The Heirs of Hammerfell - Softcover

Bradley, Marion Zimmer

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0886774519 ISBN 13: 9780886774516

Publisher: DAW, 1990

Synopsis

Separated at birth... Nobody alive knew how the feud between Storn and Hammefell had begun, but that didn't stop the fighting. When Storn's men burned Hammerfell's castle, his infant twin sons were separated, and each grew up thinking himself the rightful Duke of Hammerfell. Conn, raised in the mountains by his father's paxman, continued to fight the Storns. Alastair grew up with his mother in Thendara and planned to marry his cousin Floria. But when Conn came to Thendara to seek King Aiden's help and the twins encountered each other, it changed all their lives.

About this title

About the Author:

Marion Zimmer was born in Albany, NY, on June 3, 1930, and married Robert Alden Bradley in 1949. Mrs. Bradley received her B.A. in 1964 from Hardin Simmons University in Abilene, Texas, then did graduate work at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1965-67.

She was a science fiction/fantasy fan from her middle teens, and made her first sale as an adjunct to an amateur fiction contest in Fantastic/Amazing Stories in 1949. She had written as long as she could remember, but wrote only for school magazines and fanzines until 1952, when she sold her first professional short story to Vortex Science Fiction. She wrote everything from science fiction to Gothics, but is probably best known for her Darkover novels.

In addition to her novels, Mrs. Bradley edited many magazines, amateur and professional, including Marion Zimmer Bradley's Fantasy Magazine, which she started in 1988. She also edited an annual anthology called Sword and Sorceress for DAW Books.

Over the years she turned more to fantasy; The House Between the Worlds, although a selection of the Science Fiction Book Club, was "fantasy undiluted". She wrote a novel of the women in the Arthurian legends -- Morgan Le Fay, the Lady of the Lake, and others -- entitled Mists of Avalon, which made the NY Times best seller list both in hardcover and trade paperback, and she also wrote The Firebrand, a novel about the women of the Trojan War. Her historical fantasy novels, The Forest House, Lady of Avalon, Mists of Avalon are prequels to Priestess of Avalon

She died in Berkeley, California on September 25, 1999, four days after suffering a major heart attack. She was survived by her brother, Leslie Zimmer; her sons, David Bradley and Patrick Breen; her daughter, Moira Stern; and her grandchildren.

From Publishers Weekly:

As the first Darkover novel to appear in hardback and the first new series entry in five years, this book carries a heavy burden of expectation, which, unfortunately, it does not fulfill. Set in the era of The Hundred Kingdoms, it tells of the twin sons of the Duke of Hammerfell, separated as children after the destruction of their home and the killing of their father by Ardrin, Lord of Storn, as a result of an ancient blood feud. Alastair, the elder, is raised by his mother, the leronis Erminie in Thendara, the lowland capital of the Hasturs, while Conn, the younger and gifted with telepathy, is saved by an old retainer and grows up with the mountain people of the Hellers. When the two are reunited as adults, Alastair, contemptuous of his brother as a country bumpkin, sets out to reclaim his heritage, while Conn, viewing his twin as a fop and a weakling, stays behind to protect his mother and fall in love with Alastair's promised wife, Floria, a monitor trained to work in the Towers. While Bradley's pleasant tale should please Darkover fans, it lacks the power, depth and darkness that has informed the best of her previous works set under the Bloody Sun.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: DAW
• Publication date: 1990
• ISBN 10: 0886774519
• ISBN 13: 9780886774516
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Number of pages: 304