Book Review - Stormqueen!

To go from Darkover Landfall to Stormqueen! is a bit of a jump-cut, missing out a great deal of history – then again, I haven’t read the short story collections of either MZB or those she edited to fill in gaps, so perhaps this occurs later on.

Still, that’s only a niggle if you’re overly bothered about chronology – MZB certainly isn’t, as she repeatedly proves in her published comments on Darkover. I would definitely recommend the story of Stormqueen! itself, as it provides plenty of action, and a suitably intriguing plot, with sibling rivalry, enforced personal codes of celibacy, warfare and tragedy.

The main focus of the book is what MZB calls ‘laran’, which is basically psychic abilities, though the author has developed a whole mythology around it which makes laran much more than just ESP. This isn’t a happy story, and is all the better for it – the central character herself spends the entire book suffering to a greater and greater degree.

So, if you want a feel-good ending, look elsewhere, but if you want a decent read, you could do much worse than Stormqueen! And no, I don’t know why MZB insisted on sticking an exclamation mark at the end of her title either. ;)