A review by hydrangea
The Fall of Neskaya, by Deborah J. Ross, Marion Zimmer Bradley

4.0

It was good, but 2 things nagged at me about it.

1. A big deal seemed to made about how Taniquel had been told her tele-powers weren't worth training, and that she had been told that with the intent of marrying her off, like there was some kind of sexism there. Basically that the woman that test her for laran lied.

While Darkover clearly has a very sexist culture, it's always been made clear that even girls who are destined for an arranged marriage (i.e not worth keeping at a tower forever, or being keeper) could be trained and work there for years before leaving, and usually were. In fact, even keepers sometimes left to marry.

So why lie? There's no motivation.

Even worse, the woman that had tested her and apparently lied to her, was shown throughout the whole book to be intelligent, kind, and trustworthy. So, there better be some kind of betrayal or something in book 2 or I'm going to be mad.


2. Belisar being killed. What the fuck? seriously. Um, I kind of read with the intention of good triumphing over evil. If I wanted to read something cynical and crapsackworld I've got authors/series for that. Sure, Belisar was on the bad guys team, but he was young, and just following his dad's orders. It'd be treasonous to do otherwise.

HE WAS KILLED FOR THE FUCKING GENE HE CARRIED? WTF WTF WTF.
and it was all useless anyway cause Rumail lived.

Plus, all the Comyn are srsly inbred. It's probably floating around in some other people too.