Hastur Lord [Hardcover]

I loved this book! Written from a manuscript that Ms. Bradley started before her death, Ms. Ross has picked up the mantle of Bard of Darkover with such grace and skill that I've only noticed a few nuances different from Darkover's creator, Marian Zimmer Bradley. I have enjoyed all the Darkover books Ms. Ross has co-authored (in reality authored alone), so I expected a great read. This was a fabulous read!

This story is not only about the continued threat of the Terrans to take over a world they consider inferior; it is a love story.

Regis, new Regent of Darkover at the death of his grandfather, is caught between his love for his beloved Danilo, love for former lover and the mother of his children, Linnea, and his love of his world. Regis would be perfectly happy spending the rest of his life lived quietly with his sworn paxman, Danilo, but duty calls. When he discovers an older half-brother living in a monistary, he sees a means to an end. Dispite misgivings, he abdicates the throne to his brother. Then the nightmare begins.

This is Regis' story, taken up years after the infamous Sharra Rebellion. This is a story of political power and the uses of it both subtle and draconian. This is the making of Darkover's most beloved Regent.

I have been waiting for quite some time for this book to be published. Any fan of Marion Bradley's world of Darkover will have known that it was expected any time, and the book certainly does not disappoint. Congratulations to Deborah Ross for reworking Marion's notes and manuscript in such a way that this intriguing world comes back to life once more, and - very important - in the way I believe Marion herself would have intended it to be. And the best part is that the book really adds something to what already exists. We finally get to understand how Regis turns from the somewhat insecure and naive (yes, he still was that at the end of Sharra's exile even though it was mostly by his intervention that the Sharra matrix was destroyed, and he was the one able to help Danilo who was even less certain of himself at the time)to the wily and sharp leader we encounter in Exile's Song and The Shadow Matrix. Excellent! Furthermore, it is highly interesting to find out how the threesome relationship between Regis, Danilo and Linnea comes about. After all, so far we only had a small glimpse of this in "World Wreckers" which only took Linnea into account, we knew about the way Regis and Danilo felt about each other from The Heritage of Hastur and Sharra's exile, and finally we see this relationship an established fact in Exile's song (again). For the fans it is also useful to know why Lew Alton had become such a morose character during his stay in the Senate, while he left Darkover with such optimism - being newly restored to his wife and daughter. Using the Alton Gift is never a recipe for becoming friendly and well-natured.

And then the plot itself...and I will not spoil it all, there must of course remain something to read for any new buyer of this book! Suffice it to say that, as has been stated often enough in a number of Marion's books: be careful what you ask for, you might just get it! And finding a brother out of the blue, may not be as welcome as you think. Also interesting are some new facets of the Christoforo brothers and their religion, and admittedly the approach does call to mind the way Christianity originally spread, once certain important people embraced it. Absolutely wonderful. So, here we have a book with an interesting plotline, great characterisation of the main participants, and an intriguing twist to the history of Darkover.

There is only one "but", and that is that both the personages of Rinaldo and Tiphany in my view were not well enough fleshed out. Of course, we read about what Rinaldo does, we see his actions, and his oral explanation for them. But, we never get to really understand him. We are not invited into his head (so to speak). This could have been intentional, as Regis also concludes this at the end of the book but I would have liked to know more about this. And Tiphany really is a caricature of a person, and it sure would have been interesting to know a bit more about this woman than that she was a religious fanatic and quite mad. Whatever made the nice Dan Lawson marry the woman? There must have been something! However, on the whole it was a great re-introduction to Darkover, one I'll probably return to once in a while. Good job, and I am looking forward to the next (there is still another one "in the wings").

I first read Heritage of Hastur when I was 12 years old and it completely rocked my world. I remember just bawling by the end of that book, and I hold it dear to my heart.
This book continues the story of Regis and Danilo that began in that book, and that is why I have given it three stars - anything that picks up and extends that story has some intrinsic value. Unfortunately, in all other respects, the book is extremely disappointing. The character development is almost completely missing. We don't gain any insight into any of the (numerous) major characters over the many pages of the story. Regis Hastur is the backbone of all of the "modern" Darkover stories, and yet here you get almost no sense of him. Like so many other characters (including Rinaldo, Valdir Ridenow and Danilo), it is impossible to get a fix on him because we have so little interior development. Half the time each of these characters seems completely lame, and then the other half of the time they seem quite strong, but there is no real character development. The fights and rivalries that we see seem largely based on the assumption that these people are basically morons - does Dani really believe that Regis just abandons him to Rinaldo? Really? It seems rather incredible, given the history, but if we are going to believe it, we need some explanation about what would be behind such a belief. Similarly, Regis highly values Danilo's advice as his paxman. Why is he so unwilling to trust Danilo's distrust? Very little of it makes sense in terms of motivations or in terms of character arc.
The writing itself is not very graceful. And there is just too much packed into this one story, much of which is not satisfactorily resolved. The story obviously tries to mine various current-day issues - religious strife, disputes about sexual orientation, the role of women, etc. - but it takes too many ideas and does too little with any of them.
The book also needed a real editor. It uses the same "old sayings" over and over - I think each and every chapter must have reused the saying about not being able to put a banshee chick back into its egg; every chapter talked about how few Comyn are still around; etc. (And the Kindle edition, which is what I read, is horrendous - probably every paragraph had a word that had spacing problems. No one ever proofed it - if they did, they should be fired.)
All in all, a very disappointing book.