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Tales from the Flat Earth #2
Death's Master
In those days the world was flat and demons dwelled beneath who walked among the cities and kingdoms of the surface with powers and mischiefs to please themselves.
Among those demons there were two who were mighty above all others. One was Azhrarn, Night's Master, and the other was the lord of darkness whose name was Uhlume, Death's Master.
This is Tanith Lee's epic fantasy novel of the strangest exploit of these two demon-lords among the men and women of Earth. It is a novel of odd erotic desires, of twisted ambitions, and superhuman feats. It is the story of two boys who became men under the stresses of witcheries and wonders that surpass even the fabled lore of the Arabian Nights ... and the story also of queens and witches, of kings and commoners - and of the two terrible lords of darkness.
Tanith Lee, who has been called "a brilliant supernova in the firmament of SF" (Progressef, Holland), now proves that she is also the brightest star in the sky of modern fantasy.
Among those demons there were two who were mighty above all others. One was Azhrarn, Night's Master, and the other was the lord of darkness whose name was Uhlume, Death's Master.
This is Tanith Lee's epic fantasy novel of the strangest exploit of these two demon-lords among the men and women of Earth. It is a novel of odd erotic desires, of twisted ambitions, and superhuman feats. It is the story of two boys who became men under the stresses of witcheries and wonders that surpass even the fabled lore of the Arabian Nights ... and the story also of queens and witches, of kings and commoners - and of the two terrible lords of darkness.
Tanith Lee, who has been called "a brilliant supernova in the firmament of SF" (Progressef, Holland), now proves that she is also the brightest star in the sky of modern fantasy.
348 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published February 1, 1979
73 people are currently reading
1741 people want to read
About the author
Tanith Lee
614 books1,938 followersTanith Lee was a British writer of science fiction, horror, and fantasy. She was the author of 77 novels, 14 collections, and almost 300 short stories. She also wrote four radio plays broadcast by the BBC and two scripts for the UK, science fiction, cult television series "Blake's 7."
Before becoming a full time writer, Lee worked as a file clerk, an assistant librarian, a shop assistant, and a waitress.
Her first short story, "Eustace," was published in 1968, and her first novel (for children) The Dragon Hoard was published in 1971.
Her career took off in 1975 with the acceptance by Daw Books USA of her adult fantasy epic The Birthgrave for publication as a mass-market paperback, and Lee has since maintained a prolific output in popular genre writing.
Lee twice won the World Fantasy Award: once in 1983 for best short fiction for “The Gorgon” and again in 1984 for best short fiction for “Elle Est Trois (La Mort).” She has been a Guest of Honour at numerous science fiction and fantasy conventions including the Boskone XVIII in Boston, USA in 1981, the 1984 World Fantasy Convention in Ottawa, Canada, and Orbital 2008 the British National Science Fiction convention (Eastercon) held in London, England in March 2008. In 2009 she was awarded the prestigious title of Grand Master of Horror.
Lee was the daughter of two ballroom dancers, Bernard and Hylda Lee. Despite a persistent rumour, she was not the daughter of the actor Bernard Lee who played "M" in the James Bond series of films of the 1960s.
Tanith Lee married author and artist John Kaiine in 1992.
Before becoming a full time writer, Lee worked as a file clerk, an assistant librarian, a shop assistant, and a waitress.
Her first short story, "Eustace," was published in 1968, and her first novel (for children) The Dragon Hoard was published in 1971.
Her career took off in 1975 with the acceptance by Daw Books USA of her adult fantasy epic The Birthgrave for publication as a mass-market paperback, and Lee has since maintained a prolific output in popular genre writing.
Lee twice won the World Fantasy Award: once in 1983 for best short fiction for “The Gorgon” and again in 1984 for best short fiction for “Elle Est Trois (La Mort).” She has been a Guest of Honour at numerous science fiction and fantasy conventions including the Boskone XVIII in Boston, USA in 1981, the 1984 World Fantasy Convention in Ottawa, Canada, and Orbital 2008 the British National Science Fiction convention (Eastercon) held in London, England in March 2008. In 2009 she was awarded the prestigious title of Grand Master of Horror.
Lee was the daughter of two ballroom dancers, Bernard and Hylda Lee. Despite a persistent rumour, she was not the daughter of the actor Bernard Lee who played "M" in the James Bond series of films of the 1960s.
Tanith Lee married author and artist John Kaiine in 1992.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 115 reviews
October 21, 2020
Death's Master is like a luxurious, dark fairy tale most decidedly not for children nor those with easily offended sensibilities. Unlike the series of short tales in Lee's first Flat Earth book, Night's Master, this is a long form epic, which she deftly weaves from disparate strands. Nobody is innocent here, and there are no silver linings. The gods and demons of Flat Earth fear one thing, boredom. Gifted, or cursed, as they are with immortality. Lo, beware, for to stave off boredom they screw no less with each other than with humankind. Chaos, death and suffering inevitably follow. Ultimately, this is a story of struggle, even outright conflict, against death, and the terrible punishment that immortality, the only weapon that can be wielded against it, inflicts on the human soul by slowly leaching it of vitality, blunting the emotions and atrophying the spirit.
For in burning off mortal weakness, mortal luck and happiness were also burned. It was some antique law of the gods, older than time. Men could not have too much. Ecstasy and vulnerability belonged in the same dish. A fear the cup would be snatched away was what gave the wine its savor, and as Zhirem’s cup was sure, so was his joylessness.
Death's Master is full of despair, cruelty, malevolence and unending cycles of vengeance. Also beauty and love, as well as eroticism, much of it offputting. The depiction of Uhlume, the lord of death, is chilling to the bone. Portrayed as utterly implacable and wracked with melancholic despair, he is both wholly unsympathetic yet internally wrought with a compassion never glimpsed nor expressed. At one point, seething with rage and contempt he self destructs in what is an unforgettable scene.
"Uhlume's pale eyes were wide. They were dry and blindingly bright. Facially expressionless, it was his hands that spoke. From the tips of them, blood burst. The blood was oddly as red as the blood of a man. His brain—who could tell that? Perhaps he strove to make in himself this wild and static bleeding anger, because humanity expected it of him. Where the drops of blood fell, the ground cracked. The red speckled his white garments. His eyes were so wide now, his face was taking on an expression at last: madness."
There are many other deliciously dark, unforgettable characters including Lylas, the 200 year old immortal witch in the body of a 15 year old girl. Conniving, selfish, cunning, yet parts of her psyche frozen in time as the child she was when immortalized. Also, of course, Narsen, the leopard queen of Merh, seething with an unquenchable loathing for everyone and everything.
"Narasen gazed at her reflection with no compassion. She loathed the world and the un-world alike, the gods, humanity and demons and even Lord Death, and she had not exempted herself from the catalog."
Lee's writing is mesmerizing and full of emotional resonance. Her words are also full of these poetic barbs that leap off the page and stab you in the brain.
For in burning off mortal weakness, mortal luck and happiness were also burned. It was some antique law of the gods, older than time. Men could not have too much. Ecstasy and vulnerability belonged in the same dish. A fear the cup would be snatched away was what gave the wine its savor, and as Zhirem’s cup was sure, so was his joylessness.
Death's Master is full of despair, cruelty, malevolence and unending cycles of vengeance. Also beauty and love, as well as eroticism, much of it offputting. The depiction of Uhlume, the lord of death, is chilling to the bone. Portrayed as utterly implacable and wracked with melancholic despair, he is both wholly unsympathetic yet internally wrought with a compassion never glimpsed nor expressed. At one point, seething with rage and contempt he self destructs in what is an unforgettable scene.
"Uhlume's pale eyes were wide. They were dry and blindingly bright. Facially expressionless, it was his hands that spoke. From the tips of them, blood burst. The blood was oddly as red as the blood of a man. His brain—who could tell that? Perhaps he strove to make in himself this wild and static bleeding anger, because humanity expected it of him. Where the drops of blood fell, the ground cracked. The red speckled his white garments. His eyes were so wide now, his face was taking on an expression at last: madness."
There are many other deliciously dark, unforgettable characters including Lylas, the 200 year old immortal witch in the body of a 15 year old girl. Conniving, selfish, cunning, yet parts of her psyche frozen in time as the child she was when immortalized. Also, of course, Narsen, the leopard queen of Merh, seething with an unquenchable loathing for everyone and everything.
"Narasen gazed at her reflection with no compassion. She loathed the world and the un-world alike, the gods, humanity and demons and even Lord Death, and she had not exempted herself from the catalog."
Lee's writing is mesmerizing and full of emotional resonance. Her words are also full of these poetic barbs that leap off the page and stab you in the brain.
March 22, 2022
Strange and elegant imagery. Vast and fantastic structures. Bizarre renderings of sensual and exotic creatures. Mythic forays into imaginative wonderlands. Medieval cruelty, deep dungeons and mermaid palaces, kingdoms within kingdoms. Immense troves of world building. The adventurous spirit. Wild and absurd reversals and leaps of fancy. These are the qualities I enjoy in Tanith Lee's writing.
A worthy follow up to her first installment in the series, Night's Master, this book lacked some of the cohesive pathos of that volume, felt a little more randomized, less focused. But it contained all of the creative force of the original, gave us a longer dip into her brilliant atmospheric indulgence, and constituted another Gothic masterpiece, in my opinion. The structure of the interconnected stories allowed the author to explore several facets of her doomed and hallowed world. She converts primal fears into breathing characters, injecting them with the insecurities and pride of men and woman-tropes we have seen, but delivered forcefully to amusing and alarming effect, while these players shift through complex layers of social diversity and exhibit behaviors both arcane and mundane, sorcerous and violent. The adversities of immortals and the puerile schemes of mortals consume the bulk of this book's riveting plots. But more than the solid storytelling, we are offered an intense immersive experience, reminiscent of the best pulp sci-fi, the Golden Age charm, the vintage, suggestive, and passionate ideals of a bygone era, when the genre still possessed great, untapped mysteries.
This second book was a slower burn, focusing on the god of death, Uhlume, and Simmu and other VIPs in the grand dramas and foolish endeavors of Flat Earth, seeking after love, power, and status, conquering foes, playing the trickster and lusting openly.
