After my big reread of Anne McCaffrey, I thought maybe I should revisit Bradley. Darkover is in many ways a more complex universe than Pern, and it has been many years since I read any of them. I happened to spot this in my Kindle library and decided to start there, although it isn't a Darkover story. Surprise! I don't think I had ever read it. Or if I had, I had totally forgotten it.
Frankly, it wouldn't be amazing if I had forgotten it. I may have started it and not finished it. It isn't bad, it just isn't nearly as good as most of Bradley's work. I think our Latin textbook, with a running story set in the last days of Pompeii, was more convincing. The characters seem a little flat and the plot is not particularly compelling. I was sure that I had it on the shelf, but I couldn't find it. I did find a two-volume version called Web of Light and Web of Dark, but not the full piece.
Bradley did a whole line of pseudo historical novels. Besides this, there is The Mists of Avalon and its sequel, the title of which escapes me at the moment, obviously set in Arthurian legend. There is another called The Firebrand that I think is set in ancient Troy. There are probably others which I don't remember or have never encountered.
I didn't sit down here to trash the book, but it was definitely disappointing from a writer like Bradley.
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