Two to Conquer

I figured any Marion Zimmer Bradley book deserves its own post, free of almost-comparisons to books that really don't deserve to be compared to each other.  So here is what I really think of Two to Conquer now that I've read it through:



The protagonist Bard is still an ass.  Yes, his character was finally redeemed after 400-some-odd pages in the 505 pages in my copy of the book, in a quick save that spanned maybe 5 pages.  This is way too long to wait for a main-character save in a book that centers itself around this character and his relationships with several people that he's managed to rape and murder throughout his godforsaken life.  At no point in the novel was I ever given a chance to consider the age-old explanation, well he was abused as a child! but I almost missed this omission because it wasn't replaced by more interesting character development.

As the story goes, a Darkover warrior named Bard, a bastard raised by noble family, is promised a glorious future as army general by his king.  Darkover is a world plagued by constant war, since it is divided into almost 100 different kingdoms that all fear each other's control.  In order to secure his position among the nobility, Bard goes overboard trying to seduce and finally rape his betrothed, the king's daughter, which leads to a series of events that involves conjuring up Bard's double from another world.  The double Paul Harrell, pulled from a world more like our own today, contrary to my expectations didn't end up changing Bard's misogynistic and destructive ways at all, he rather seemed to change along with him, but for no apparent reason other than that he suddenly falls in love with yet another woman he planned on seducing/raping.  I won't give away how Bard came across his own epiphany, as this is the crux of the novel that just came too late in the game.

Sadly the story as a whole was not enough to keep me guessing and turning the pages, and I doubt it was meant to be.  By the middle of the novel, I realized there was no reason for me to expect a change in Bard's character, nor was there any hope of a focus on the feelings of the characters that he denigrated, to shake things up a little bit.  And as much as I wanted to learn more about these other characters, their 2-dimensional selves were kept in the background, which to me almost justifies Bard's dismissal of them as just a bunch of whiny women.

So I'm not sure what the purpose of the novel was - to make us sympathize with a rapist/murderer, to show us how all men really think, or that they can even be "saved" from their hatred by divine epiphanies.  But I'm quite sure it didn't come across very well.  I didn't hate it, however, I think it had its moments.  And owing to Amazon reviews of other Darkover books, I might give a couple more of the series a try in the future.

Stay tuned for next week's review of one of Bradley's beloved Avalon novels, Priestess of Avalon!  I can't wait to read it again, myself.