With her strong characters, beautiful prose, and sense of dark humor, Tanith Lee's descriptive masterworks are some of my favorite reading experiences of all time. I delight in the fact that there are so many more books in her oeuvre I have yet to savor. I felt this same elation when I first discovered Philip. K. Dick, Jack Vance, and Gene Wolfe. The richness of the reading experience is often taken for granted, except when the author believes so deeply in their own invented world that they communicate the feeling all escapists long for, then the work feels at times, more real than the reality around us.
A worthy follow up to her first installment in the series, Night's Master, this book lacked some of the cohesive pathos of that volume, felt a little more randomized, less focused. But it contained all of the creative force of the original, gave us a longer dip into her brilliant atmospheric indulgence, and constituted another Gothic masterpiece, in my opinion. The structure of the interconnected stories allowed the author to explore several facets of her doomed and hallowed world. She converts primal fears into breathing characters, injecting them with the insecurities and pride of men and woman-tropes we have seen, but delivered forcefully to amusing and alarming effect, while these players shift through complex layers of social diversity and exhibit behaviors both arcane and mundane, sorcerous and violent. The adversities of immortals and the puerile schemes of mortals consume the bulk of this book's riveting plots. But more than the solid storytelling, we are offered an intense immersive experience, reminiscent of the best pulp sci-fi, the Golden Age charm, the vintage, suggestive, and passionate ideals of a bygone era, when the genre still possessed great, untapped mysteries.
This second book was a slower burn, focusing on the god of death, Uhlume, and Simmu and other VIPs in the grand dramas and foolish endeavors of Flat Earth, seeking after love, power, and status, conquering foes, playing the trickster and lusting openly.
With her strong characters, beautiful prose, and sense of dark humor, Tanith Lee's descriptive masterworks are some of my favorite reading experiences of all time. I delight in the fact that there are so many more books in her oeuvre I have yet to savor. I felt this same elation when I first discovered Philip. K. Dick, Jack Vance, and Gene Wolfe. The richness of the reading experience is often taken for granted, except when the author believes so deeply in their own invented world that they communicate the feeling all escapists long for, then the work feels at times, more real than the reality around us.
April 26, 2012
ORIGINALLY POSTED AT Fantasy Literature.
On Tanith Lee’s Flat Earth, humans live in the space between apathetic gods and vain and meddlesome demons. In the first FLAT EARTH book, Night’s Master, we met Azhrarn, prince of demons and ruler of the night who found and loved a human orphan. I loved that book for its exotic setting and gorgeous fairytale quality, but Death’s Master, the second FLAT EARTH book, is even more enchanting. While the first book was a series of connected tales, Death’s Master is a traditional novel. This time we meet a second Lord of Darkness, Uhlume, Lord Death, when he makes a deal with Narasen, a human warrior queen.
Narasen, the Leopard Queen of Merh, doesn’t like men. When she rebuffs a powerful magician, he curses her, causing plague, famine and barrenness to settle in Merh. An oracle announces that the land will be healed when Narasen, who is barren, bears a child. After the people of Merh have sent all the men they can muster to Narasen, she seeks escape by asking the witch Lylas, Death’s Handmaiden, to arrange a deal with Death.
Uhlume, the Lord of Death, gives Narasen a child, but the price she must pay is heavy: after giving birth, she must remain under the Earth with Uhlume for 1000 years. The rest of the story follows Simmu, Narasen’s hermaphrodite child; his friend Zhirem, whose mother also made a deal with Death; Lylas, who assigns nine virgins to guard the waters of immortality; the demon Azhrarn, who can’t help but meddle in human affairs; and other characters that’ve unfortunately come to the attention of demons.
It’s hard to truly like any of these characters, which, I suspect, is the main reason that the FLAT EARTH books are not universally loved. Tanith Lee’s characters are all well-developed, but they don’t give back. They’re not interested in whether you like them, so you’re not likely to find yourself really caring what happens to any of them. Tanith Lee isn’t offering us friends. Instead, she offers a vision of a world that’s completely foreign, yet peopled by real humans who we can relate to, whether we like them or not. Lee uses this unfamiliar world to explore familiar human nature in a way that isn’t possible outside a fantasy setting.
One theme in Death’s Master is the idea that when life becomes difficult, we often preserve sanity by knowingly casting illusions. When Narasen goes with Death to the underworld, she sees all the humans who’ve made similar deals with Death and must live in his kingdom for 1000 years. The place is horrible, but they’ve constructed illusions to make it bearable. When Narasen scorns these weak-minded people, Death explains that they survive by creating their own reality:
"The soul is a magician. Only living flesh hampers it... This land is a blank parchment where anyone may write what they wish."
Another theme is the boredom that comes with immortality on Earth. When the well of immortality is discovered and some humans drink from it, their lives eventually become pointless and dull. Lee suggests that the gods knew that the constant threat of pain and death is what gives life its meaning and joy:
"Men could not have too much. Ecstasy and vulnerability belonged in the same dish. The fear the cup would be snatched away was what gave the wine its savor and as Zhirem’s cup was sure, so was his joylessness... to die is a fear, but to live is a fear, also."
These ideas are so beautifully examined in Death’s Master, but Tanith Lee’s writing isn’t unrelievedly heavy. In fact, I think she’s one of the funniest writers I know and even this dark tale has plenty of humor. The scene in which all nine virgins were disqualified in three nights is hilarious and this description of Yolsippa the charlatan had me literally clapping my hands in delight:
"Generally Yolsippa was not a sensual man, but there was one thing, and one thing alone, which could stir him instantaneously and irrepressibly to amorous frenzy. This singular thing was a member of either sex who happened to be cross-eyed. Now the reason for this is a matter of conjecture. Possibly Yolsippa, in his tender years, had been nursed by a woman with just such a feature who had toyed indelicately with him so that ever after the erection of his weapon became associated with the strabismus of his nurse. Now and again Yolsippa had taken himself into a brothel and there lain down with straight-gazing harlots in an effort to be rid of the ridiculous taint. But it was no use; the perversion remained. Indeed, many afflicted by the squint had been most grateful for it. However, the cross-eyed being that Yolsippa had suddenly caught sight of in the desert border town was none other than the local prizefighter, a man near seven feet high with a prodigious girth, the belly of a boar and the fuse of an ox. Yolsippa completely comprehended the unwisdom of his passion, but no sooner had the two blood-shot squinting eyes been fixed on him than he began shuddering in a seizure of profound desire. Nor was it any use to seek his own medicine for dispelling such emotion since it was made of water, spirit, and mules’ urine."
Here, and in all of her writing, you can clearly see the influence of Jack Vance, who Tanith Lee calls “one of the literary gods” in her afterword to her story in the anthology Songs of the Dying Earth. In fact, Lee says that “Influence is too small a word. What I owe to Vance’s genius, as avid fan and compulsive writer, is beyond calculation.”
Indeed, Tanith Lee’s imagination and writing style are a fantasy lover’s dream. If you haven’t read Tanith Lee, you’re missing one of our age’s best fantasists. If you’re not into the twisted dark fairytales found in FLAT EARTH, you should at least try some of her short fiction, which is easily found in the best anthologies.
I listened to Susan Duerden narrate the audio version which was just released by Audible Frontiers. Her lush voice is gorgeous and I think she has the sexiest male voice I’ve ever heard by female or male narrator. The sing-song quality I mentioned in my review of Night’s Master was less noticeable this time. If you’re an audio reader, don’t miss this. Death’s Master, originally published in 1979, won the British Fantasy Award for Best Novel in 1980.
Originally posted at Fantasy Literature.
On Tanith Lee’s Flat Earth, humans live in the space between apathetic gods and vain and meddlesome demons. In the first FLAT EARTH book, Night’s Master, we met Azhrarn, prince of demons and ruler of the night who found and loved a human orphan. I loved that book for its exotic setting and gorgeous fairytale quality, but Death’s Master, the second FLAT EARTH book, is even more enchanting. While the first book was a series of connected tales, Death’s Master is a traditional novel. This time we meet a second Lord of Darkness, Uhlume, Lord Death, when he makes a deal with Narasen, a human warrior queen.
Narasen, the Leopard Queen of Merh, doesn’t like men. When she rebuffs a powerful magician, he curses her, causing plague, famine and barrenness to settle in Merh. An oracle announces that the land will be healed when Narasen, who is barren, bears a child. After the people of Merh have sent all the men they can muster to Narasen, she seeks escape by asking the witch Lylas, Death’s Handmaiden, to arrange a deal with Death.
Uhlume, the Lord of Death, gives Narasen a child, but the price she must pay is heavy: after giving birth, she must remain under the Earth with Uhlume for 1000 years. The rest of the story follows Simmu, Narasen’s hermaphrodite child; his friend Zhirem, whose mother also made a deal with Death; Lylas, who assigns nine virgins to guard the waters of immortality; the demon Azhrarn, who can’t help but meddle in human affairs; and other characters that’ve unfortunately come to the attention of demons.
It’s hard to truly like any of these characters, which, I suspect, is the main reason that the FLAT EARTH books are not universally loved. Tanith Lee’s characters are all well-developed, but they don’t give back. They’re not interested in whether you like them, so you’re not likely to find yourself really caring what happens to any of them. Tanith Lee isn’t offering us friends. Instead, she offers a vision of a world that’s completely foreign, yet peopled by real humans who we can relate to, whether we like them or not. Lee uses this unfamiliar world to explore familiar human nature in a way that isn’t possible outside a fantasy setting.
One theme in Death’s Master is the idea that when life becomes difficult, we often preserve sanity by knowingly casting illusions. When Narasen goes with Death to the underworld, she sees all the humans who’ve made similar deals with Death and must live in his kingdom for 1000 years. The place is horrible, but they’ve constructed illusions to make it bearable. When Narasen scorns these weak-minded people, Death explains that they survive by creating their own reality:
"The soul is a magician. Only living flesh hampers it... This land is a blank parchment where anyone may write what they wish."
Another theme is the boredom that comes with immortality on Earth. When the well of immortality is discovered and some humans drink from it, their lives eventually become pointless and dull. Lee suggests that the gods knew that the constant threat of pain and death is what gives life its meaning and joy:
"Men could not have too much. Ecstasy and vulnerability belonged in the same dish. The fear the cup would be snatched away was what gave the wine its savor and as Zhirem’s cup was sure, so was his joylessness... to die is a fear, but to live is a fear, also."
