Hawkmistress!
core novel 1982 Darkover
Record
| First published | 1982 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | novel |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 4.00 (4,527 ratings, collected 2026-09-14) |
| Page count | 336 |
| First-edition ISBN | 0879977620 |
Synopsis
Fifteen-year-old Romilly MacAran possesses a rare psychic gift, the laran of the MacArans, that lets her sense and communicate with animals, a talent she uses to train hawks and horses on her family's estate. When her father tries to force her into a politically convenient marriage she does not want, she cuts her hair, disguises herself as a boy, and flees, eventually joining a company of men traveling toward a mountain monastery. Along the road and within the monastery walls she becomes entangled in a brewing civil conflict over Darkover's throne, forced to conceal both her sex and her growing psychic powers even as both become steadily harder to hide from those around her.
Where it sits
- Universe: Darkover
- Series: Darkover core; position 15 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 15 of 22: previous Sharra's Exile (1981) · next Thendara House (1983)
Sources
← Darkover dossier · All universes
Part of the Library. Fields without an identified source are omitted, never guessed.