The Bloody Sun
core novel 1964 Darkover
Record
| First published | 1964 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | novel |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 3.92 (3,095 ratings, collected 2026-09-14) |
| Page count | 372 |
| First-edition ISBN | 9780886776039 |
Synopsis
A man raised off-world on Terra returns to his birth planet of Darkover and discovers, almost by accident, that he possesses strong latent psychic abilities long suppressed by his upbringing among humans who neither recognized nor trained them. His growing powers draw him into the orbit of a psychic training Tower, where matrix technicians work to control and refine such gifts, and into a tangle of half-uncovered mysteries about his true parentage and his hidden ties to one of Darkover's ruling aristocratic families. As he is tested and challenged by Tower life, he must reconcile the Terran world he grew up in with the telepathic, tradition-bound society that turns out to be his birthright.
Where it sits
- Universe: Darkover
- Series: Darkover core; position 3 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 3 of 22: previous The Sword of Aldones (1962) · next Star of Danger (1965)
Sources
- Wikipedia: Darkover series
- sfadb: Marion Zimmer Bradley
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bloody_Sun
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