Book Review - Hawkmistress

My mother has owned Marion Zimmer Bradley books for decades, and I previously read The Mists of Avalon during my English Lit undergraduate course in Arthurian Lit (I was thrilled to see a fantasy novel on the reading list!), but only got round to finally making my way through the Darkover series in 2005. I got through a fair few, but my PhD started that same year, which rather slowed the process down.

Still, I hope to get back to them at some point, because thus far, I've enjoyed the inventive plots and occasional feminist statements that I remember from The Mists of Avalon - both are present in Hawkmistress. The Sisterhood of the Sword provided a strong female presence, but unfortunately this was weakened by Bradley casting many of its members as somewhat petty and close-minded, rather than focusing on the female potency they could embody.

Romilly herself (the central protagonist) is a likeable female character in some respects, such as her strength of character, but she does occasionally become irritating in her responses to others - for example, the classbound arrogance of the early part of the novel.

All in all, after a slow start, I found this to be an entertaining read, and I look forward to moving on through the whole series at some point (my PhD reading has finally calmed down a little).

If you hope to follow the chronology of Darkover (though Bradley herself doesn’t recommend it), you might want to check out some of the more recent additions to the Darkover universe, as many of them – such as The Clingfire Trilogy – which takes place during the same period as Hawkmistress and shortly thereafter.