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cimoreneI'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...
Actually, the part of Zorayas' (the woman's) story that bothers me most is the implication that there's some sort of genetic seed of evil that can't be overcome by being brought up by a good parent. Of course there is a genetic component to, say, psychopathy or sociopathy, and also to malignant narcissism. But they usually require an environmental trigger on the order of trauma and neglect in early childhood, whereas Zorayas, though secretly the daughter of a tyrannical deposed despot, is raised by a gentle herbalist priest hermit magician who teaches her the healing arts. She doesn't have a single negative experience except chronic pain until she's a teenager, and then she suffers, like, one incident of mockery and violence (which IS very very traumatic of course, but it's just one), a couple of months of social rejections and shunning from villagers who won't accept her as a substitute herbalist, and then one violent horrible assault, and that turns her to the dark side. She didn't even know about her origin until she was a teenager. She immediately starts learning everything she can about the dark arts with the aim of becoming a tyrannical despot and conquering the known world! Uh. Okay...? I mean I know it's fantasy and the science of psychology wasn't quite where it is now in the 1980s, but I can't help thinking that this would look a bit dubious even then, unless you take genetic evil for granted.
However, I am still looking forward to the rest of this series.
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...
- The underage part concerns one male human character who is 16?17? and past puberty (though legally underage in some jurisdictions) and one male demon character who is older than time and also is fundamentally bad, because he's a demon. His actions, including this scene, are not intended to be read in a positive light. Still, it could trigger or squick some.
- Even if the demon were a human character, the fact that the other character is a new adult in the story's context would make him one of those creepy guys who dates teenagers, which is not the same as a pedophile, although it is also gross and arguably immoral. But then, so is being a demon.
- The rape scene isn't especially explicit either, and can be skimmed past in a page. The woman who is raped definitely is evil afterwards, but the rape doesn't make her evil, though it is presented as a kind of last straw before she turns to the dark side.
- She isn't punished by the story, because this isn't that kind of story. A story that punishes characters is by definition a story with a moral lesson to impart; but the stories in this book are stories about how bad things happen to all sorts of people regardless of justice. Some characters learn from things that happen and survive, and others don't, and many others do nothing wrong and suffer horribly anyway. It is a story with a lot of suffering, but it isn't deserved or motivated suffering, and she does less of it than most of the characters who do nothing wrong.
- She does ultimately have her downfall (a result of revenge), but she goes out on top of the world pretty much.
- The story doesn't draw a moral from this, nor does it infer anything about rape and suffering in general. However, this is the only rape shown on the page in the book, and this evil powerful woman is one of the major characters. It's possible to question that legitimately, or simply to skip rape stories in principle, without imputing an agenda that the story doesn't have.
Actually, the part of Zorayas' (the woman's) story that bothers me most is the implication that there's some sort of genetic seed of evil that can't be overcome by being brought up by a good parent. Of course there is a genetic component to, say, psychopathy or sociopathy, and also to malignant narcissism. But they usually require an environmental trigger on the order of trauma and neglect in early childhood, whereas Zorayas, though secretly the daughter of a tyrannical deposed despot, is raised by a gentle herbalist priest hermit magician who teaches her the healing arts. She doesn't have a single negative experience except chronic pain until she's a teenager, and then she suffers, like, one incident of mockery and violence (which IS very very traumatic of course, but it's just one), a couple of months of social rejections and shunning from villagers who won't accept her as a substitute herbalist, and then one violent horrible assault, and that turns her to the dark side. She didn't even know about her origin until she was a teenager. She immediately starts learning everything she can about the dark arts with the aim of becoming a tyrannical despot and conquering the known world! Uh. Okay...? I mean I know it's fantasy and the science of psychology wasn't quite where it is now in the 1980s, but I can't help thinking that this would look a bit dubious even then, unless you take genetic evil for granted.
However, I am still looking forward to the rest of this series.
(no subject)
Date: 10 Feb 2022 04:56 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 10 Feb 2022 07:37 pm (UTC)I did notice The Silver Metal Lover showing up in the related works somewhere though, I think.
(no subject)
Date: 10 Feb 2022 07:58 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 11 Feb 2022 04:09 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 10 Feb 2022 10:47 pm (UTC)Silver Metal Lover played off robots, and humanized the AI (the robot part was pretty much cosmetic) remarkably. It's a future world with a teenage girl POV, so the YA label gets applied, but the background is messy, mean, colorful futurism with a disaster going on.
There's a vampire take-off, which I thought was kind of dry (but it's not Red as Blood; that's a fairytale collection, maybe one you've read).
There's a ghost story, Kill the Dead, not YA at all, informally known as "fantasy ghostbusters."
There's a very weird future utopia, Drinking Sapphire Wine and Don't Bite the Sun, also could be labelled YA for the POV (which to me reads as a 20-something character coping with extended adolescence), but the plot is something else entirely.
Sung in Shadow is a rewrite of R&J, with thoroughly novelistic background and maybe hints of folk magic.
Cyrion is another story collection all with the same lead character, in the vein of epic fantasy.
This doesn't scratch the surface of Tanith Lee's oeuvre, but it points to a different branch of what she wrote. There's also some more-or-less standard SF (for the 70s and 80s), but a lot of it felt flat for me, even though I don't think it was badly written. I suspect I wasn't ready for social commentary back then.
(no subject)
Date: 11 Feb 2022 12:39 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 11 Feb 2022 04:10 pm (UTC)