These ideas are so beautifully examined in Death’s Master, but Tanith Lee’s writing isn’t unrelievedly heavy. In fact, I think she’s one of the funniest writers I know and even this dark tale has plenty of humor. The scene in which all nine virgins were disqualified in three nights is hilarious and this description of Yolsippa the charlatan had me literally clapping my hands in delight:
"Generally Yolsippa was not a sensual man, but there was one thing, and one thing alone, which could stir him instantaneously and irrepressibly to amorous frenzy. This singular thing was a member of either sex who happened to be cross-eyed. Now the reason for this is a matter of conjecture. Possibly Yolsippa, in his tender years, had been nursed by a woman with just such a feature who had toyed indelicately with him so that ever after the erection of his weapon became associated with the strabismus of his nurse. Now and again Yolsippa had taken himself into a brothel and there lain down with straight-gazing harlots in an effort to be rid of the ridiculous taint. But it was no use; the perversion remained. Indeed, many afflicted by the squint had been most grateful for it. However, the cross-eyed being that Yolsippa had suddenly caught sight of in the desert border town was none other than the local prizefighter, a man near seven feet high with a prodigious girth, the belly of a boar and the fuse of an ox. Yolsippa completely comprehended the unwisdom of his passion, but no sooner had the two blood-shot squinting eyes been fixed on him than he began shuddering in a seizure of profound desire. Nor was it any use to seek his own medicine for dispelling such emotion since it was made of water, spirit, and mules’ urine."
Here, and in all of her writing, you can clearly see the influence of Jack Vance, who Tanith Lee calls “one of the literary gods” in her afterword to her story in the anthology Songs of the Dying Earth. In fact, Lee says that “Influence is too small a word. What I owe to Vance’s genius, as avid fan and compulsive writer, is beyond calculation.”
Indeed, Tanith Lee’s imagination and writing style are a fantasy lover’s dream. If you haven’t read Tanith Lee, you’re missing one of our age’s best fantasists. If you’re not into the twisted dark fairytales found in FLAT EARTH, you should at least try some of her short fiction, which is easily found in the best anthologies.
I listened to Susan Duerden narrate the audio version which was just released by Audible Frontiers. Her lush voice is gorgeous and I think she has the sexiest male voice I’ve ever heard by female or male narrator. The sing-song quality I mentioned in my review of Night’s Master was less noticeable this time. If you’re an audio reader, don’t miss this. Death’s Master, originally published in 1979, won the British Fantasy Award for Best Novel in 1980.
Originally posted at Fantasy Literature.
July 28, 2020
Devotees of Tanith Lee's Tales from the Flat Earth series luxuriate in her vibrant, exotic prose and her thematically dark stories which are said to be founded on Arabian and Babylonian lore, not to mention a fair dose of Jack Vance's Dying Earth stories albeit with much less humor. This second book in the series is a step up from the first book with a stronger storyline and more accessible characters, which eventually earned it the British Fantasy Award for Best Novel, the first time ever awarded to a female author. Sexual trigger warnings are still set off like jumpy car alarms due to a varying degree (or lack) of consent in many situations, and the adult content will be anywhere from eyebrow-raising to titillating depending on the reader's tastes.
February 27, 2020
At first this second volume of the series seemed more coherent and an improvement on book 2. It revolves around the children of two mothers: one woman who is a queen and has to bear a child to save her land and people in order to lift a curse, and one who attempts to save her son from the enemies who will threaten his life by making him immune to all threats. Nothing ends happily for either the mothers or their sons. The two boys eventually end up as close friends while they endure a strict and life-denying upbringing at a monastery, but are then riven apart by their own, no longer quite human, natures and the interference of demonic forces: the lord of darkness Azharn, a key figure in book 1, and Uhlume, the lord of death.
There are a lot of characters, a lot of action, but no one who can really be cared about or sympathised with. The nearest is a rogue and conman who ends up immortal when Simmu, one of the sons, the one borne to lift the curse, decides to wage a "war" against death by obtaining the elixir of life and dishing it out to chosen people (except that the conman drinks from the flask without permission as he is dehydrated in the desert). Otherwise, the characters behave perversely just to bring about their own ill fortune it seems, with Zhirem, the one who cannot be killed, deciding to be wicked and setting out to make himself a supremely powerful wizard whose one goal is to destroy Simmu and everything he has worked for. And equally oddly, Simmu and co, having partaken of immortality, become indolent and ossified within a few years - this might be understandable after centuries but seems unlikely after a few years. There are various other characters who are wicked just "for the fun of it" rather than for any real reason and it all became rather overlong and tedious by about two thirds of the way through. I read to the end just to find out what happened, but can't say I enjoyed it so this is an OK 2-stars for me sadly.
There are a lot of characters, a lot of action, but no one who can really be cared about or sympathised with. The nearest is a rogue and conman who ends up immortal when Simmu, one of the sons, the one borne to lift the curse, decides to wage a "war" against death by obtaining the elixir of life and dishing it out to chosen people (except that the conman drinks from the flask without permission as he is dehydrated in the desert). Otherwise, the characters behave perversely just to bring about their own ill fortune it seems, with Zhirem, the one who cannot be killed, deciding to be wicked and setting out to make himself a supremely powerful wizard whose one goal is to destroy Simmu and everything he has worked for. And equally oddly, Simmu and co, having partaken of immortality, become indolent and ossified within a few years - this might be understandable after centuries but seems unlikely after a few years. There are various other characters who are wicked just "for the fun of it" rather than for any real reason and it all became rather overlong and tedious by about two thirds of the way through. I read to the end just to find out what happened, but can't say I enjoyed it so this is an OK 2-stars for me sadly.
May 26, 2018
In which we meet Uhlume, Death's Master, another Lord of Darkness, kin to Azhrarn, Night's Master, and in which Uhlume and Azhrarn contest with each other.
Not directly, of course; but through two children of extraordinary birth: Simmu and Zhirem, both of whom are (indirectly) created by one Lord but end up (indirectly) serving the other as their destinies intertwine and separate and violently oppose one another.
Although, like Night's Master, this is more-or-less a collection of shorter tales, unlike Night's Master, there's a much more definite overarching thread linking everything together -- Simmu and Zhirem.
As with Night's Master, this is a dark and luxuriant book, full of terrors and wonders, awe and love and hatred, told in Tanith Lee's inimitable, mythic prose.
Not directly, of course; but through two children of extraordinary birth: Simmu and Zhirem, both of whom are (indirectly) created by one Lord but end up (indirectly) serving the other as their destinies intertwine and separate and violently oppose one another.
Although, like Night's Master, this is more-or-less a collection of shorter tales, unlike Night's Master, there's a much more definite overarching thread linking everything together -- Simmu and Zhirem.
As with Night's Master, this is a dark and luxuriant book, full of terrors and wonders, awe and love and hatred, told in Tanith Lee's inimitable, mythic prose.
December 24, 2016
Night's Master was a loosely-tied collection whose central point is the demon lord Azhrarn as he meddles and ruins puny mortal lives according to whim and faerie menace. Here he is a background puppeteer, still manipulating events with almost artistic motivations, as well as a faint malice towards his not-cousin Uhlume, Lord of Death.
But this story is about a set of humans or mostly-humans and the long movements of their mutually-destructive actions, in a world that is profoundly unsympathetic. There is no cosmic justice, no moral compass, no sense that any wrong is repaid or wrongdoer receives comeuppance. This book does not care what you think, and bears no moral and no internal meaning other than itself. It in fact has many cases where illusion provides meaning or solace to an otherwise comfortless existence.
It returns full circle to stability: even human immortals are ground down and forgotten. The universe continues without them.
Lee's characterizations continue to amaze. The Lord of Death is neither capricious nor vicious, but mostly bored. A powerful witch concocts cosmic defenses, but she is physically and emotionally fourteen years old: her constructions are the gaudy over-the-top things of a child. Vicious, constant malice is dreary and miserably habitual, a tiresome compulsion.
But this story is about a set of humans or mostly-humans and the long movements of their mutually-destructive actions, in a world that is profoundly unsympathetic. There is no cosmic justice, no moral compass, no sense that any wrong is repaid or wrongdoer receives comeuppance. This book does not care what you think, and bears no moral and no internal meaning other than itself. It in fact has many cases where illusion provides meaning or solace to an otherwise comfortless existence.
It returns full circle to stability: even human immortals are ground down and forgotten. The universe continues without them.
Lee's characterizations continue to amaze. The Lord of Death is neither capricious nor vicious, but mostly bored. A powerful witch concocts cosmic defenses, but she is physically and emotionally fourteen years old: her constructions are the gaudy over-the-top things of a child. Vicious, constant malice is dreary and miserably habitual, a tiresome compulsion.
April 14, 2021
another dark fantasy masterpiece from Tanith Lee
November 29, 2013
Death's Master is finally an ebook. It's an epic fantasy told in the high style full of eroticism and horror, as well as beauty. Part runaway Wildean fantasia, part Arabian Nights, here's what I said about the Flat Earth series as a whole:
The eroticism in the text [is} exploratory but tempered by a peculiar kind of innocence, helped in no small part by the jewel-like precision of the prose. There [are] horrors in the stories, but there [is] also tenderness. It is [Tanith] Lee's special talent to mix both tenderness and terror.
The eroticism in the text [is} exploratory but tempered by a peculiar kind of innocence, helped in no small part by the jewel-like precision of the prose. There [are] horrors in the stories, but there [is] also tenderness. It is [Tanith] Lee's special talent to mix both tenderness and terror.
March 15, 2016
The second book in Tanith Lee’s Flat Earth series is again very interesting like the previous one but it is also a very different one in the manner the story is told. Whereas the previous book Night’s Master was split into multiple parts with somewhat loosely connected stories that all served the purpose of creating a unifying tapestry this one more or less follows a few core characters over the course of the entire novel. There are two characters who are priests, Simmu and Zherim, who both being friends separate at a pivotal point in the plotline and then for the rest of the book you get to see them greatly grow and change and become incredibly powerful. Because of his experiences with death Simmu hated death and wished to defeat death and he did this by seeking immortality and dragging others into this prison of immortality with him as well, thus he becomes immortal on purpose. Then there is Zherim who yearned for death but because of a spell his mother had a witch put on him when he was a child he is unable to die except by old age, thus immortal by accident. It was not his mother’s choice to make so this ends up causing him major problems later. For example he cannot even take his own life which he tries to at the pivotal point I mentioned in what becomes a very tragic scene. It is all a very puzzling predicament but I kind of figured out how it would shape out in the end, with a show down between Zhirem and Simmu, between life and death. The book ends with a bang! An epic conclusion that is sure not to disappoint.
