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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Admirable Attempt to Explore Gender Issues, 25 Jun 2005
This review is from: Renunciates: Thendara House (Daw Science Fiction) (Mass Market Paperback)
The second book in the Saga of the Renunciates (collected in a later volume), Thendara House contains both good and bad elements of MZB's concern with gender issues. On the plus side, we see an in depth look at the combined Sisterhood of the Sword and Priestesses of Avarra, whose coming together was implied in Two to Conquer. They have now become the Free Amazons, or Renunciates, less a military than a female collective of various professionals. Midwives and mercenaries provide the most powerful characters, as the women from The Shattered Chain are found once more, older and increasingly detailed. However, on the down side the characters seem to often become mere mouthpieces for MZB's didactic intrusions, which while interesting as polemic sit uneasily within a fantasy novel. These work much better when MZB wove them into the plot and the characters, which she also does here, but there are a number of long dialogues which have the feeling of an essay plonked uncomfortably into the middle of a fantasy novel. Still, Jaelle and Magda draw upon your affections, and you can't help but feel some small emotion for the increasing difficulties of their trials. Note that in Darkovan chronology, this book comes after The Spell Sword and The Forbidden Tower, so if you have the Saga of the Renunciates collected volume, read those two before moving on in the trilogy.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Dare to question conventional thinking..., 23 April 1997
By A Customer
This review is from: Renunciates: Thendara House (Daw Science Fiction) (Mass Market Paperback)
The second in the series of stories depicting Magdalen Lorne, the Terran struggling to belong to a world in which her people are extremly distrusted, and Jaelle n'ha Melora, the native struggling against her expected duty and place in feminine society. Thrown together in the first novel, Magda and Jaelle become fast friends, the only two who do not belong anywhere and find comfort only in each other. Thendara House is the story of these women, one a native trying to work and leave peacefully with the alien Terrans, and one a Terran trying to pass successfully as a native, who discover that one cannot be what she is not, and one cannot escape that which is destined to be. Struggling to control their untrained laran (ESP), they find peace only in the crux of disaster, and finally learn that they cannot always rely on their own stregnth to survive. A must read for the Darkover fan, and ignorant "Terran" alike.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
If this is your first Darkover book...It won't be your last!, 15 Sep 1996
By A Customer
This review is from: Renunciates: Thendara House (Daw Science Fiction) (Mass Market Paperback)
Years have passed since I read Thendara House for the first time.
I have read it at least five times since. The essence of humanity
is revealed from two perspectives; Technological vs. pre-industrial
civilization. I find myself abhoring the trappings of "progress"
and the subsequent belief that people must move forward at all costs.
I, like Magda, quickly learned in Thendara House that a person can be incapable
of understanding the subtleties of human behavior and responses,
but more importantly, come to understand that there are as many ways to live as there are people living.
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