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Another escapist (in the good sense) Darkover novel; this one is set post-rediscovery, and one of the main characters is a Terran who is assimilating into Darkover society. So we get to watch him experiencing culture clashes involving nudity taboos and privacy among telepaths and when it's okay to make love to your best friend's wife.
(Relatively often, as it turns out; in fact this particular Darkover novel is to a great extent about sex, and has at least one quite memorable softcore four-way love scene. Entirely tasteful, though, and fully integral to the narrative and not egregious or anything.)
It's also a direct sequel to The Spell Sword, but I haven't read that in years and it doesn't matter. (In fact I might go dig that up and read it sometime soon; I seem to be on a Darkover kick recently.)
In terms of Darkoverian chronology, it's the story of how four renegades (one of them from Earth) figure out a viable alternative to the rather nasty totalitarian set of traditions that govern the use of psionics on Darkover at the time of rediscovery, through cleverness and adaptability and the triumph of love (and the aforementioned group cuddling) and like that. One of the neat things about the Darkover novels is that not only is there a rich underlying tradition behind each one, but the traditions change (slowly and realistically) over the many centuries that the books cover.
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