The World Wreckers (1971) 215 pages by Marion Zimmer Bradley.

This is the first one of Bradley's Darkover novels that I've read. Looking at her wikipedia entry it's the sixth that she wrote. Darkover is a planet that has remained mostly free of Terran influence. It's the only planet with developed telepaths.

The story begins with some entity hiring Andrea Closson to "wreck" Darkover. The deal being that the Darkovan's have refused to join the Terran empire, and that if through a series of "natural" disasters, they would have to come and ask for aid. In order to pay for the aid they would have to join the Terran Empire, and the entities who hired the world wreckers would stand to gain much when Darkover was exploited.

There are a couple of mentions of Andrea and what she has done, but most of the story follows Regis Hastur and the group of offworld telepaths that he has asked the Terran's to find and bring to Darkover. It's the chemistry between David, Jason, Keral (a chieri, a native race of Darkover), Missy, Connor, Desideria, that is the real story. Regis does get the idea that something deliberate is being done to the planet, but there is no mention of him searching for whoever is responsible.

There were a couple of places where the story seemed to have a gap. Maybe it's just this cold that I have, and I missed it, and I didn't really get what happened at the end. I reread that section and I still don't get it. Regis gets the telepaths together so that they can sell their services to the Terran's in order to pay for repairing the damage to the planet, I get that. They have a fesitival, that's fine, it's one of their holidays. Andrea thinks this is her chance to finish the job of wiping out all the telepaths at once. OK. It's what happens next that seemed to be really loose.

Perhaps if I read a couple of the earlier books, I'd have some background to explain that behavior. Or maybe it's because it was written in 1971. I am going to reserve judgement until I read more about Darkover.