Aleytys is the bastard daughter of Azdar, a village chief on the backwater world of Jaydugar. Abused by her stepmother Qumri, she finds love with an older villager named Vajd, and one night as they lie in each other's arms, he tells her how her mother crashed there in a spaceship and was enslaved by her father as a concubine. But then, when the mysterious star woman fell pregnant, Azdar tried to make her abort the baby, only for the woman, Shareem, to slay the doctor with a gesture of her hand.
Subsequently forced to flee the village when Qumri convinces Azdar to burn Aleytys as a festival Human Sacrifice, Aleytys has only a few clues Shareem left with the young Vajd to guide her when she managed to find a way to escape Jaydugar. Penniless and pregnant, she struggles to survive, to escape her planet, and to learn to use the powerful gifts of her Vryhh heritage. To further complicate matters, her adventures lead her to become bonded irreversibly with the Diadem: an artifact containing the souls of three long-dead adventurers... and which was recently stolen from a race of Insectoid Aliens who very much want it back.
In addition to the nine novels of Aleytys's long journey home, Clayton wrote several more novels in the same setting; by the time of her death in 1998, the Diademverse comprised over half of her entire bibliography. Originally published by DAW Books, the series is unfortunately mostly out of print. In The New '10s, Open Road Media acquired the publishing rights to Diadem along with many of Clayton's other novels and began re-releasing them as ebooks; however, only the first five Diadem novels are currently available.
Books in The 'Verse:
- Diadem from the Stars (1977)
- Lamarchos (1978)
- Irsud (1978)
- Maeve (1979)
- Star Hunters (1980)
- The Nowhere Hunt (1981)
- Ghosthunt (1983)
- The Snares of Ibex (1984)
- Quester's Endgame (1986)
- Shadowplay (1990)
- Shadowspeernote (1990)
- Shadowkill (1991)
- Fire in the Sky (1995)
- The Burning Ground (1995)
- Crystal Heat (1996)
- A Bait of Dreams (1985)
- Shadow of the Warmaster (1988)
Tropes:
- And I Must Scream: The eponymous Diadem was specifically built to enact this as a revenge. It cannot be taken off once put on, and it gradually absorbs and traps the wearer's mind, which remains completely conscious long after the wearer's physical death. It was created by an ex-lover of Harskari, who (impatiently) killed her and threw her body into a volcano. She had to wait until the planet itself was rubble and a passing asteroid miner put on the diadem before she could sense anything outside of herself or make contact with another person again. Shadith, on the other hand, only had to lie around as crumbling bones for a few hundred years; but all three of the Diadem's victims were looking at an eternity in a glass case in a museum until Events Transpired.
- Boy of the Week: Aleytys has a high sex drive and tends to temporarily shack up with one or two men per planet. She has Commitment Issues that make it difficult for her to form lasting relationships: she blames it on being half-Vryhh based on a message her mother left for her on Jaydugar, but her handler in Star Hunters says her Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse.
- Covers Always Lie: Aleytys is a redhead, pointedly so, but is drawn as a blonde on Eric Ladd's Irsud cover.
- Face Full of Alien Wing-Wong: In Irsud, Aleytys is bought from a slave market to be the host to the next nayid queen. They make a point that normally nayids are civilized enough to reproduce using nonsentient animals, but this time they hope the queen will inherit her powers.
- Mind Hive: The spirits of past Diadem wearers are bound irrevocably to the device, and can take over the wearer's body at need. When Aleytys becomes a wearer, there are three: its original owner Harskari (represented as a pair of amber eyes), a scholar whose jealous lover forged it to trap her forever, a bard named Shadith (violet eyes), and a warrior named Swardheld Foersvarat (black eyes) who stumbled on Shadith's then-ancient skeleton.
- Missing Mom: Aleytys's birth mother Shareem escaped Jaydugar when Aleytys was too young to remember her, not wanting the reminder of her brief time as Azdar's Sex Slave but still hoping a curse she (pretended to) pronounce upon the house of Azdar if they harmed her would be enough to protect her. The message Shareem left for her says openly that if Aleytys is anything like her father, Shareem doesn't want to know her. Aleytys in turn ultimately returns to Jaydugar in Maeve to visit her son Sharl for the last time, leaving him with his father Vajd and his new wife after they convince her that the life she's chosen for herself is too dangerous for a child.
- N.G.O. Superpower: The Star Hunters, introduced in Maeve, are a private foundation that are employed as interstellar troubleshooters, mainly by the various trade conglomerates that de facto run much of the galaxy.
- Omniglot: One of Aleytys's powers is the ability to learn foreign languages by reading minds.
- Planetary Romance: Aleytys adventures from planet to planet throughout a galaxy equally inhabited by elemental spirits, Insectoid Aliens, rogue psychics, hostile natives, corrupt megacorporations, and Transplanted Humans of every kind.
- Pregnant Badass: As Aleytys remarks later, she walked across a planet barefoot and pregnant, surviving by her wits and her Psychic Powers.
- Punished for Sympathy: Azdar has Vajd's eyes put out for helping Aleytys escape.
- Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: Downplayed: Aleytys actually has a rather blase attitude to sexual violence despite the fact it's frequently directed at her in the first several books. It's implied that after all the hardship she went through in the first book, she just considers it another risk to deal with rather than anything particularly special. That said, those who force themselves on her do tend to be the worst people in each book in other respects.
- Replacement Goldfish: Discussed. After Vajd tells Aleytys about Shareem, Aleytys becomes angry with him, thinking he wanted Shareem and is just settling for her. Vajd insists that's not true: Shareem was just a Precocious Crush and what he feels for Aleytys is real.
- Sexy Packaging: The Daw Books English covers of Lamarchos
◊ (drawn by Michael Whelan) and Irsud◊ (by Eric Ladd)note show Aleytys fully nude from behind. The cover of Star Hunters (by Michael Mariano) is a little tamer, with Aleytys in a long skirt and a bikini top, The Nowhere Hunt has her fully clothed but with gratuitous Male Gaze of her ass in tight pants, while the cover of Ghosthunt shows her from behind in a translucent red gown. The German covers of Diadem from the Stars and The Nowhere Hunt go even further, with Aleytys's bare chest fully visible. - Telepathic Spacemen: The Vryhh are wandering Human Aliens with a laundry list of superhuman abilities: improved memory, Super-Strength and reflexes, instinctive understanding of machinery, omniglotism, telepathy, Healing Hands, and any number of other powers.
