Customer Reviews

The Spell Sword

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

 

 

"The Spell Sword" is another Darkover novel by Marion Zimmer Bradley. This one is set sometime after the Terran Empire rediscovered Darkover. Now there are both the Darkovan natives, as well as men from Terra living on Darkover. This novel begins in a way that we have seen several times before: with a crash of a Terran vehicle on Darkover. This time it is from a team based at the Terran outpost at Thendara. Andrew Carr is a member of the Mapping and Explorations team that is slowly gathering information about Darkover. In a winter storm, the plane crashed and it was only through what Andrew thought was a hallucination that he was able to survive for very long in the storm. Andrew had visions of a woman named Callista guiding him away from the plane and to safety, but he had difficulty believing that these visions might be true. Eventually, Carr does come to accept that the vision is more than a hallucination, but someone communicating with him.

Damon Ridenow has been called to help find Callista, who has gone missing without a trace. Before Damon arrives at Callista's home he has to travel through someplace called "the darkened land" where the land is in shadows, uninhabitable and attacks can come from invisible assailants. Not a place you would want to spend much time. After passing through "the darkened land", Damon learns more about Callista's abduction and also meets Andrew Carr who was led there somehow by the vision of Callista. When Andrew and Damon discuss what has happened, they see the connection and that the only way to save Callista is by working together. Damon is surprised to discover that Andrew, a Terran, also has the potential to be a telepath, which Damon believed was a skill native to Darkover.

Throughout the Darkover series we hear that there are non-human races on the planet: the chieri and the cat-people. While we see the chieri once or twice, we have never seen the cat-people before and this was an area that I was interested in. For the most part, they are not developed as a race or as characters, except that we now know that some can be telepaths like humans (and chieri). We also know that they are mainly enemies of humans (though they have worked with the less reputable humans from the Dry Towns), though Damon does allow that their motives and culture are so far removed from human that it would be difficult to truly comprehend it.

This is a short novel, coming in less than 200 pages, but I found it to be fairly entertaining and I suspect that it sets the stage for the much longer "The Forbidden Tower" which features many of the same characters. "The Spell Sword" serves as introduction to Andrew Carr, Damon Ridenow, and Callista. It is fairly good for a fantasy novel, though it does not feature the depth of some. This is a straight forward story with some action.

Darkover history has a lot of magic weapons, for an example the legendary Aldones sword. This story is about another sword, one with a matrix in it that aloud Don Steban, one great warrior that has been hurted in battle and can not walk, to fight trough the person who is holding it. This book, also, present us to Andrew Carr, a terran who has been haunted by the spirit of a Keeper wich is trapped by non-humans appart from her friends and family. He found himself atracted by the strange planet and when his plane has crashed in the Hellers he needs to believe in the strange woman, which appears only to him, to survive. Another important caracther that appears in this book is Damon Ridenow, a man who has lost his faith in himself when the Keeper of Arilin Tower send him away. This man starts here his journey, to get back his own confidence and leadership; the following steps in his path will be shown in the book named Forbiden Tower.

Andrew Carr is stationed on Darkover, drawn there by a strange vision of a woman he has never met. When his plane crashes in the wild mountains of the planet, it is a power that he does not believe that draws him to safety. Both he and the Comyn Lords of the hills will have to overcome their prejudices to rescue Callista-- the mysterious woman of Carr's visions.

The Darkover series is absolutely brilliant. I still find it the best of Bradley's work. The Spell Sword is an excellent example. Prejudice, culture shock, gender, and self-confidence are the themes that make her work so very good.

Highly recommended, either as a separate book or as part of one of the omnibus editions. The Daw paperback from 1974 comes bound with a note about the chronology of the series.

I hadn't read this in about 20 years but decided to try it again. I really do like many of Bradley's Darkover books, especially the Renunciate books. However, The Spell Sword, one of her earlier works, has little depth to its characters and is not as well written as her later books. As another reviewer said, The Forbidden Tower, which I really like, has these same characters. The Forbidden Tower was published 3 years later and Bradley had improved her character and plot development skills most satisfactorily by then. The Spell Sword left me feeling unsatisfied and frustrated with the weak characters presented in the book. What little informationthe Spell Sword has can be found in later, much more well-written books.

Its most interesting to read the Darkover books in chronological order (as listed at various websites), but you can skip this book and go directly to The Forbidden Tower and you would not have missed anything.

As I go through the Darkover books in the order in which they were written, the quality of MZB's writing continues to improve, but the stories seem repetitive. A person from Earth comes to Darkover, is drawn unexpectedly into adventure, and subsequently decides that Darkover is his true home. The Spell Sword is no exception to this pattern.

I did enjoy this book, partly because (as I implied) it is better written than most of what came before it. Here, we meet Damon Ridenow, a bookish Darkovan who is caught off guard when he and his traveling companions are ambushed by mysterious, invisible attackers. Meanwhile, a Terran named Andrew has crash landed in the nearby mountains, and visions of a woman lead him to safety -- and to Damon Ridenow. Together, they do battle with the powerful, invisible foes who attacked Damon and who are besieging and terrorizing Darkovan towns, holding hostage the woman of Andrew's visions.

These foes are certainly the weak point of the book: we know they are "cat people" and that they've discovered a matrix crystal that gives them great and dangerous power, including that of invisibility. But a mysterious enemy should only be mysterious to a point, if you want them to be interesting. Their motives and their physical characteristics (they aren't always invisible) are left so ill-defined that I found myself imagining a bunch of Felix The Cats with evil grins attacking our protagonists. The cat people never become scary nor interesting.

The Spell Sword is another readable, but somehow lacking, Darkover book.

Andrew Carr is part of the Mapping and Exploration team which is charting the planet of Darkover for the newly-arrived Terran Empire. Like all Earthmen, Andrew is cynical about psi powers, so he shrugs off a meeting with an old fortuneteller in the Spaceport's trade city who shows him a beautiful red-headed girl in her crystal ball.

What Andrew doesn't know is that this dim, cold world is filled with people with vast psychic powers they call "laran" or "donas", and Andrew himself has been suppressing his potential in the noisy, crowded empire. After his plane crashes in the icy mountains, Andrew receives visions of the lovely Callista, who has been kidnapped by nonhumans. The Earthman must overcome his prejudices and inner mental blocks to aid her kinsman in her rescue, then ultimately find his place between the two worlds.

Classic Bradley. I take out my well-worn paperbacks and re-read them every couple of years.

from the back cover of the September 1974 Daw paperback edition

Although Darkover was a world inhabited by humans as well as semi-humans, it was primarily forbidden ground to the Terran traders. Most of the planet's wild terrain was unexplored...and many of its peoples seclusive and secretive.

But for Andrew Garr there was an attraction he could not evade. Darkover drew him, Darkover haunted him-and when his mapping plane crashed in unknown heights, Darkover prepared to destroy him.

Until the planet's magic asserted itself-and his destiny began to unfold along lines predicted only by phantoms and wonder workers of the kind Terran science could never acknowledge.

The story line is so exciting, and the characters so lovable. A person can't help but get into it, and have a hard time not thinking about the story or wondering what's next. It took no time at all to read the book, partly because of the suspense and partly because it's only 156 pages. It's an excellent appetizer, some of her other books are longer, but from the three that I've read they all seem to have the same effect.

This book is full of suspence, and it has some interesting information. There is also a love story that only makes it better. I would reccomend this book to any fan of MZB.