Book Review: The Anything Tree by John Rackham/The Winds of Darkover by Marion Zimmer Bradley
It’s time for another Ace Double, two books in one! Sometimes you’d get one novel that was much more popular than the other, and this is one of those cases.
This one starts with Selena Ash, socialite, discovering that her spaceship has been sabotaged to strand her in the middle of nowhere. The logical conclusion is that someone has discovered that she’s not the shallow party girl she’s been pretending to be, but a secret agent on a mission. (We’re not told what that mission is just yet.) Selena manages to figure out the sabotage before it’s permanent, but heads to the coordinates anyway to see what’s going on. Rather than hang about in empty space, she lands on a human-livable (according to sensors) planet in the neighborhood.
The planet isn’t in any registry, but it turns out there is one human inhabitant. “Joe” has been here a while, and has learned how to cooperate with the local vegetation. That’s very important as the plants here are mobile and respond negatively to aggression.
Joe would rather be alone, but is kind of stuck with Selena for the time being, as she won’t survive without him. And eventually, the people hunting Selena show up. Now the pair must work together to deal with the intruders. But is the Anything Tree something they need to protect from the enemy, or something they need to protect the enemy from?
It’s good that we see Selena being competent in the first chapter or two, as she’s rendered near helpless for a long time in the alien environment of Jensen’s World, before the last couple of chapters allow her to be competent again. Which is a bit better than Quest for Camelot, which this novel reminded me of certain scenes from. Mind, the ending kind of cuts off the chances of a sequel applying the lessons she’s learned here.
Joe is cut from the “back to nature loner” cloth so often used as romantic leads, and most of his background is easily guessable from clues in the narrative. (Especially when we learn what Selena’s mission is, and how her current circumstances tie into it.)
The villains are two-dimensional, but then they only show up about two-thirds of the way through and have very limited interactions with our main characters.
The most interesting part of the book is the plant and animal life of Jensen’s World; they aren’t exactly compatible with human lifestyles and Joe’s had to learn how to get along with or avoid most of the locals.
This isn’t a bad book by any means, but not a particularly good one, and suffers by comparison with its companion.
This novel takes place on Darkover, a planet where the local humans had natural psionic abilities in a much higher proportion than the people of Terra. As a result, their culture and technology developed along different lines, what Terrans would consider “magic.” However, for some reason, telepathy and the other psychic abilities have been fading from the general population, so a lot of the old technology has been lost, and civilization had somewhat fallen apart.
Relatively recently, the starfaring Terran Empire has made contact with Darkover. While the Empire has an outpost there, the Comyn that’s the closest thing to an overall government of Darkover is concerned about the introduction of Terran superscience destroying their culture, and therefore has limited what they’ll accept. Most of the Darkover stories involve individual Terrans interacting with Darkoveran culture and its “magic.” This story starts with an introduction describing the previous books and their approximate timeline. (Characters from those are mentioned in this novel.)
Our first protagonist is Dan Barron, who was an air traffic controller for the Imperial starport on Darkover. He’s been having hallucinations of being a completely different person in another place and time, and of a chained goddess. But he hasn’t told anyone about this. When he had an episode at work and nearly caused an air disaster that would have killed thousands of people (averted by a skilled pilot who is the hero of another story), Barron still didn’t bring up the hallucinations as he thought they would be treated as a thin excuse.
As a result, Barron has become a pariah in the Terran Station, but the brass recognize it wasn’t a deliberate action, and he has an excellent service record. So while he can’t be an air traffic controller anymore, they don’t want to discharge him either. As it happens, a Comyn lord has decided that optical lenses will not be too disruptive to Darkoveran culture, and has asked for someone to train a select group on lens grinding. And Dan Barron has lens grinding as a hobby! Off he goes. heading into the “real” Darkover for the first time.
The second protagonist is Lady Melitta of Storn Castle. The mountain fastness her family controlled has been taken over by Brynat Scarface, a cunning bandit. Though mighty in battle, Brynat cares little for the responsibilities of lordship to those under them and will be a cruel ruler. Melitta’s blind brother, the Storn of Storn, is holed up in a tower, protected by a forcefield but in deep trance, so he can’t be harmed directly, but also cannot rout the invaders.
Melitta is a very active young woman, skilled at riding and climbing, and has a bit of telepathy herself. When Storn contacts her telepathically and asks her to seek help from a distant city, she’s the one person in the castle who might be able to escape by the ancient secret passages.
The third protagonist is Storn himself. Blind since birth, he’s self-taught in the ancient arts of Darkoveran psychic ability. He knows by peeking into the future that Barron is somehow important to freeing his castle and people, so has been influencing events to that effect. But to fully take control of his destiny, Storn must commit a horrific crime, violating an ancient taboo.
This winds up being more science fantasy than science fiction, using sciencey-sounding explanations to justify what is basically magic. The story is very much in the planetary romance tradition, and quite well written in that type of story.
One especially appreciated feature is that Darkover is not a monoculture, but the different cultures aren’t defined by “hats.” The mountain people have different ideas about politeness and hospitality than the Drytowners, and the Comyn lords have different social rules to both (and have internal disagreements about what level and speed of social and technological change is acceptable.)
There’s a particularly difficult conversation between Storn and Lord Aldaran about the conflict between doing what’s best for everyone in the long run, and helping out an individual or small group in the immediate timeframe. Lord Aldaran has invested fully in preparing for the future, but that means he has no military forces to rescue Storn Castle. The bandit problem does need to be dealt with at some time, but it’s way down the priority list. Storn understands, but can’t be patient for the decade or two it might take before Lord Aldaran and his allies are prepared to free his people.
Surprisingly for a book of this type, there’s relatively little violence. The siege and overthrow of Storn Castle is over by a few days when we first join the story, and our protagonists avoid having to fight as much as possible. The final battle is rather impersonal though the implications are horrific, and we understand why the Comyn bans weapons that go outside a man’s reach.
We only get a little time with Brynat, but it’s clear that while he’s a cruel and brutal man, he also understands the rules of his society and is prepared to follow them when it doesn’t directly interfere with his plans. If he can just hold Storn Castle long enough, and follow the forms, the other mountain people may just shrug and accept him as the new lord of the area. The peasants have had bad lords before, and their affections might eventually be won or worn down.
The ending might be a little too neat, but it works well with this sort of story.
Content note: Death in war, threats of violence. Rape is done off-page, and threatened on-page. Storn briefly considers incest, which is not a taboo among the mountain folk. He steals a horse, and commits something all Darkoverans consider highly taboo (and the Terrans would also consider a crime even if the exact thing isn’t in their laws.) The Drytowners consider women property. Older teens and up.
The Winds of Darkover is available separately, and it’s probably much easier to find that way, or in a Darkover collection. However, if you stumble upon this Ace Double in a used bookstore, it’s worth picking up and reading the flipside as well.
