The Heritage of Hastur
core novel 1975 Darkover
Record
| First published | 1975 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | novel |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 4.03 (3,361 ratings, collected 2026-09-14) |
| Page count | 381 |
| First-edition ISBN | 0879971894 |
Synopsis
Two young heirs of rival Comyn houses, Regis Hastur and Lew Alton, navigate dangerous political intrigue and risky matrix-technology experiments amid Darkover's fraught relationship with the Terran Empire. When forbidden clingfire weapons surface in the border city of Aldaran, a delicate diplomatic mission meant to smooth relations between the houses instead draws Lew into contact with a perilous ancient artifact whose power threatens to reignite old conflicts. Meanwhile Regis, chafing against expectations placed on him as a Hastur heir, confronts corruption within the ruling Guard and doubts about his own reluctant psychic gifts, as both young men are pulled toward roles in Comyn leadership that neither is fully ready to accept.
Where it sits
- Universe: Darkover
- Series: Darkover core; position 9 of 22 in the series' recorded order
- Author: Marion Zimmer Bradley
Awards (verified)
- Nebula Award (Best Novel), 1975: nominated; sfadb registers this under its 1976 award-year listing; nebulas.sfwa.org's own nominated-work page is cited directly rather than resolving the exact ceremony-year label.
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 9 of 22: previous The Spell Sword (1974) · next The Shattered Chain (1976)
Sources
- Wikipedia: Darkover series
- sfadb: Marion Zimmer Bradley
- Wikipedia: The Heritage of Hastur
- The Nebula Awards: The Heritage of Hastur
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Part of the Library. Fields without an identified source are omitted, never guessed.