Black Trillium (The Saga of the Trillium Book 1)

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

Ebook, 2015

Status

Available

Publication

Open Road Media Sci-Fi & Fantasy (2015), Edition: Reprint, 372 pages

Description

Three royal sisters must undertake separate but equally perilous quests in order to defeat the dark sorcery that has ravaged their kingdom in book one of the Saga of the Trillium, an ingenious collaboration by three classic names in fantasy fiction. Peace has long reigned in Ruwenda thanks to the magical protection of the Archimage Binah. The realm's devoted guardian is aging, however, and her magic is weakening. When the kingdom's triplet princesses were still infants, Binah gave each of them the mystical power of the Black Trillium. But the unthinkable occurs too soon, and Ruwenda is overrun by the ravaging armies of neighboring Labornok before the sisters, Haramis, Kadiya, and Anigel, have time to learn how to use their great gift. Forced to flee, the young princesses must follow their separate destinies through a dangerous and unfamiliar world of Oddlings and enemies-for only the combined power of three magical talismans can help them defeat the malevolent sorcerer who has brought chaos and death to their once-idyllic home. But it will take new kinds of strength and wisdom to confront the great evil that has descended on the World of the Three Moons. Marion Zimmer Bradley, Julian May, and Andre Norton, three of the most honored names in fantasy fiction, have joined forces to create an extraordinary world and culture in the first book of the remarkable Saga of the Trillium, a breathtaking tale of duty, peril, love, and magic. This title is part of the hoopla BONUS BORROWS COLLECTION! Through the month of August, you can borrow this title without using any of your monthly hoopla Instant Borrows!.… (more)

Rating

(227 ratings; 3.3)

Media reviews

Un roman agréable, bien mené, avec trois héroïnes attachantes et une histoire pas trop basique. C'est du conte de fées, mais de haut niveau. Les trois auteures ont chacune leur style, ce qui empêche la monotonie, et le souffle de l'aventure est là. Un seul regret : passer d'une histoire à
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l'autre sans cesse amène parfois un sentiment de frustration...
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User reviews

LibraryThing member worldsedge
I don't think I've ever read a book this long that said so little. What plot there was was incoherent. On top of that the dialogue that made me wince to read it, and the ending was so abrupt it made me laugh. Almost like they'd contracted for 490 pages, and stopped as quickly as they could once
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that goal was reached.

This trainwreck is proof positive that group written books emerge like Frankenstein monsters as an assortment of ill-fitted parts stitched together. The sad part is there MIGHT have been something here, but what ACTUALLY was put out is about as close to garbage as I've ever seen this side of a self-published work. And those don't typically have the benefit of any editing.

I could say more, but why bother? Enough time has been wasted, onward to something better.
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LibraryThing member heinous-eli
If read for plot, coherency, and character development, this book is terrible. I read it more as a competition between three female writers as to control of a plot and it was much more amusing.
LibraryThing member kpickett
A pretty standard fantasy story about princess, each with thier own colored flower, attempt to reunite their fallen kingdom. Not particularily gripping but and ok read for fantasy readers.
LibraryThing member rbtwinky
I was greatly disappointed by this book. MZB has been one of my favorite authors for a long time, and the promise of a fantasy story with not one but three female protagonists seemed too good to be true. Maybe it was. The story was so incredibly predictable. Each of the three sisters went through
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the exact same things, just with slightly different colorations. I have no desire to read a book three times in a row, no matter how good it might be. Unsurprisingly, the character development was extremely shallow, and the writing did not draw me into the story easily. However, I do think that this would be easy, accessible fantasy to a young woman.
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LibraryThing member jshillingford
I chose this book because I'm a fan of 2 of the three authors (I have never read Andre Norton). I love Bradley's historical fiction, and Julian May writes some of the best science fiction I have ever had the pleasure to read. Thankfully, this is one of those rare occasions where a book written by
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more than one author is unnoticeable as such. The story-telling is seamless in this fantasy saga of three sisters who embark on a quest to discover themselves and save their country in the process. This novel spawned several sequels written individually by the authors. Great book for YA readers, but sadly out of print.
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LibraryThing member dragonasbreath
I enjoyed it. It was lighthearted fun, the sisters are all different, the authors did a wonderful job of making it look like there is only one author although these authors are seldom collaborators...they will sometimes put their name on a protege's book to help break the market, but they seldom
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collaborate.
I enjoyed it enough that when I saw the first sequel I purchased it as well.
there are officially 3 of them - one produced by each of the authors following their character after this book.
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LibraryThing member Silvernfire
Okay, I tried. I did try to enjoy this book. But the first word to pop into my head when trying to read it was "overwrought" and I had to force my way through it, which isn't good. I'm surprised that three authors with so much experience produced a book that was so flat and predictable.
LibraryThing member Dani12
Predictable, unoriginal and flat. The sisters felt two dimensional in character and the plot was obvious. It is not a long read but I struggled through it nonetheless. I would not recommend it.
LibraryThing member David.Alfred.Sarkies
This is another of those books that I read a long time ago that I can't remember anything about: in fact I never actually remembered reading this book until I saw it sitting on the shelf of a second hand bookshop when (for some unknown reason) I was running my eye over the science-fiction/fantasy
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shelf (maybe because I was looking for something vaguely interesting, or at least the DS9 books that were set after the series, not that they would be any good, but then I can't really comment on books that I haven't read).
Maybe that should have been a clue as to why this book wasn't any good. I can still remember books that I read in English in high school many, many years ago (Lord of the Flies for instance, or that book about the kid who stole a motorcycle and then proceeded to kill an old lady) but this book, I cannot remember anything about it. However, by perusing the comments on Goodreads I have noticed that not many other people though very highly of it either. Okay, it had three female protagonists and was written by three female authors, but that is not necessarily going to make a book any good.
What makes me wonder though is how multiple authors sit down and write a single book. Do they write a chapter each, or do they hand each other parts of the book to write, and then come together and attempt, in some way, to merge the stories together. Or, as I suspect was the case in this book, they each take a main character (and maybe some minor characters), go away and develop them, and then use their developments to draft the book. I also suspect that they will also sit down around a table and try to nut out how the book will go (though that is probably the easiest part since a lot of fantasy writers these days simply take the plot of Lord of the Rings and change the names, isn't that right Terry Brooks?).
I sort of wonder if there is anything else I can say about this book, and I personally don't think there is. It is sort of like one of those things where you get three famous authors together to collaborate on a work, and the work ends up failing abysmally. It is not really the authors fault, but then again I must admit that of those three authors, this is probably the only book of theirs that I have ever actually read (though I did read another book of Norton's recently and was not all that impressed with it).
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LibraryThing member JohnFair
I was really unsure about this - the book is fairly clearly written for teen girls, and I'm neither :-) The story starts out as looking like it's going to be a standard fantasy epic, with a kingdom overwhelmed by it's hated neighbour with the aid of an evil sorcerer, and the rightful heir forced to
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flee to the marshlands of her lost kingdom along with her fellow triplets where they have to learn their innate skills in order to win back the kingdom.. Some of the magic they employ, especially the sorcerer, looks to be a lost technology, though, and it's clear that the humans are not necessarily native to this world
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Language

Original publication date

1990
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