Reading Darkover in the 21st Century: Star of Danger

[patrick_morris_miller]

Star of Danger

First publication in 1965 by Ace Books

Read from DAW omnibus A World Divided (DAW Collectors #1278), published 2003

Time period: Against the Terrans - The First Age (Recontact)

Two teens, one Terran and one Darkovan, get into and out of peril and adventure, from the Trade Town to the backcountry and places between.

Sixteen year old Larry Montray's father Wade is transferred by the Terran civil service to Darkover. Given the choice by his father, Larry accompanies him on the journey rather than stay home and go to boarding school. On the long trip, he has the extremely good sense to learn the appropriate language.

(Casta and cahuenga aren't named in the story.)

Nearly immediately on landing, Larry meets and befriends Kennard Alton, who 'saves' Larry from a gang of Darkovan bullies in the appropriate Darkovan way: he demands the bullies choose one of their number for a fair fight, who proceeds to kick Larry's ass. Impressed by Larry doing his best to hold his own, Kennard invites him home for dinner.

Larry meets Kennard's father Valdir, is invited to swap his ruined Terran togs for Darkovan castoffs, and spends the night - causing Wade to flip when Larry comes home in the morning; he forbids Larry to leave the Terran enclave again. But Larry decides it is better to keep his promise to the Altons to return then take his medicine than it would be to obey his father and insult a Darkovan household. He brings Kennard the books he promised to lend, meets the imposing Lorill Hastur (!), and comes home to face his father's wrath like a man.

This gets Larry good and grounded, and - whoops! The Montrays are called to the Terran Legate's office, where Wade is told that the Altons are Very Important Darkovans, and the Darkovan Council itself is quite offended at the insult he's given to the Altons and Kennard by treating them as unworthy of their son's company. Now Larry has been invited to spend a season at the Alton country estate - the first time a Terran has ever been welcomed beyond the Terran Trade Town.

Larry's arm needs no twisting, and now Wade dare not object. What follows is a right jolly boys' adventure in which Larry fights a forest fire, is kidnapped by bandits and rescued by Kennard, is captured with Kennard by trailmen and wins their freedom by his wits (Prime Directive schmime directive), survives the countryside with inadequate gear, and meets one of the chieri - the reclusive, fading Darkovan indigenes who remember humanity's arrival on a stranded spaceship.

And all along, telepathic abilities are stirring within the red headed Larry. Hmm, I wonder where those came from.

Continuity

In Star of Danger, we meet many characters who will feature in other works, particularly Larry Montray (who will more often be called Lerrys, the most similar Darkovan name) and the two Altons, Kennard and Valdir.

Now, Star of Danger is the fourth published Darkover work, but I have skipped over both Sword of Aldones and The Bloody Sun, as both were rewritten later and I lack the energy to do parallel reads of their texts. But it is in those two stories that Bradley developed the bulk of the Darkovan worldbuilding that appears in this book which was not present in The Planet Savers - in fact, those two stories lay out most of the setting of Darkover at the time of Terran recontact. At this remove from when I first read the series, I'm not able to state that anything in Star of Danger was not first introduced in them - and the mind-magic with which Kennard deals with the bandit Cyrillon's starstone is a trifle compared to the matter of the Sharra Matrix from Sword of Aldones.

Other than recurring characters, what is noteworthy in this book is the chieri Narad-zinie's soliloquy in which the boys receive a canned lesson in the history of humans on Darkover, how the chieri ancestry of the first Hastur led to human laran and the seven Domains, and how humans selectively bred themselves to create the particular powers of each family.

Other notes:

• Larry's school library on Terra states that one of Darkover's exports is "fine metals for precision tools". Darkover is usually presented as being metal poor.
• The Compact is explicitly referred to, though Varzil the Good is not.
• The count of nonhuman sapients of Darkover increases, as we encounter a kyrri (created, we later learn, by humans during the Ages of Chaos) and the chieri, siblings of the trailmen.
• Terran phones still seem to be the kind you put down when you want to stop talking. No evidence of video. My bet is they still have cords.
• The Legate notes that, by Darkovan reckoning, Larry is a man - and thinks Wade should act accordingly.
• Valdir states clearly the Darkovan principle that a man fights his own fights, and is unimpressed by Terran institutions like police - and is probably impressed that Larry was willing to stand up to a Darkovan tough, though he does not say it out loud.
• Larry observes that the firefighting team does not differentiate rich from poor, aristocrat from common. On Darkover a forest fire is potential disaster for everyone and it is appalling that bandits would set one as a distraction. (See Rediscovery, where even bandits think lighting a forest is beyond the pale. Or don't.)
• Cyrillon has six fingers on each hand, suggesting he has strong chieri inheritance and explaining how he could use his starstone so effectively.
• According to Kennard, it takes a very skilled laran user to read the mind of someone they don't share a language with. Remember this next novel.

Consent issues

The most unpleasant event in the story is Larry's capture by Cyrillon and his bandits. Particularly, his left - dominant - arm and hand are bound in an attempt to prevent him from escaping; for the rest of the story they will be sore and numb.

The captivity among the trailmen is much gentler. The boys just may never be allowed to return to their own people because they use fire. Quite reasonable, you'll agree?

The friction between Wade and Larry over whether he may leave the safety of the Terran compound is better done. On the one hand, it is understandable that Wade might consider the Trade City too dangerous - and Larry does pick up a black eye at the hands of Darkovan toughs. But Larry makes the very adult decision that honor must come before obedience - but that it also demands he accept his father's punishment for disobedience.

Collected miscellanea

Riffing off that last paragraph, it seems to me that Bradley could have submitted Star of Danger to Scribner's as a juvenile, and Larry's disobedience might easily be the only element that Alice Dalgliesh would have balked at. We have here a fair decent adventure with adolescent male protagonists and not one whiff of S-E-X - the principal function played by female characters is to not exist.

Seven years and numerous professional publications have passed since The Planet Savers and, as one would expect, Bradley's writing has become more polished. The story readily permits itself to be read.

Concluding thoughts

Star of Danger seems to be a clear improvement over The Planet Savers; while "boy becomes man" is not a terribly ambitious plot, it is more relatable than "man takes the straight path through a modicum of challenge and danger and gets the girl". And Darkover is not simply painted on screens now; there is a depth to the world, a feeling that, while Larry's questions have been answered, we are inspired to ask some of our own and they may have answers. (And some of them have already been answered in The Sword of Aldones and The Bloody Sun, but in this reread we must be patient.)