There were many parts of this novel I immensely enjoyed and then there were other parts I didn’t enjoy as much but in the end like with Night’s Master it all came together perfectly and so as a reader I felt very rewarded. Again I feel better about this book after I’ve finished it than I did when I was initially reading it. I’m hard pressed to say which book in the series I’ve enjoyed more so far. If I enjoy the next book as much as the previous ones then this is shaping up to be one of the best fantasy series’ I’ve read. These two books are already nearly as good as the best fantasy I’ve read anyway, making this definitely the best fantasy you’ve never heard of. Tanith Lee is such a well liked author among people in the industry its surprising she isn’t read more by fantasy fans. In an interview I read she said that she doesn’t write what people want to read and that’s obviously been her problem as far as breaking out into the mainstream is concerned. She writes what she wants to write and doesn’t pigeonhole herself to writing one particular thing and I greatly respect her for that.
I’ve heard people compare this series to the Dying Earth and although I can see the similarities and I don’t doubt the influence there is one particular author that was in my mind when I read this book, one whom has influenced many fantasy authors. In an interview when asked about one weird fiction author she thought was undervalued Tanith mentioned Mervyn Peake. This comes as no surprise since she really does do a great job of emulating his style. I love being right. Here she did the best job of anyone I know of describing Peake’s writing style:
“I hope I’m in error here, but I think generally Mervyn Peake is still not properly valued. His incredible 3-volume epic (the 4th volume cut short by his early illness and death) of the Groan Dynasty and their habitat, Gormenghast, is unique–in that word’s true meaning. There was nothing like it. And where there is, somewhat, now, that is due only to the exquisite influence of his work on others. He wrote like no one else. His was, and is, a Voice that–though I suppose it is copy-able–stays yet unreachable. His structures–words, images–his moon-high illuminations and abyssal shadows are frankly inimitable. He breaks the rules, even of Weird, while remaining one of the kings of it. Here and there Peake can, admittedly, be a densely-forested read, but these passages are, too, like a graceful movie of perfect camera-work and lighting. Like paintings coming calmly into life. Or riotously. The sequence circles on itself like music, and then one falls out into the glowing, breathable water of his prose. Peake can terrify and make laugh, and shock and tantalize–and break your heart. He can do it in 10 pages. Or 3 words. Unique, as I said.”
There were many parts of this novel I immensely enjoyed and then there were other parts I didn’t enjoy as much but in the end like with Night’s Master it all came together perfectly and so as a reader I felt very rewarded. Again I feel better about this book after I’ve finished it than I did when I was initially reading it. I’m hard pressed to say which book in the series I’ve enjoyed more so far. If I enjoy the next book as much as the previous ones then this is shaping up to be one of the best fantasy series’ I’ve read. These two books are already nearly as good as the best fantasy I’ve read anyway, making this definitely the best fantasy you’ve never heard of. Tanith Lee is such a well liked author among people in the industry its surprising she isn’t read more by fantasy fans. In an interview I read she said that she doesn’t write what people want to read and that’s obviously been her problem as far as breaking out into the mainstream is concerned. She writes what she wants to write and doesn’t pigeonhole herself to writing one particular thing and I greatly respect her for that.
I’ve heard people compare this series to the Dying Earth and although I can see the similarities and I don’t doubt the influence there is one particular author that was in my mind when I read this book, one whom has influenced many fantasy authors. In an interview when asked about one weird fiction author she thought was undervalued Tanith mentioned Mervyn Peake. This comes as no surprise since she really does do a great job of emulating his style. I love being right. Here she did the best job of anyone I know of describing Peake’s writing style:
“I hope I’m in error here, but I think generally Mervyn Peake is still not properly valued. His incredible 3-volume epic (the 4th volume cut short by his early illness and death) of the Groan Dynasty and their habitat, Gormenghast, is unique–in that word’s true meaning. There was nothing like it. And where there is, somewhat, now, that is due only to the exquisite influence of his work on others. He wrote like no one else. His was, and is, a Voice that–though I suppose it is copy-able–stays yet unreachable. His structures–words, images–his moon-high illuminations and abyssal shadows are frankly inimitable. He breaks the rules, even of Weird, while remaining one of the kings of it. Here and there Peake can, admittedly, be a densely-forested read, but these passages are, too, like a graceful movie of perfect camera-work and lighting. Like paintings coming calmly into life. Or riotously. The sequence circles on itself like music, and then one falls out into the glowing, breathable water of his prose. Peake can terrify and make laugh, and shock and tantalize–and break your heart. He can do it in 10 pages. Or 3 words. Unique, as I said.”
June 26, 2021
Господарят на нощта продължава хладната си, отчасти незаинтересована, отчасти пълна с любопитство игра с любимата си играчка - човешките същества от света на плоската земя. От мрака се появява обаче и нов играч - самият господар на смъртта. И човешките пешки започват да падат една след друга, докато двамата безсмъртни владетели си разменят послания.
Тук Танит Ли се е опитала да изгради цялостна история, а не поредица от елегантни миниатюри както в първата книга. И - поне за мен - не се е получило особено добре.
Първата една трета се изчита на един дъх. Какво би могло са е по-интригуващо от отчаяна и горделива кралица в договорка със смъртта; човешко дете, странстващо в нощта в компанията на демони; друго дете, запратено в кладенеца с огъня на неуязвимостта; пародия на манастир, където обядът на скромните монаси (в стил гурме) не бива да се прекъсва от болни просители на здравните услуги на лечебницата им; еликсир на безсмъртието? След спиращата дъха завръзка, от момента с търсенето на еликсира на безсмъртието нататък, обаче историята се разпилява без ясна посока. Героите изобщо не осъществяват взаимодействие, вместо това Танит Ли изморително скача от герой на герой, като всеки съществува независимо от събитията и няма почти никаква връзка с основния сюжет. Решенията им най-често са лишени от каквато и да е логика.
Краят е силен и донякъде компенсира предхождащото лутане из страниците. Но отново консистентността ми се губеше за сметка на иначе прекрасни и живописни описания. Танит Ли сякаш се наслаждаваше на определени параграфи просто от интерес към думите, чист самоцел, без да държи да имат някакъв по-цялостен смисъл. Също така очакванията ми към господаря на смъртта никак не се оправдаха - оказа се доста скучно всемогъщо създание.
Третата книга се очертава - поне по описание - доста по-фокусирана, да видим.
Тук Танит Ли се е опитала да изгради цялостна история, а не поредица от елегантни миниатюри както в първата книга. И - поне за мен - не се е получило особено добре.
Първата една трета се изчита на един дъх. Какво би могло са е по-интригуващо от отчаяна и горделива кралица в договорка със смъртта; човешко дете, странстващо в нощта в компанията на демони; друго дете, запратено в кладенеца с огъня на неуязвимостта; пародия на манастир, където обядът на скромните монаси (в стил гурме) не бива да се прекъсва от болни просители на здравните услуги на лечебницата им; еликсир на безсмъртието? След спиращата дъха завръзка, от момента с търсенето на еликсира на безсмъртието нататък, обаче историята се разпилява без ясна посока. Героите изобщо не осъществяват взаимодействие, вместо това Танит Ли изморително скача от герой на герой, като всеки съществува независимо от събитията и няма почти никаква връзка с основния сюжет. Решенията им най-често са лишени от каквато и да е логика.
Краят е силен и донякъде компенсира предхождащото лутане из страниците. Но отново консистентността ми се губеше за сметка на иначе прекрасни и живописни описания. Танит Ли сякаш се наслаждаваше на определени параграфи просто от интерес към думите, чист самоцел, без да държи да имат някакъв по-цялостен смисъл. Също така очакванията ми към господаря на смъртта никак не се оправдаха - оказа се доста скучно всемогъщо създание.
Третата книга се очертава - поне по описание - доста по-фокусирана, да видим.
February 13, 2011
This is the first of the Flat Earth books I read, and it's still my favorite. What I mostly remember is the gorgeous Whelan cover and the awesome if necrophiliac warrior queen. Shut up, she was too awesome.
June 24, 2025
Night's Master is a swirling collection of ideas, the Arrabesque taken to incredible fantastical highs, characters created, destroyed, stories weaving together, all to a singular unexpected apex - Death's Master by contrast is composed of a single story - though it is composed of many disparate parts that combine to make it so - and I think basically the only difference in quality between the two and which you prefer will entirely come down to which style you prefer - wilder inventive ideas with more stuff thrown at the wall, or singular character connection?
Either way, both come with Tanith Lee's incredible writing, this sing-song storytelling that's so much a myth or fable it just begs you to read it to someone. Each and every page has a beautiful description, or fabulous image, this style of writing firing the mind's imagination better than anything else I can think of. The story here is almost immaterial, two figures set as friends and then against each other, struggle with Immortality - but how Lee uses these ideas, these situations to build up these thematic concepts, overloaded with pointed imagery. It's just masterful, that's all there is to it.
I think the only people I'd steer away from these books are the particularly squeamish - There is a heavy focus on embodiment, physicality, and with that comes the obvious two things, sex and violence. Nothing here is more explicit than what you'd read in any given romance or horror novel, the writing is evocative but generally keeps you at a distance - but the topics and themes dive deeper, dealing with whatever you name - incest, rape, mutilation, genocide, etc etc. Lee's Flat Earth is a brutal, terrible land, but one whose description is just so incredibly poignant, you're drawn in like a moth to a flame. No one is doing Fantasy-as-Mythology better than this. No one.
Either way, both come with Tanith Lee's incredible writing, this sing-song storytelling that's so much a myth or fable it just begs you to read it to someone. Each and every page has a beautiful description, or fabulous image, this style of writing firing the mind's imagination better than anything else I can think of. The story here is almost immaterial, two figures set as friends and then against each other, struggle with Immortality - but how Lee uses these ideas, these situations to build up these thematic concepts, overloaded with pointed imagery. It's just masterful, that's all there is to it.
