Quote:
Originally Posted by CRussel
All of which has little to do with where this topic started  , but that's OK. I'm even more glad I asked the question in the first place! |
If you think you might want recs for which of the nuDarkover books were more enjoyable (IMHO), and that you might want to start with first, the following is spoiler-texted in case you don't. No plot spoilers or giving away the story, I promise.
Spoiler:
The "Clingfire Trilogy" by Deborah J. Ross is probably the most fun to read. It's set in the Ages of Chaos and tells the tale of Varzil the Good, and it kind of mangles what we know about the Ages of Chaos and Varzil the Good, but that really wasn't all that much to begin with, so it doesn't work out too badly.
So it's a reasonably entertaining read with some nifty bits, as long as you go into it like you were diving into an interesting looking Darkover AU you happened to find over at
The Pit of Voles* and not expecting a serious filling-in of the gaps.
The first book or two are actually a bit boring and draggy, but the 3rd one makes up for that with some slightly more interesting background characters getting a bigger part in some better plots.
Whether or not you'll like "The Alton Gift" and "Hastur Lord", also by Ross, kind of depends on whether or not you liked the new status quo set at the end of the Adrienne Martine-Barnes books about Lew Alton's daughter Marguerida.
Those completely turned over a lot of what had been previously established about Darkover itself, and some of the characters were acting in uncharacteristic ways, which is something which tends to continue in these sequels which go a generation further.
I found them more annoying because they took the much more established characters and interactions in a way that IMHO wasn't particularly congruent with what had been long since established about the setting and personalities, and so they were more irritating because there was more of the backstory to mangle than there was in the Clingfire books.
But your mileage may vary if you happen to like the retro-continuity inserts and "everything you know is different/nothing will ever be the same" All-New All-Different Darkover sort of sweeping changes.
BTW, you've probably already seen this, but in case you missed it,
freebie vintage MZB backlist book in the Deals forum, being offered as a holiday gift from the MZB Literary Works Trust.
*
Context is for the weak.