Marion Zimmer Bradley 1 hr 46 min read

Waking in a bare white room among snow-peaked mountains, Jay Allison faces a chubby, ginger-haired man he has never seen, and a plague on Darkover that only a divided man can help to cure.

Marion Zimmer Bradley's 1958 novel is the first published Darkover story, a rich adventure and space opera. Vivid, humane, foundational. Read it for the beginning of a beloved series, a man of two personalities sent into the mountains of an alien world to win the trailmen's aid against a deadly fever.

In its time

Published in 1958, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

1 hr 46 min read (a novella, a full arc in one sitting or two).

Illustrated by

Irving H. Novick