The Ruins of Isis [Paperback]

Marion Zimmer Bradley (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Pocket (August 2, 1983)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 067146843X
• ISBN-13: 978-0671468439
• Product Dimensions: 6.6 x 4.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,360,240 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

16 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars FANTASTIC!!!, January 28, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Ruins of Isis (Starblaze Editions) (Paperback)

This is a classic Bradley book. Travel to another world called ISIS/CINDERELLA. A world where the woman is the dominant sex and the men are just playthings and slaves - wonderful. It's quite enlightening and i think more men should read it and take a few tips. Anyway it all comes crashing down around them in the end. I wont give it all away and spoil it. READ IT! I loved the book so much i even named my daughter Isis Cinderella after it.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great book, October 7, 2002

By 

Jasmin (Sydney, Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Ruins of Isis (Starblaze Editions) (Paperback)

I have to say I started reading MZB via her mainstream novels the Avalon series. But moving onto her other works, 'The Ruins of Isis' ain't that bad. It's about an anthropologist travelling and exploring the Matriachate Isis/Cinderella under the disguise of an archaeologist. There's conflict between her and her husband, the planet's politics, people and an unveiling of those mysteries that hold the city together. Shows insights into anthropology and our society. Defintely recommended.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not MZB's best, February 5, 2002

By 

frumiousb "frumiousb" (Amsterdam, the Netherlands) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Ruins of Isis (Paperback)

Scholar Cendri and her husband, Master Scholar Dal, come to the xenophobic planet of Isis/Cinderella. Because this planet has a very strict matriarchal society, Cendri poses as the master scholar while Dal is relegated to the role of her possession and assistant. They are nominally there to study what may be ruins from the race that seeded the galaxy, but while there they find that their own assumptions about gender and power are called heavily into question.

I'd like to stress that this isn't a bad book, and MZB completists will certainly not regret reading it, but the ideas that are sketched out here are developed more fully and with much more grace in both the Darkover and Avalon books. The gender politics come over a little bit too heavy-handed and occasionally make it difficult to focus on the plot.