ISBN-13: 978-0886777340
• ASIN: B000VARC00
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (38 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,623,771 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Marion Eleanor 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. 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 and for her Arthurian novel, THE MISTS OF AVALON.
In addition to her novels, Mrs. Bradley edited 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, which is still published annually under the title MARION ZIMMER BRADLEY'S SWORD AND SORCERESS.
She died in Berkeley, California on September 25, 1999, four days after suffering a major heart attack.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Unsatisfying, by-the-numbers retread, April 6, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Exile's Song (Darkover) (Paperback)

When I was 18 I adored the Darkover series, so I opened this novel hoping to recapture some of that spirit. But I can't ever be 18 again, and I can't ignore all the problems that made this book deeply unsatisfying. The basic plot, for one, was already done (twice!) much better in The Bloody Sun. The characters are all fairly flat, with a couple of identifying quirks substituting for characterization, and none of them have much motivation to speak of -- instead of complexity, we have simplistic stimulus-and-response behavior that just doesn't ring true.

Even in the case of Margaret, our Heroine, there's not much depth, and very little emotion: we're told that she's feeling this way and that, and she thinks about her feelings constantly, but we're never allowed to participate in those feelings.

The transformation of the bitter hard-drinking Lew of her memories (which I found quite a plausible and interesting development of the character) back into Good Old Darkover Lew, everybody's pal and passionate good-guy, as soon as he reappeared was sudden, unmotivated, and made me wonder, if all he needed to make himself a happy, well-balanced man again was to come back to Darkover, and nobody minded his coming back, why didn't he do it years ago and spare everybody more trouble?

Plus, the confrontation with the Big Secret Villain, which should have been the climax of the novel, occurs about halfway through, leaving the rest of it anticlimactic, aimless, and rather pointless. (Lots more whining and histrionics all around, though and some seriously bizarre family dynamics.)

I will only mention in passing the clumsy prose, and the extreme padding that turn a sparsely-plotted book into a heavyweight for no particular reason.

It would be easy to attribute this book's faults to its not having been actually written by MZB. But MZB turned out her share of serious clunkers over the years, and I've never read any of Adrienne Martine-Barnes's solo efforts. so that wouldn't be entirely fair. Exile's Song does hit most of the expected notes in a Darkover book, it just hits them dully, without any real originality or freshness or invention. It's a connect-the-dots, color-inside-the-lines version, flat and predictable.

There are books in the Darkover series that do have freshness, originality, and real strength of feeling. (The Heritage of Hastur, say, or The Forbidden Tower, or The Bloody Sun.) I'd head there for my fix, not to Exile's Song.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A little dissappointing..., April 30, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Exile's Song (Darkover) (Paperback)

The book wasn't that bad...although a little overdone. The thing that upset me the most was that the whole Regis & Danilo relationship that was so carefully built before was shattered. Regis got married, and Danilo just gets to stand in the background, smiling? That bothered me so much, the rest of the book seemed dry. Although I would still reccomend it to others, especially those that haven't read Darkover before.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Okay..but not as 'good as it gets'...., June 12, 2000

By 

T. Young - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Exile's Song (Darkover) (Paperback)

Marion Zimmer Bradley is a wonderful author, but I'm sorry to say that she doesn't show the story development that she usually has. Her character development is still great, but not good enough for 4 or 5 stars.

The story of Margaret Alton is quite interesting. She goes to the planet of her birth and learns that she is a telepath with the "Alton Gift," among other gifts. The back-of-the-book-synopsis says that there's a 'trap that was set for her centuries before her birth,' and that was what interested me in the book. But the 'trap' is the gift. She learns that she has these things about half-way through the book, and then you are looking forward to this 'trap,' but that is the trap.

The characters are neat, but as for the story, it is weaker than it could have been. Nice try Ms Bradley...I'm still looking forward to other Darkover Novels (I've heard that this one isn't the best one of the bunch...)