I think the only people I'd steer away from these books are the particularly squeamish - There is a heavy focus on embodiment, physicality, and with that comes the obvious two things, sex and violence. Nothing here is more explicit than what you'd read in any given romance or horror novel, the writing is evocative but generally keeps you at a distance - but the topics and themes dive deeper, dealing with whatever you name - incest, rape, mutilation, genocide, etc etc. Lee's Flat Earth is a brutal, terrible land, but one whose description is just so incredibly poignant, you're drawn in like a moth to a flame. No one is doing Fantasy-as-Mythology better than this. No one.
November 15, 2015
Strongly believe that Book 1 was better than Book 2.
Tanith Lee said that each Book has a different demon. In Book 1, I totally felt that all the tales at situated in the Flat Earth and every tales revolves around Azhrarn, more or less. And there's no real protagonist or main character in Book 1. Azhrarn is the central figure that all the tales revolve around. But he's not the main character, as there's really no main character. Each tale has its own main character but the book as book as a whole doesn't. But for Book 2, which is supposed to be revolving around Death with other characters. He doesn't have much screen time. Azhrarn probably had just as much if not more than Death. He's mentioned but he doesn't really do anything. Also, each tale tells you something. Like the first one is to not trust demons, for example. I don't remember most of them. But each tale just tells you something, like cause and effect or something.
But in Book 2, I don't get that feeling anymore. Although Death is supposedly to be the demon of the book, he doesn't seem like it. And Book 2 actually feels like there is a protagonist. Well, two protagonists. I also can't rationalize most of Zhirem's decision.
When I read books, I always seek out whether certain plot points, events or whatever are well developed or not. Like should things really proceed how the author writes it as? Based on what the author built up, or written, up to a certain point, would that character really do what s/he did? Because Tanith Lee oriented Book 2, Death's Master, mainly around Zhirem and Simmu, there's a lot more character development and basis for them than any other characters in Book 1 and 2 (other than Azhrarn). So, to me, some of the things that happened or things they decided to do just doesn't connect to me.
For example, what's wrong with being invulnerable? Sure, your father thought you're possessed. The temple and priests tried to brainwash you. The temple and priests decided to shun you. But do any of these things really turn a person to how Zhirem would behave? I mean, at the end of the day, just walk back and be a farmer, then he'll have an awesome life. Or be a warrior, he will be a hero, unlike Simmu.
In short, things happened because that's what the author wrote. It works if it's just small, short tales instead of more centralized one. But it makes no sense as it is.
Another example is Narasen. She knows what the curse is. She's a lesbian and hates men. She knows her land is cursed. She loves power. She knows the curse says that sleeping with men is useless. Why the hell would she not just go invade other cities? This land is infertile, so we're going to stay here and die.
Tanith Lee said that each Book has a different demon. In Book 1, I totally felt that all the tales at situated in the Flat Earth and every tales revolves around Azhrarn, more or less. And there's no real protagonist or main character in Book 1. Azhrarn is the central figure that all the tales revolve around. But he's not the main character, as there's really no main character. Each tale has its own main character but the book as book as a whole doesn't. But for Book 2, which is supposed to be revolving around Death with other characters. He doesn't have much screen time. Azhrarn probably had just as much if not more than Death. He's mentioned but he doesn't really do anything. Also, each tale tells you something. Like the first one is to not trust demons, for example. I don't remember most of them. But each tale just tells you something, like cause and effect or something.
But in Book 2, I don't get that feeling anymore. Although Death is supposedly to be the demon of the book, he doesn't seem like it. And Book 2 actually feels like there is a protagonist. Well, two protagonists. I also can't rationalize most of Zhirem's decision.
When I read books, I always seek out whether certain plot points, events or whatever are well developed or not. Like should things really proceed how the author writes it as? Based on what the author built up, or written, up to a certain point, would that character really do what s/he did? Because Tanith Lee oriented Book 2, Death's Master, mainly around Zhirem and Simmu, there's a lot more character development and basis for them than any other characters in Book 1 and 2 (other than Azhrarn). So, to me, some of the things that happened or things they decided to do just doesn't connect to me.
For example, what's wrong with being invulnerable? Sure, your father thought you're possessed. The temple and priests tried to brainwash you. The temple and priests decided to shun you. But do any of these things really turn a person to how Zhirem would behave? I mean, at the end of the day, just walk back and be a farmer, then he'll have an awesome life. Or be a warrior, he will be a hero, unlike Simmu.
In short, things happened because that's what the author wrote. It works if it's just small, short tales instead of more centralized one. But it makes no sense as it is.
Another example is Narasen. She knows what the curse is. She's a lesbian and hates men. She knows her land is cursed. She loves power. She knows the curse says that sleeping with men is useless. Why the hell would she not just go invade other cities? This land is infertile, so we're going to stay here and die.
June 5, 2025
Ένα ακόμα εξαιρετικό (αν και κάπως τραβηγμένο σε μέγεθος, εξού και τα 4 αστέρια) βιβλίο από την Τάνιθ Λι, αυτή τη φορά περισσότερο σπονδυλωτό μυθιστόρημα αντί για συλλογή διηγημάτων. Η γλώσσα και ο τρόπος γραφής για μια ακόμα φορά μαστορικά, η θλίψη για μια ακόμα φορά πανταχού παρούσα. Θα την ήθελα να έχει εναντιωθεί κάποια στιγμή σε κυρίαρχες αξίες (πχ το αναπόφευκτο του θανάτου και η τιμωρία όσων προσπαθούν να του ξεφύγουν, ή την τραγωδιολαγνεία όσον αφορά τους πρωταγωνιστές) αλλά όπως και να χει, θεσπέσιο ανάγνωσμα.
February 27, 2024
This book, beginning with the clash between a curse and a pride, yielded a bargain first. Then it, like a hugely complicated dream, followed its own path into a labyrinthine landscape full of strange humans and stranger demons. The first half of the story as in 'Book One' moved swiftly, with some very interesting characters— all involved in a complicated dance of pain and pleasure. But the second book became slow, meandering and pondrous.
But the world-buliding was superb, once again.
But the world-buliding was superb, once again.
June 13, 2024
A excepción de la misteriosa obsesión que tenía la autora por violar a la peña, lujazo de estilo, de aire de cuento y de elegancia. Diría que todas las mujeres son desgraciadas y terminan fatal, pero también lo hace con los hombres, lo cual me place. Vivan la tragedia y el sufrimiento eterno.
November 30, 2013
Приключенията в света на Плоската земя, отпреди боговете да се разбудят и създадат живота, такъв какъвто знаем, че е вече загинал преди хилядолетия, продължават с високо признатата и награждавана история за дните и нощите на великия Господар на смъртта или самата Смърт преди качулката и косата. Прекрасният демон Юлум, с белите си коси и черната си кожа, събира душите на напускащите тленността, и ги отвежда в земите отвъд, но понякога и в земите отдолу, в зависимост от сделката, сключена от притежателите на искрицата човешки дух в края на съществуванието им. И колкото повече биват отвеждани, толкова повече търсят своят начин да избегнат срещата със смъртносния безразличен дявол. Естествено, човешко е.
Да отлагаш срещата с господаря на смъртта е едно нещо, но да бъдеш господар на самата Смърт, която носи края , и да я караш да има твоите търсения и ограничения, е съвсем друга задача, която по различен път трима не съвсем по човешки замесени младежи, достигат сред поредицата си от криви стъпки и погрешни решения. Един племенен принц , с неясен баща и дарено от майка си почти проклятие за пълна неуязвимост към тлението; едно многополово същество , заченато от мъртъв и смъртна, менящо принадлежността си към силните и слабите физически според гордите си емоции; и една девойка, създадена от целувката на въздушен господар на етера, с очи в цвета на вселената, поред привличат погледа както на господаря на смъртта, така и на познатия ни господар на нощта, които съвсем естествено си съперничат за владението на живата раса.
Историята прелита през животи, лишени от естествения страх от края, отдадени на слепи удоволствия, безкрайни търсения и замираща човечност, където страстта се съживява само с приближаването до неминуемата смърт, която за пореден път пропуска личните си задължения , подчинена на надбожествена измама с есенцията на съзиданието. Нашите герои, заслепени от любов и омраза, често едновременно като цялостно чувство, пътуват от дълбините на чистите океани до пясъците на червените пустини, в търсене на смисъла на живота , но което е и по-важно - смисъла на смъртта. А това пътешествие е така декадентско и деградиращо всичко свързано с човещината като есенция, че в края демоничната страна по един или друг начин побеждава, обезмисляйки най-лелеяната концепция за вечния живот, фактически оказала се непоносима за ограниченията на човешкото съзнание.
Господарят на смъртта е център образът, предизвикван ежесекундно както от ходещите под слънцето, така и от тези, живеещи в мрака на подземните демонски селения. Самотата на събиращия последен дъх, липсата на обич и още повече – липсата на истинска омраза, създават изключително жив образ на меланхоличния принц , скитащ натоварен с най-тежката задача от сътворението насам, а именно да разплита с утешение нишките на живота на най-добрите божествени създания – хората. Историята е доста по – консистентна, и последователно логически свързана от предходната Господарят на нощта, без да представя твърде много герои и приказки, въпреки вечното пътешествие към небитието, концентриращо се върху легендата за извора на живота и грешките на божествените, оставящи с пълно безразличие най-доброто си постижение да изгние на воля. Философия с красивите одежди на епична приказка за пораснали, никога небивали деца. Очаквам следващата си среща с народите на Плоската земя, когато реалността е била най-скучната идея на някой попреял демон, а има толкова други варианти…
Да отлагаш срещата с господаря на смъртта е едно нещо, но да бъдеш господар на самата Смърт, която носи края , и да я караш да има твоите търсения и ограничения, е съвсем друга задача, която по различен път трима не съвсем по човешки замесени младежи, достигат сред поредицата си от криви стъпки и погрешни решения. Един племенен принц , с неясен баща и дарено от майка си почти проклятие за пълна неуязвимост към тлението; едно многополово същество , заченато от мъртъв и смъртна, менящо принадлежността си към силните и слабите физически според гордите си емоции; и една девойка, създадена от целувката на въздушен господар на етера, с очи в цвета на вселената, поред привличат погледа както на господаря на смъртта, така и на познатия ни господар на нощта, които съвсем естествено си съперничат за владението на живата раса.
