Rediscovery
core novel 1993 Darkover
Record
| First published | 1993 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | novel |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 3.86 (2,375 ratings, collected 2026-09-14) |
| Page count | 307 |
| First-edition ISBN | 0886775612 |
Synopsis
Written with Mercedes Lackey, this Darkover novel is set more than two thousand years after the original colonists of Darkover Landfall lost contact with Earth, at the moment a Terran Empire survey ship finally rediscovers the isolated planet and begins establishing a spaceport, first at Caer Donn and later at Thendara. The renewed contact forces Darkovan society, which has grown around the telepathic Comyn caste and the disciplined laran training of the Towers, to confront outsiders wielding advanced technology and very different assumptions about power and progress. Bradley and Lackey trace how this collision unsettles old rivalries among the ruling houses even as it opens Darkover to a wider galaxy its people had all but forgotten, laying the groundwork for the uneasy Terran-Darkovan relationship explored throughout the rest of the series.
Where it sits
- Universe: Darkover
- Series: Darkover core; position 19 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 19 of 22: previous The Heirs of Hammerfell (1989) · next Exile's Song (1996)
Sources
← Darkover dossier · All universes
Part of the Library. Fields without an identified source are omitted, never guessed.