Thendara House
core novel 1983 Darkover
Record
| First published | 1983 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | novel |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 3.98 (2,967 ratings, collected 2026-09-14) |
| Page count | 414 |
| First-edition ISBN | 0879978570 |
Synopsis
Magda Lorne takes an extended leave from Terran Intelligence Service duty to spend six months living at the Thendara Guildhouse, formally joining the Renunciates, the independent religio-military sisterhood of women who have set aside Darkover's rigid patriarchal customs to live and work on their own terms. Her decision unsettles both her Terran superiors and the Darkovans she has long studied from the outside. Meanwhile Jaelle n'ha Melora, a founding member of the same Guildhouse, struggles with the strains of her marriage to a Terran officer while trying to reconcile conflicting loyalties to her husband, her Guild oath, and her own sense of independence, and the two women's very different paths steadily draw closer together.
Where it sits
- Universe: Darkover
- Series: Darkover core; position 16 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 16 of 22: previous Hawkmistress! (1982) · next City of Sorcery (1984)
Sources
- Wikipedia: Darkover series
- sfadb: Marion Zimmer Bradley
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thendara_House
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