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I've known the name Tanith Lee since I was a child, and I'm vaguely familiar with her cover art and the fact that she had long high fantasy series. I knew she was a classic, I'd just never read any because my parents didn't own any of her books, and my interest wasn't strong enough to go looking for other sff books they didn't already have. (There were more books in their library free that I thought I would like than I could ever get around to, so I mostly only sought to acquire books that had specifically piqued my interest for some reason.)
Anybody who knows Lee's work personally want to make a further recommendation?
Night's Master, from 1978, is the first book of her Flat Earth universe, which I'd heard of, but I didn't know what it was. Flat Earth is a high fantasy world told in a folklore/storybook style that many reviewers describe as 'fairy tale' (but it's really just that the style is reminiscent of the style of fairy tale retellings from the Golden Age of fairytales/illustration), and that others describe as reminiscent of 1001 Nights, but I kinda think this is mostly because there's a Semitic and/or Persian flavor to most of the made-up names. The fantasy societies presented are not especially Middle Eastern/Semitic/Persian beyond the occasional stereotype (a dancing girl, a desert caravan, one single instance of a face veil), and characters are frequently described as white- and pale-skinned and -haired. Of course the style also has a storyteller-like quirk to it in common with 1001 Nights and many other folklore-based stories; but it doesn't have a framing device or anything like that, so the resemblance, while no doubt intended, is... superficial and stereotypical-feeling enough to be rather uncomfortable. You could change the names only and most of these stories would simply be high fantasy, with no cultural flavor left.
TBH a great deal of the fantasy genre was like that in the second wave though, and I say that as someone who loves and grew up on second wave. Orientalism is baked very deeply into the European literary traditions that sff grew out of. I didn't catch any extra offensive features of the borrowed stereotypes, though I'm by no means an expert. I'd say it's about equal to some of the well-intended borrowing I've seen from Zelazny, whose work I love. Which is to say, a bit yikes, and one hopes if they were writing these things today they would do better, but it seems readable.
Anyway, that issue aside, I found this book really fun and groovy and different. There's a bit of similarity to Cherryh's The Dreaming Tree duology that I read last week, in the sort of distance that the narration has from the events presented - fantasy that feels like folktales often has that effect. (So, therefore, it also has in common a lot of reviews from people who find the style boring or couldn't understand it, and rave reviews from people who loved the style.) This story is a great deal more like a collection of fairytales than the Cherryh; it's ALMOST a collection, but the stories are in a very specific order and have a very specific throughline, so they're rather more like an album, or a volume of a comic book. In fact, I'd also compare them to Neil Gaiman's Sandman, but I'd have to reread it again first. And also I have to read the sequels to this one.
One other issue: this is the first time I've had the unpleasant experience of seeing an Anti's review near the top of the Goodreads page. That was more yikes than the book was. Since the book mostly is about events related to a powerful demon, most of the stories end badly for the humans in them, but they do this in a fairytale way which isn't especially upsetting to read; the book should be rated M, and should carry content warnings for noncon, underage, and violence, though. The Anti said something like (please remember to read this in your TERF voice) 'What the heck did I just read? A queer character who turns out to be a pedophile and a woman who gets raped and becomes evil and then the story punishes her even more!' Obviously I know it would be pointless to argue WITH an Anti; however, it's worth providing some content notes... ( Read more... )
Anybody who knows Lee's work personally want to make a further recommendation?
Night's Master, from 1978, is the first book of her Flat Earth universe, which I'd heard of, but I didn't know what it was. Flat Earth is a high fantasy world told in a folklore/storybook style that many reviewers describe as 'fairy tale' (but it's really just that the style is reminiscent of the style of fairy tale retellings from the Golden Age of fairytales/illustration), and that others describe as reminiscent of 1001 Nights, but I kinda think this is mostly because there's a Semitic and/or Persian flavor to most of the made-up names. The fantasy societies presented are not especially Middle Eastern/Semitic/Persian beyond the occasional stereotype (a dancing girl, a desert caravan, one single instance of a face veil), and characters are frequently described as white- and pale-skinned and -haired. Of course the style also has a storyteller-like quirk to it in common with 1001 Nights and many other folklore-based stories; but it doesn't have a framing device or anything like that, so the resemblance, while no doubt intended, is... superficial and stereotypical-feeling enough to be rather uncomfortable. You could change the names only and most of these stories would simply be high fantasy, with no cultural flavor left.
TBH a great deal of the fantasy genre was like that in the second wave though, and I say that as someone who loves and grew up on second wave. Orientalism is baked very deeply into the European literary traditions that sff grew out of. I didn't catch any extra offensive features of the borrowed stereotypes, though I'm by no means an expert. I'd say it's about equal to some of the well-intended borrowing I've seen from Zelazny, whose work I love. Which is to say, a bit yikes, and one hopes if they were writing these things today they would do better, but it seems readable.
Anyway, that issue aside, I found this book really fun and groovy and different. There's a bit of similarity to Cherryh's The Dreaming Tree duology that I read last week, in the sort of distance that the narration has from the events presented - fantasy that feels like folktales often has that effect. (So, therefore, it also has in common a lot of reviews from people who find the style boring or couldn't understand it, and rave reviews from people who loved the style.) This story is a great deal more like a collection of fairytales than the Cherryh; it's ALMOST a collection, but the stories are in a very specific order and have a very specific throughline, so they're rather more like an album, or a volume of a comic book. In fact, I'd also compare them to Neil Gaiman's Sandman, but I'd have to reread it again first. And also I have to read the sequels to this one.
One other issue: this is the first time I've had the unpleasant experience of seeing an Anti's review near the top of the Goodreads page. That was more yikes than the book was. Since the book mostly is about events related to a powerful demon, most of the stories end badly for the humans in them, but they do this in a fairytale way which isn't especially upsetting to read; the book should be rated M, and should carry content warnings for noncon, underage, and violence, though. The Anti said something like (please remember to read this in your TERF voice) 'What the heck did I just read? A queer character who turns out to be a pedophile and a woman who gets raped and becomes evil and then the story punishes her even more!' Obviously I know it would be pointless to argue WITH an Anti; however, it's worth providing some content notes... ( Read more... )
