Star of Danger
core novel 1965 Darkover
Record
| First published | 1965 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | novel |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 3.72 (1,958 ratings, collected 2026-09-14) |
| Page count | 213 |
| First-edition ISBN | 9780886776077 |
Synopsis
A teenage boy named Larry Montray arrives on Darkover with his father, a Terran administrator posted to the planet, and against his father's explicit wishes slips beyond the spaceport's boundary to explore the forbidden city outside. There he befriends Kennard, the son of a local noble house, and is invited back to the family's mountain estate, an invitation that draws him deep into a world the Terran authorities normally keep off-limits to their own people. Amid hunting trips, court customs, and rivalries among Kennard's kin, Larry's presence stirs up trouble he does not fully understand, and the adventure gradually reveals his own latent telepathic abilities, gifts that mark him as more Darkovan than anyone expected.
Where it sits
- Universe: Darkover
- Series: Darkover core; position 4 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 4 of 22: previous The Bloody Sun (1964) · next The Winds of Darkover (1970)
Sources
- Wikipedia: Darkover series
- sfadb: Marion Zimmer Bradley
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_of_Danger
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