Историята прелита през животи, лишени от естествения страх от края, отдадени на слепи удоволствия, безкрайни търсения и замираща човечност, където страстта се съживява само с приближаването до неминуемата смърт, която за пореден път пропуска личните си задължения , подчинена на надбожествена измама с есенцията на съзиданието. Нашите герои, заслепени от любов и омраза, често едновременно като цялостно чувство, пътуват от дълбините на чистите океани до пясъците на червените пустини, в търсене на смисъла на живота , но което е и по-важно - смисъла на смъртта. А това пътешествие е така декадентско и деградиращо всичко свързано с човещината като есенция, че в края демоничната страна по един или друг начин побеждава, обезмисляйки най-лелеяната концепция за вечния живот, фактически оказала се непоносима за ограниченията на човешкото съзнание.
Господарят на смъртта е център образът, предизвикван ежесекундно както от ходещите под слънцето, така и от тези, живеещи в мрака на подземните демонски селения. Самотата на събиращия последен дъх, липсата на обич и още повече – липсата на истинска омраза, създават изключително жив образ на меланхоличния принц , скитащ натоварен с най-тежката задача от сътворението насам, а именно да разплита с утешение нишките на живота на най-добрите божествени създания – хората. Историята е доста по – консистентна, и последователно логически свързана от предходната Господарят на нощта, без да представя твърде много герои и приказки, въпреки вечното пътешествие към небитието, концентриращо се върху легендата за извора на живота и грешките на божествените, оставящи с пълно безразличие най-доброто си постижение да изгние на воля. Философия с красивите одежди на епична приказка за пораснали, никога небивали деца. Очаквам следващата си среща с народите на Плоската земя, когато реалността е била най-скучната идея на някой попреял демон, а има толкова други варианти…
August 19, 2016
Death's Master (1979) by Tanith Lee challenges my ability to review books. How do I even summarize this work? By all rights, this book shouldn't work, but it does, which makes it absolutely fascinating to me. Thinking through everything that I've read, I can't say that I've ever read anything like this book. It's not for everyone. This work can throw you just as easily as it can capture you. It requires something of you, the reader, if only the dedication to reach the end.
This book follows a biography model, following the life of Simmu, from the inexplicably strange circumstances of his birth, through his childhood, adventurehood, his crowning successes, and through to his final fate. While following this story, we also follow the story of several other characters closely associated with Simmu, such as Zharak.
Overall, the writing proceeded thickly and formally, feeling mildly archaic even for 1979. Fortunately, Tanith knows how to work with this thickish prose, pulling it like taffy to extrude the tale. And what an improbable tale it is, full of overpowered characters who successfully prove that overpowered actions create overpowered results, generating overpowered reactions, which generate more overpowered results, and so one. When the story centers around the fundamental powers of of the universe, such as Death and the Prince of Demons, overpowered ceases to be a meaningful term.
The book is also an "adult" fantasy novel, so sexual situations about. To be clear, the book is not explicit, but it is forthright. It contains sexual situations of all sorts, some of which are gender bending, and some of which are jaw-droppingly outlandish. Lee can and does push sexuality in new and unique directions.
This was my first Tanith Lee. I liked this well enough to read more of this series, but not so much that I'll rush out and buy some right now.
This book follows a biography model, following the life of Simmu, from the inexplicably strange circumstances of his birth, through his childhood, adventurehood, his crowning successes, and through to his final fate. While following this story, we also follow the story of several other characters closely associated with Simmu, such as Zharak.
Overall, the writing proceeded thickly and formally, feeling mildly archaic even for 1979. Fortunately, Tanith knows how to work with this thickish prose, pulling it like taffy to extrude the tale. And what an improbable tale it is, full of overpowered characters who successfully prove that overpowered actions create overpowered results, generating overpowered reactions, which generate more overpowered results, and so one. When the story centers around the fundamental powers of of the universe, such as Death and the Prince of Demons, overpowered ceases to be a meaningful term.
The book is also an "adult" fantasy novel, so sexual situations about. To be clear, the book is not explicit, but it is forthright. It contains sexual situations of all sorts, some of which are gender bending, and some of which are jaw-droppingly outlandish. Lee can and does push sexuality in new and unique directions.
This was my first Tanith Lee. I liked this well enough to read more of this series, but not so much that I'll rush out and buy some right now.
March 27, 2014
Excellent book it's a shame that it doesn't hold it together towards the end. This is the third book by Tanith Lee that I have read and second from the tales of flat earth series. This novel can best be described as an epic, sweeping story that will keep you busy for many hours. I was hooked by this book, the interconnecting stories of love, sex, mystery and high fantasy are breathtaking. This is an incredible feat of myth making here, the stories are dark, mature and full of intrigue. Unfortunately after weaving such a multi stranded intricate tale the book buckles under its own weight; it doesn't wrap the stories up satisfactorily considering the sheer imagination and complexity the novel had built up by the third act. Its for this reason I rate the book a 4 out of 5 rather than a 5. It's a shame because arguably the climax is the most important part of a story. The tale is too intricate, too detailed and too multi stranded that wrapping it up in a satisfactory manner would have been an incredible feat. Even with all the negatives fantasy fans should pick this book up. Tanith Lee is a special author and I can't wait to read the next book in the tales of flat earth series.
June 17, 2012
I LOVE Tanith Lee's writing. I've followed her for years. This books is easily as good as the first in the series, Night's Master. She is the queen of dark fantasy! It's a short read with many graphic and elaborate descriptions that enthralled me.
November 17, 2010
Upon re-reading, this book was just as darkly wondrous and captivating as the first time I read it, several years ago. Tanith Lee's originality and brilliance will never cease to amaze me.
October 12, 2019
Death has a body in Flat Earth, but we meet him throught actions of others. Although every man knows him, he seems detached and impotent, almost.
Flat Earth is full of magic, superstition, wonder, and cruelty, and our protagonists try to take charge of their lives, which are often under powers greater than their own.
This lush story reminded me of Vance, and the atmosphere is sensual, and mysterious. It reads almost like a fairy tale, and the author woves a rich tapestry. It is a bit repetitive, but not less intoxicating.
Flat Earth is full of magic, superstition, wonder, and cruelty, and our protagonists try to take charge of their lives, which are often under powers greater than their own.
This lush story reminded me of Vance, and the atmosphere is sensual, and mysterious. It reads almost like a fairy tale, and the author woves a rich tapestry. It is a bit repetitive, but not less intoxicating.
August 7, 2020
Pretty nice.
June 12, 2025
Doesn't quite have the narrative consistency of the first one but it does have the ornate gothic imagery, the inter connected mythology, the dream like quality etc, so who cares?
April 28, 2024
I really took my time with this one. Not because it was bad but because, like the first one, Night's Master, it is just so worth absorbing gradually and at a languid pace. While I did prefer Nights Master as an overall narrative, this was a worthy sequel.
October 12, 2023
A re-read from my youth. Just as perfect and evocative as I remember. Lush prose, and great storytelling in the grand tradition of the Persian Myths and Arabian nights of old.
December 4, 2017
had these books for 30+ years, read many times, still as good as before
March 11, 2023
Vreading this book forced me to upgrade Book 1, Night's Master, from 4 stars to 5 because I had to make room to rate this one in a way that acknowledges it's really good, but not as perfectly crafted as Night's Master. For one thing, it's arguably too long for the relative simplicity of the story that's told. To be fair, I was never not engrossed, and there was never a point when I thought, “Ugh, this is getting to be a slog.” But it did take me an entire week to get through it, and looking back from the end, it would have been more satisfying if it were 20% shorter. But I understand the dilemma Lee's editor faced. Where is the part you would cut? Every part of it feels gorgeously wrought in the moment, and there's no section I can point to and say, “I wanted THIS part to be tightened up.”
For another, there were a couple of characters who played a large role in the early part of the story, made brief appearances later on, but were ultimately left as unsatisfying loose ends. I'm referring to . The overall ending is satisfying in that , but the ultimate fates of the major players was perhaps a bit TOO reminiscent of a Greek myth – you know the ones, where someone ends up a constellation and someone else becomes the wind. One thing is made clear, though: .
Still, a solid 4 overall. All of this nitpicking is only to show how it doesn't quite meet the very high standard set by Book 1.
Not for the faint of heart. I wouldn't characterize Tanith Lee's writing as erotica, but it continues to be populated with sex stuff that might be offputting even to those who are ready for an “adult fantasy,” although it's all couched in quite poetic language. In terms of sexuality, Lee was way ahead of her time, including a completely matter-of-fact acceptance of homosexuality, bisexuality, and gender-fluid characters. But that same matter-of-fact acceptance also crosses other taboo lines that some readers are less comfortable with. The Lord of Death is the title character, so you shouldn't be surprised to find some necrophilia involved. Bestiality is also fairly well known in Flat Earth and particularly in Under Earth, where the gnarled, ugly Drinn practice it gleefully. Brother-sister incest isn't totally overlooked. The first few chapters feature a magician who reluctantly agrees to let a Drinn sodomize him every day for a year in exchange for arcane learning, and a lesbian queen who's forced to lie with all the men in her nation in a vain attempt to conceive a child that will lift a curse. We'll also learn what it's like to have sex under the sea, and it turns out there's quite a strong element of auto-erotic asphyxiation involved. There are no violent rapes in this one, but there is a protagonist who commits 8 rapes by deceit in three nights (it actually is essential to the plot and not gratuitous). So read on if you dare, and back away slowly if you're skeeved out by what you just read.
The title character of this book, Uhlume, Lord of Death, is a stark contrast to the star of Book 1, Azhrarn, Prince of Demons, Lord of Darkness. Where Azhrarn was passionate and capricious, delighting in trysts with mortals and demons, his favors brief, his wrath enduring, Uhlume is a cool, dispassionate, sexless figure. Unlike Azhrarn, he is not needlessly cruel, though he can be hard, and he can be compassionate, though he is implacable. Lee herself points out in her foreword that because Uhlume is Azhrarn's opposite, he is not the one who gets up to shenanigans. He's primarily a reactive character, so she had to bring her human characters to the fore, let them create the shenanigans, and then get Uhlume involved. As someone who largely stays in his own lane, Uhlume spends surprisingly little time onstage, but the entire story revolves around a bargain he makes with a mortal, its repercussions, and a scheme that is hatched to end Death's reign forever. There's a theme gradually developed here that reminded me of The Good Place, Season 4, along the lines of, .
