Tanith Lee

asuza_chan

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Mar 18, 2005
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San Diego, CA, USA
Is anyone here a Tanith Lee fan? I am a huge fan of her works even though they are super difficult to find here in the states, and I would love to find some people who love her as much as I do so we can discuss her works. You can e-mail me if you would like.
 
Tanith Lee is one of my favorite writers -- despite the fact that some of her books are a bit too dark and violent for my taste. Mostly, I love her style, which is amazing. Not sure whether a discussion of her works belongs in Classic SF, though, since most, if not all, of her work has been published since 1970.

She's very prolific, but it's true that only about half of her books seem to get published over here, and some of those not easy to find even on Amazon. I've started ordering some of her backlist from Amazon UK, but only a book or two at a time, since the cost of shipping is horrendous and my husband experiences piercing pains in our mutual bank account whenever I do so.

I just finished reading "Sung in Shadow" about a week ago. It's Lee's retelling of the Romeo and Juliet story.
 
Going by what I know of your tastes, I'd say Dark Castle, White Horse or Companions on the Road but they're not so easy to find these days.

You definitely want to stay away from White as Snow her recent retelling of Snow White, because even I couldn't stomach it and I'm a big fan. Her earlier fairy tale retellings in Red as Blood are beautiful and evocative.

If you're in the mood for science fiction, I believe they've reissued The Silver Metal Lover to go with the recently published not-exactly-a-sequel. It's YA, but I read it as an adult and it made me shed many a tear. Also in the YA line is Piratica, just now coming out in paperback in the US. It's slight but fun.


Cast a Bright Shadow, which is fairly new, is full of many strange and startling and wonderful images (the reason I liked it), but has an extremely opaque plot -- after reading the whole book, I'm still not sure of what it was all about, but perhaps that will be revealed in the sequel, which I've just ordered.
 
Thanks for the info Kelpie. I'll see if I can get those, possible through my library :D
 
Very much a Tanith Lee fan myself. I originally reaq the first two - Birthgrave and Stormlord - but my all time favourite of hers has to be Volkhavaar ... shortly followed by Vivia. But there's a lot of her stuff out there. I think her total thus far is around seventy books, and she's still producing (for Tor Macmillan).
 
I've read "Birthgrave" and it's follow up "Shadowfire" which were both enjoyable.

I also read "East of Midnight" which I recommend too.
 
I've never heard of Shadowfire -- no doubt something that was retitled for publication in the US. I have read a Birthgrave sequel, Vazkor, Son of Vazkor, which is probably the same book.

Neal, I recently read Volkhavaar and liked it very much, although generally speaking I like her more recent books best.
 
Teresa

Did you ever finish the last trilogy she wrote that started with Cast a Bright Shadow?
 
No, I haven't. The series isn't available here, so I have to hunt the books up online and send for them overseas. Must get around to doing that for the last book. Thanks for the reminder.
 
One my favorite books is Silver Metal Lover,but have not read the indirect sequel,I also liked her Tales from The Flat Earth:Lords of Darkness Omnibus (3 novels), Tales from The Flat Earth:Nights Daugther Omnibus (2 novels.)

Just checked I have 21 paperback and 5 hardbacks of Tanith's so you could say I quite like her.:)
 
Tanith Lee is one of my all time favorites. I love Silver Metal Lover but my favorite is probably Drinking Saphire's Wine. I thought that book was fantastic. Also East of Midnight. I love her Night's Master, Dillussions Master, Night's Mistress etc series about Azhran.

I wasn't as much of a fan of her Birthgrave saga but still enjoyed it.
 
The Birthgrave is on my "favourite 20 books" list. I really must get around to re-reading it and reviewing it sometime.

I havn't read a lot by her, but I have read that her books have been getting steadily more "extreme" in pushing the boundaries of acceptable taste.
 
Her 'Unicorn' series I thought was very good. Certainly different but I liked her style of writing. It has been years since I read them though, perhaps I should try a few more. I know our library has many of her books & that they are very popular.
 
I wish our library did; they have only a tiny fraction of her vast output.

Fortunately, I run across some of her older, hard-to-find books used from time to time. (If they would re-issue some of them so I could buy them new, I would.)
 
Mithfanion asked me about one of her books in the October reading thread:

Keep me posted on Lionwulf 3, I am interested in that one. This series I am reading in my native Dutch so I have to wait a bit more, but I still have not seen a single review for this book on the Internet and it has been out for several months now.

And this seems like a better place to give a more detailed response. Beginning with a bit of background on my experience of the series so far.

I adored the first book in the series Cast a Bright Shadow. It was long and grim and incredibly complex, with subplots springing up in all sorts of unexpected directions -- but it was so beautifully written, and filled with so many magicial and breathtaking images, that I felt it was one of the very best things she's ever written (and that's saying a lot, because when she's "on" she's one of my favorite writers).

The second book Here in Cold Hell disappointed me. It was even grimmer and even more rambling, and it didn't seem to advance the story, and there was far less beauty and far more sex and violence (and book number one had hardly been short of either). Then, too, she introduced so many new characters and subplots when it seemed to me that there were more than enough already.

With practically any other author, there is very little chance that I would have gone on to the third book, but knowing how Tanith Lee's writing can fluctuate between brilliant and dismal from book to book, I was eager to see which it would be in the final volume.

And so now to answer the question:

For me, No Flame But Mine recaptured much, though not all, of the magic of the first book. It was definitely worth reading for that alone. And all of the characters and subplots from the previous two books are brought together and begin to form a coherent plot. (Unfortunately, because there were so many of them, and because of the time between books, I was constantly saying, "Who? What? Oh wait ... I think I do remember something about that. Vaguely.") In many ways, it even made reading Cold Hell worthwhile.

There does seem to be an unnecessary proliferation of new gods and demi-gods, and much remains obscure. But I found the conclusion very satisfying -- not only in terms of that single volume, but as the conclusion of the whole series.
 
I'm not really into her stuff - a bit too self-consciously 'Gothick' for my taste.

Having said that, I think When the Lights Go Out is just about the best urban fantasy I've ever read.
 

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