The book was pretty good. I was a little disappointed with it mainly because I am used to MZB’s feminist literature and was expecting something more along the lines of that. There was only one female in the whole book and she had a very minor role. The book gave a too much away. In the beginning they tell you that the Darkovan people are humans (non-humans live there too) and speak a variation of early earthly languages. Then at the end you find out in a big revelation that the Darkovan humans are really earthlings from back in the day. You do find out some other cool stuff at the end that does change your perspective a little though. Another thing that I didn’t like so much about this book was the way it got started. You weren’t into the main rising action of the book until it was half-over. It just wandered a little too much.

The world of Darkover is great though. The culture is new, exciting and different. There is magic to take place, mysterious powers to understand. There are non-humans to imagine. The other-worldly feeling is rich and very well constructed. ( )

The 12th book, chronologically speaking, in Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover series, Star of Danger (1965) takes place a generation or two after the events of The Forbidden Tower. (Valdir Alton, roughly 11 years old in The Forbidden Tower, is a graying adult with a 16-year-old son here.) As it is one of the earlier-written books in the series, it naturally contains many "out of continuity" events and disclosures.

The story of a 16-year-old, red-headed Terran youth named Larry Montray who goes to Darkover (which the Terrans call Cottman IV) with his father, Wade Montray, Larry disobeys the Terran quarrantine (Darkovans have allowed the Terrans to build a spaceport and establish limited trade only on sufferance) to leave the confines of the Terran settlement to travel to Thendara for a look at what Darkovan society is really like, and earns the friendship of the young Comyn lord Kennard Alton, heir to the Domain of Alton. Larry's actions inadvertantly precipitate a diplomatic crisis that is resolved when his father is forced to let him accept the invitation of Lord Valdir Alton to spend six months at his house; the Terrans, in the person of Commander Reade, Legate to Cottman IV, and the Darkovans, in the person of Valdir, both have a not-so-hidden agenda for wanting Larry to accept Valdir's invitation. Less than a week in to his visit, Larry and Kennard are swept up in events out of their control, and both boys learn that, to survive, they must draw on both Terran and Darkovan knowledge.

There's a lot more action in Star of Danger than is found in many of the Darkover books; there are also a lot more appearances by the nonhuman aborigines of Darkover -- the kyrri (who function as servants in the Alton household, in contrast to the previous two books, The Spell Sword and The Forbidden Tower), the Fuzzy-esque trailmen (who call themselves "People of the Sky"), and the elfin chieri -- than is typical. There is a fair bit of laran, or psi, power on display here, without the constraints and drawbacks that Bradley introduced in her later books. Star of Danger is a fascinating look at what the Darkover series might've been had Bradley not steered it into a feminist-oriented direction; this book made me realize that, for all of MZB's uneven prose, indifferent editing and occasional out-and-out lousy books (City of Sorcery, I'm looking at you), I much prefer the later thoughtful, talk-heavy, feminist-skewed books to the early "boys own" adventure-type books.

There are tantalizing hints here of the direction in which MZB would lead the Darkover series; there are also statements of the major tensions between the Terrans and the Darkovans, as well as those between the Darkovans and the native sentients, that would be subsequently explored but never "solved." My favorite sentence in Star of Danger can also be easily applied to our current geo-political situation: "It was, [Larry] knew, a deeper conflict than they could ever resolve with words alone; a whole civilization based on expansion and growth, pitted against one based on tradition" (p. 170). Ooh, mais oui. ( )