I love Lee's drive to write female characters who are fully realized agents in their own right, and Lee as author doesn't impose any moral judgments on them. Both Queen Narazen and Kassafeh are great examples of this, while Lylas is more of a simpering sycophant. And if you're a fan of Azhrarn, worry not! He will make an appearance, and he spends almost as much time onstage as Uhlume.
Because the humans are the drivers of the story, the structure is also different from Night's Master. Instead of a chain of connected but distinct mini-stories like pearls on a string, this is a single continuous narrative thread that braids in new characters from time to time. Because it is almost twice the length of Night's Master, everything unfolds more slowly, but it does give you more time to enjoy Lee's worldbuilding – she whisks you away to the blasted grey plains of Inner Earth, to a magical garden where nine virgins guard the well of immortality, to undersea palaces with sculptures of coral, to a shining white city built on the brink of dawn, and even briefly back to the darkly entrancing depths of Under Earth.
Lee's writing is so lyrical and given to poetic lights of fancy you'll either love it or hate it. It features passages like, “Dusk came to the third day and killed it with a blue sword. Always it was the same, and the day, always taken by surprise, never escaped, but bled and swooned and shut its eyes in blackness.” I could easily hate stuff like this, but somehow Lee makes it feel natural and right to me. Audio narrator Susan Duerden is also a love-her-or hate-her prospect, but she dials up the “reciting ancient epic poetry” feel of it to 11. If you're willing to just immerse yourself in it and go with the flow, it's an exotic delight, like stepping into another world scented with strange flowers and spices, but if you're not ready to wallow in it, you could easily quit in disgust in the first five minutes.
One immediate improvement Lee made to Flat Earth here in Book 2 is that she makes it clear there are non-white people here, and one of her major characters is Zhirim, a son born to the king of a people with golden skin and tawny hair and eyes. Zhirim is suspect because he has genuinely dark skin and curling midnight hair, and the king believes Zhirim's mother, his favorite wife, has been unfaithful. As soon as I realized Zhirim was going to encounter Simmu, a plainly white character, I was pretty sure Lee was also going to feature an interracial romance, which again was pretty avant-garde for 1979. And Lord Uhlume himself is black, although he's not just dark-skinned in the way humans are - he's literally black like a statue carved of onyx, with white hair, white robe, and eyes of a profound nothingness.
Random Thought: Lee is very fond of the biblical phrase “lie with” for sex, and she's one of a small number of people who never fail to conjugate “lie/lay” and “lay/laid” correctly. I hear so many people, even otherwise accomplished authors, get this wrong, and it tickled me to hear her get it right, even using it in the subjunctive: “Beloved, men bring me gold, but you I would pay to lie with, and if I lay with you, I would give over my sinful ways.” And another nifty thing narrator Susan Duerden accomplished was pronouncing “geas” correctly, which is a real trick. And I gleefully caught her in one rare error, although it's possible it's just a British/American difference – the word “slough” is used several times, always used in the sense that should rhyme with “enough” (verb: to shed or cast off), but Duerden invariably pronounces it like “plow” (noun: swampy place or state of stagnation). That's sure not enough to knock her off my “best audios” shelf, though.
For another, there were a couple of characters who played a large role in the early part of the story, made brief appearances later on, but were ultimately left as unsatisfying loose ends. I'm referring to . The overall ending is satisfying in that , but the ultimate fates of the major players was perhaps a bit TOO reminiscent of a Greek myth – you know the ones, where someone ends up a constellation and someone else becomes the wind. One thing is made clear, though: .
Still, a solid 4 overall. All of this nitpicking is only to show how it doesn't quite meet the very high standard set by Book 1.
Not for the faint of heart. I wouldn't characterize Tanith Lee's writing as erotica, but it continues to be populated with sex stuff that might be offputting even to those who are ready for an “adult fantasy,” although it's all couched in quite poetic language. In terms of sexuality, Lee was way ahead of her time, including a completely matter-of-fact acceptance of homosexuality, bisexuality, and gender-fluid characters. But that same matter-of-fact acceptance also crosses other taboo lines that some readers are less comfortable with. The Lord of Death is the title character, so you shouldn't be surprised to find some necrophilia involved. Bestiality is also fairly well known in Flat Earth and particularly in Under Earth, where the gnarled, ugly Drinn practice it gleefully. Brother-sister incest isn't totally overlooked. The first few chapters feature a magician who reluctantly agrees to let a Drinn sodomize him every day for a year in exchange for arcane learning, and a lesbian queen who's forced to lie with all the men in her nation in a vain attempt to conceive a child that will lift a curse. We'll also learn what it's like to have sex under the sea, and it turns out there's quite a strong element of auto-erotic asphyxiation involved. There are no violent rapes in this one, but there is a protagonist who commits 8 rapes by deceit in three nights (it actually is essential to the plot and not gratuitous). So read on if you dare, and back away slowly if you're skeeved out by what you just read.
The title character of this book, Uhlume, Lord of Death, is a stark contrast to the star of Book 1, Azhrarn, Prince of Demons, Lord of Darkness. Where Azhrarn was passionate and capricious, delighting in trysts with mortals and demons, his favors brief, his wrath enduring, Uhlume is a cool, dispassionate, sexless figure. Unlike Azhrarn, he is not needlessly cruel, though he can be hard, and he can be compassionate, though he is implacable. Lee herself points out in her foreword that because Uhlume is Azhrarn's opposite, he is not the one who gets up to shenanigans. He's primarily a reactive character, so she had to bring her human characters to the fore, let them create the shenanigans, and then get Uhlume involved. As someone who largely stays in his own lane, Uhlume spends surprisingly little time onstage, but the entire story revolves around a bargain he makes with a mortal, its repercussions, and a scheme that is hatched to end Death's reign forever. There's a theme gradually developed here that reminded me of The Good Place, Season 4, along the lines of, .
I love Lee's drive to write female characters who are fully realized agents in their own right, and Lee as author doesn't impose any moral judgments on them. Both Queen Narazen and Kassafeh are great examples of this, while Lylas is more of a simpering sycophant. And if you're a fan of Azhrarn, worry not! He will make an appearance, and he spends almost as much time onstage as Uhlume.
Because the humans are the drivers of the story, the structure is also different from Night's Master. Instead of a chain of connected but distinct mini-stories like pearls on a string, this is a single continuous narrative thread that braids in new characters from time to time. Because it is almost twice the length of Night's Master, everything unfolds more slowly, but it does give you more time to enjoy Lee's worldbuilding – she whisks you away to the blasted grey plains of Inner Earth, to a magical garden where nine virgins guard the well of immortality, to undersea palaces with sculptures of coral, to a shining white city built on the brink of dawn, and even briefly back to the darkly entrancing depths of Under Earth.
Lee's writing is so lyrical and given to poetic lights of fancy you'll either love it or hate it. It features passages like, “Dusk came to the third day and killed it with a blue sword. Always it was the same, and the day, always taken by surprise, never escaped, but bled and swooned and shut its eyes in blackness.” I could easily hate stuff like this, but somehow Lee makes it feel natural and right to me. Audio narrator Susan Duerden is also a love-her-or hate-her prospect, but she dials up the “reciting ancient epic poetry” feel of it to 11. If you're willing to just immerse yourself in it and go with the flow, it's an exotic delight, like stepping into another world scented with strange flowers and spices, but if you're not ready to wallow in it, you could easily quit in disgust in the first five minutes.
One immediate improvement Lee made to Flat Earth here in Book 2 is that she makes it clear there are non-white people here, and one of her major characters is Zhirim, a son born to the king of a people with golden skin and tawny hair and eyes. Zhirim is suspect because he has genuinely dark skin and curling midnight hair, and the king believes Zhirim's mother, his favorite wife, has been unfaithful. As soon as I realized Zhirim was going to encounter Simmu, a plainly white character, I was pretty sure Lee was also going to feature an interracial romance, which again was pretty avant-garde for 1979. And Lord Uhlume himself is black, although he's not just dark-skinned in the way humans are - he's literally black like a statue carved of onyx, with white hair, white robe, and eyes of a profound nothingness.
Random Thought: Lee is very fond of the biblical phrase “lie with” for sex, and she's one of a small number of people who never fail to conjugate “lie/lay” and “lay/laid” correctly. I hear so many people, even otherwise accomplished authors, get this wrong, and it tickled me to hear her get it right, even using it in the subjunctive: “Beloved, men bring me gold, but you I would pay to lie with, and if I lay with you, I would give over my sinful ways.” And another nifty thing narrator Susan Duerden accomplished was pronouncing “geas” correctly, which is a real trick. And I gleefully caught her in one rare error, although it's possible it's just a British/American difference – the word “slough” is used several times, always used in the sense that should rhyme with “enough” (verb: to shed or cast off), but Duerden invariably pronounces it like “plow” (noun: swampy place or state of stagnation). That's sure not enough to knock her off my “best audios” shelf, though.
March 10, 2024
“What hero is greater than Lord Death?”
OR
“Love is not enough. Nor life. Neither sorcery.”
OR
“…half-smiling at an unremembered love…”
Whereas Tanith Lee’s first Flat Earth series book, Night’s Master (1978), is a composite novel made of linked short stories featuring the relationship between Azhrarn the Prince of Demons and humankind and the world, the second one, Death’s Master (1979) is an epic novel depicting the conflict between Uhlume Lord Death and his “human” servants and their enemies, with interference from his rival Azhrarn. (“There was this between Lords of darkness… a sort of allergic yet loving rivalry, a sort of unliking affection, a scornful unease, xenophobia and family feeling.”)
In addition to the enigmatic black-skinned white-haired Uhlume, who can go anywhere anything has died, and the sublime Azhrarn, who hates boredom and likes mortals who do interesting things, the novel features monstrous and compelling characters who are both beyond human and very human: Narasen the proud leopard queen, who prefers women to men, makes a desperate deal with Death, turns indigo, and broods on vengeance; Simmu her strange child who, conceived by his masculine mother’s coupling with a (dead) feminine father, can change gender at will, and who, abandoned in a tomb as a babe and raised by demonesses, fears nothing living (not even cobras) but fears everything dead (even sparrows) and communicates by graceful gestures and uncanny glances; Simmu’s childhood friend Zhirem, who is invulnerable and, perhaps, joyless after having been comprehensively burned at age five in a sublime fire; Death’s witch-servant Lylas, who’s 230-years-old but physically and psychologically fourteen; the beautiful merchant’s daughter Kassafeh, whose real father is an aethereal being and whose strangely changing eyes see through any illusion; the grotesque buffoonish “slit-purse, night prowler, seller of ineffectual potions,” Yolsippa, who is a “shrewd fool” incontinently attracted to any cross-eyed person of either gender. Etc.
