City of Sorcery
core novel 1984 Darkover
Record
| First published | 1984 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | novel |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 3.76 (2,040 ratings, collected 2026-09-14) |
| Page count | 432 |
| First-edition ISBN | 0879979623 |
Synopsis
A small rescue expedition of Terran and Renunciate women, led by Magda Lorne, sets out into the treacherous, largely unmapped Hellers mountains to find a missing Terran operative who reappeared at a spaceport with severe amnesia after what seemed to be a routine aircraft crash. As the party pushes deeper into increasingly uncharted and hostile territory, the search uncovers signs of a secretive all-female sisterhood living apart from both Terran and Darkovan society, and the women encounter a formidably powerful leronis, or sorceress, whose motives and loyalties are far from clear. What begins as a straightforward search-and-rescue mission gradually turns into a confrontation with forces and traditions none of the expedition members anticipated.
Where it sits
- Universe: Darkover
- Series: Darkover core; position 17 of 22 in the series' recorded order
- Author: Marion Zimmer Bradley
Notes
- From the series record (Darkover): Core Canon = the 22 novels published under Bradley's own credited authorship during her lifetime (1958-1999; some jointly credited with a co-author -- Mercedes Lackey on Rediscovery, Adrienne Martine-Barnes on Exile's Song/The Shadow Matrix/Traitor's Sun -- but always alongside Bradley herself). Per Bradley's own stated preference, publication order is used rather than the internal Darkovan chronology (Founding/Ages of Chaos/Hundred Kingdoms/Rediscovery/Modern eras), consistent with this project's deliberately-unrecorded-chronology pattern used elsewhere. Expanded Canon (the post-2000 continuation novels written entirely by Deborah J. Ross after Bradley's 1999 death -- the Clingfire Trilogy, The Alton Gift, Hastur Lord, The Children of Kings, Thunderlord!, The Laran Gambit, Arilinn) is deliberately deferred out of scope per the credited-authorship bright line (same approach as Pern's generational handoff), same treatment as InCryptid's and Solomon Kane's deferred Expanded backlogs; not populated as book records yet. The Door Through Space (1961) shares worldbuilding details but is explicitly not part of the Darkover setting per its own cover copy and is excluded. The Sword and Sorceress anthology series (which Bradley edited but did not herself write) is out of scope for the same reason Songs of the Dying Earth was excluded from Cugel's Saga.
Neighbouring works
Publication order and internal chronology are tracked as two separate orderings and are never conflated: a book's place in one says nothing about its place in the other.
- Publication order, within the series Darkover: position 17 of 22: previous Thendara House (1983) · next The Heirs of Hammerfell (1989)
Sources
- Wikipedia: Darkover series
- sfadb: Marion Zimmer Bradley
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_Sorcery
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Part of the Library. Fields without an identified source are omitted, never guessed.