Tanith Lee sure created augmented, alienated, crooked, and charismatic characters and wove ironic and moving interconnected destinies for them! Despite being monstrous, we care about them as we (in morbid fascination) watch them working towards their tragic destinies, which concern mortality and immortality, love and hate, annihilation and redemption.
Despite the many typos in the DAW first edition, like “heaving” instead of “hearing,” this was one of those rare books that I wanted to read more and more quickly, because I was so curious to see what surprising appalling thing the characters would do next, but that I ended up reading more and more slowly to prolong my immersion in it and its world, my pleasure in its prose and irony.
To list the pleasures of the novel:
1. Awesome Lines…
“To lie with any man is abhorrent to me... To lie with a dead one makes no odds, and may be better.”
… Including Neat Conversations (at times reminiscent of Jack Vance)
“Sorcery is a strong wine, and you are drunk on it.”
“Do not anticipate I shall sober.”
2. Ubiquitous, Delicious, Wicked Irony
Almost every page twists with wry lines and ironic flourishes, from small scale descriptions to large scale plot developments. Check, for example, this chapter ending:
“And, being a dutiful descendant he bore the skull [mistakenly thinking it’s his father’s] home, and went without food that he might have built for it an expensive tomb just beyond the village. The tomb was the wonder of the district, and pointed out by parents to their children as the deed of a good son.
Then, one morning, as chance would have it, the skull of the real father was washed up in the cove below the village. But, not recognizing it and reckoning it unlucky, the fisherfolk threw it down a dry well, and shoveled in dirt to obscure it, avoiding the area thenceforth.”
3. Fertile Fantastic Imagination with Teeth
“His eyes, which had seen centuries snuffed out almost in a blink, were impossibilities—two things made of light which was black, two searing flames the shade of unmitigated darkness.”
“Lylas the witch had forgotten she was dead. She turned luxuriously in her slumber and stretched out a languid hand to seize the collar of her blue dog. Her hand closed on air. She opened her eyes.”
“And she grinned a hag’s grin with his own dead mother's teeth.”
“Their eyes might have been made of glass. It was as if without knowing or being troubled by it, they were slowly calcifying, the calcification beginning with the topmost layer of the skin, creeping inward till it reached the organs and the mind.”
“The motives of the demons were both complex and simple. What intrigued them, they permitted liberties and rapture. What was fruitless or insolent or unwary, they eradicated. What bored them, they overlooked.”
4. Plenty of Sex (the original DAW cover calls it “an epic novel of adult fantasy”)
The sexy scenes often have an Arabian Nights-like earthy humor, but may turn sensually sublime, as Azhrarn demonstrates. And the sex is meaningful. It is a means to magical knowledge and power, as the mage who tries raping Narasen earned his by being penetrated by his master once a day. Or it is a way to work a great change in the world, as Simmu realizes. Or to companionably pass the time in a wasteland, as Simmu and Kassafeh find. And to fundamentally alters a relationship, as Simmu and Zhirem discover.
5. Messed-Up Characters
“Narasen was brooding… like venom fermenting in a vat.”
“Simmu began to laugh. And as he laughed his eyes were full of the tears of that utter panic-stricken loneliness a man feels who knows he will never be alone again.”
“Death is all I ask, and all I may not have.”
6. Exquisite Prose (tight, poetic, witty, awful, beautiful)
I reread, savored, typed up, reread, savored, etc. SO many passages, like--
“When she was fourteen, wandering home late from some orgy of an obscure sect over the hills and the hour before dawn, Lylas the witch had met Death. It was at a place where the ground was unloved, a place of thorns, and nearby three men had been hanged. Lylas had been well schooled, and she knew a thing or two more than most. She paused under the creaking gallows when she recognized the ebony Lord in his white clothes, and into her shrewd and youthful brain there came an inspiration. It was an inspiration of the sort to set heart banging, teeth jittering, hands cold and mouth dry. It was of the sort which comes only once, and must be hearkened to and acted on--or let go and ever regretted. Lylas chose not to regret. So she went up to Death and addressed him humbly.”
I’m looking forward to Delusion’s Master (1981)
OR
“Love is not enough. Nor life. Neither sorcery.”
OR
“…half-smiling at an unremembered love…”
Whereas Tanith Lee’s first Flat Earth series book, Night’s Master (1978), is a composite novel made of linked short stories featuring the relationship between Azhrarn the Prince of Demons and humankind and the world, the second one, Death’s Master (1979) is an epic novel depicting the conflict between Uhlume Lord Death and his “human” servants and their enemies, with interference from his rival Azhrarn. (“There was this between Lords of darkness… a sort of allergic yet loving rivalry, a sort of unliking affection, a scornful unease, xenophobia and family feeling.”)
In addition to the enigmatic black-skinned white-haired Uhlume, who can go anywhere anything has died, and the sublime Azhrarn, who hates boredom and likes mortals who do interesting things, the novel features monstrous and compelling characters who are both beyond human and very human: Narasen the proud leopard queen, who prefers women to men, makes a desperate deal with Death, turns indigo, and broods on vengeance; Simmu her strange child who, conceived by his masculine mother’s coupling with a (dead) feminine father, can change gender at will, and who, abandoned in a tomb as a babe and raised by demonesses, fears nothing living (not even cobras) but fears everything dead (even sparrows) and communicates by graceful gestures and uncanny glances; Simmu’s childhood friend Zhirem, who is invulnerable and, perhaps, joyless after having been comprehensively burned at age five in a sublime fire; Death’s witch-servant Lylas, who’s 230-years-old but physically and psychologically fourteen; the beautiful merchant’s daughter Kassafeh, whose real father is an aethereal being and whose strangely changing eyes see through any illusion; the grotesque buffoonish “slit-purse, night prowler, seller of ineffectual potions,” Yolsippa, who is a “shrewd fool” incontinently attracted to any cross-eyed person of either gender. Etc.
Tanith Lee sure created augmented, alienated, crooked, and charismatic characters and wove ironic and moving interconnected destinies for them! Despite being monstrous, we care about them as we (in morbid fascination) watch them working towards their tragic destinies, which concern mortality and immortality, love and hate, annihilation and redemption.
Despite the many typos in the DAW first edition, like “heaving” instead of “hearing,” this was one of those rare books that I wanted to read more and more quickly, because I was so curious to see what surprising appalling thing the characters would do next, but that I ended up reading more and more slowly to prolong my immersion in it and its world, my pleasure in its prose and irony.
To list the pleasures of the novel:
1. Awesome Lines…
“To lie with any man is abhorrent to me... To lie with a dead one makes no odds, and may be better.”
… Including Neat Conversations (at times reminiscent of Jack Vance)
“Sorcery is a strong wine, and you are drunk on it.”
“Do not anticipate I shall sober.”
2. Ubiquitous, Delicious, Wicked Irony
Almost every page twists with wry lines and ironic flourishes, from small scale descriptions to large scale plot developments. Check, for example, this chapter ending:
“And, being a dutiful descendant he bore the skull [mistakenly thinking it’s his father’s] home, and went without food that he might have built for it an expensive tomb just beyond the village. The tomb was the wonder of the district, and pointed out by parents to their children as the deed of a good son.
Then, one morning, as chance would have it, the skull of the real father was washed up in the cove below the village. But, not recognizing it and reckoning it unlucky, the fisherfolk threw it down a dry well, and shoveled in dirt to obscure it, avoiding the area thenceforth.”
3. Fertile Fantastic Imagination with Teeth
“His eyes, which had seen centuries snuffed out almost in a blink, were impossibilities—two things made of light which was black, two searing flames the shade of unmitigated darkness.”
“Lylas the witch had forgotten she was dead. She turned luxuriously in her slumber and stretched out a languid hand to seize the collar of her blue dog. Her hand closed on air. She opened her eyes.”
“And she grinned a hag’s grin with his own dead mother's teeth.”
“Their eyes might have been made of glass. It was as if without knowing or being troubled by it, they were slowly calcifying, the calcification beginning with the topmost layer of the skin, creeping inward till it reached the organs and the mind.”
“The motives of the demons were both complex and simple. What intrigued them, they permitted liberties and rapture. What was fruitless or insolent or unwary, they eradicated. What bored them, they overlooked.”
4. Plenty of Sex (the original DAW cover calls it “an epic novel of adult fantasy”)
The sexy scenes often have an Arabian Nights-like earthy humor, but may turn sensually sublime, as Azhrarn demonstrates. And the sex is meaningful. It is a means to magical knowledge and power, as the mage who tries raping Narasen earned his by being penetrated by his master once a day. Or it is a way to work a great change in the world, as Simmu realizes. Or to companionably pass the time in a wasteland, as Simmu and Kassafeh find. And to fundamentally alters a relationship, as Simmu and Zhirem discover.
5. Messed-Up Characters
“Narasen was brooding… like venom fermenting in a vat.”
“Simmu began to laugh. And as he laughed his eyes were full of the tears of that utter panic-stricken loneliness a man feels who knows he will never be alone again.”
“Death is all I ask, and all I may not have.”
6. Exquisite Prose (tight, poetic, witty, awful, beautiful)
I reread, savored, typed up, reread, savored, etc. SO many passages, like--
“When she was fourteen, wandering home late from some orgy of an obscure sect over the hills and the hour before dawn, Lylas the witch had met Death. It was at a place where the ground was unloved, a place of thorns, and nearby three men had been hanged. Lylas had been well schooled, and she knew a thing or two more than most. She paused under the creaking gallows when she recognized the ebony Lord in his white clothes, and into her shrewd and youthful brain there came an inspiration. It was an inspiration of the sort to set heart banging, teeth jittering, hands cold and mouth dry. It was of the sort which comes only once, and must be hearkened to and acted on--or let go and ever regretted. Lylas chose not to regret. So she went up to Death and addressed him humbly.”
I’m looking forward to Delusion’s Master (1981)
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