I have to admit that I haven’t read Fifty Shades of Grey, or any of the sequels, or the Twilight books that apparently inspired E.L. James to write the Fifty Shades fanfiction series in the first place. Not taking a stand against them or anything, they’re just not my thing. There’s been a lot of backlash against the series and the “unhealthy” relationship between the main characters, but it’s been hard for me to judge the books because, approve or disapprove of them, it’s obvious that they make millions of people happy. Every one of us has something we like in spite of (or maybe because of) it being a little off the beaten track. For me, that something would be Tanith Lee’s stories.
Lee’s Secret Books of Paradys series are all set in the Gothic, alternate-world version of Paris: Paradys. The Secret Books of Paradys I and II collects together The Book of the Damned (three short stories), and The Book of the Beast (short novel). The stories jump backwards and forwards in time, sometimes containing the same elements or history, but mostly they’re only linked by similar themes and the setting of the city itself. Since it’s Tanith Lee, the stories are all decadent, violent, lush, dark, and unfortunately in this case, a little hard to understand.
“I held out my book. It was precious to me, as were all the things I’d written; even where I despised their inadequacy there was not one I would disown. Each tore its way from my entrails. Each had shortened my life, killed me with its own special little death.”
I’m trying to think how to describe Tanith Lee’s writing; it’s a little like the purple prose of Poppy Z. Brite, only not quite as earthy. The phrases she uses always sound archaic, even when it’s in a modern day setting, and the pages are dense with sentences that can go on for several lines. “Raoulin was aware he was happy, but wisely, like a superstitious savage in some travelogue of the Caesars, did not name his state.” That’s a pretty typical description. It can take a long time to get through even a few pages of that kind of thing.
The three short stories in the first half of the book, The Book of the Damned didn’t work for me as well as some of Lee’s other works. All three stories have themes of transformation, spiritual and physical, as well as having characters who won’t let themselves be confined to either male or female identities. They’re all set in the city of Paradys at different times (early 19th century, Middle Ages, and modern day), and each one is set around the theme of one color (red, yellow, or blue) and of course there’s always something more or less horrifying going on. But other than that it’s hard to really link the three stories together.
Stained with Crimson was the story I found the hardest to get through. A nineteenth century poet lusts hopelessly for a banker’s wife; the wife may or may not be a kind of vampire, and her brother may or may not also be her lover. Or captor. Or they may be two halves of one soul that’s been fighting itself for centuries, it’s hard to say. The poet has an interesting secret (Lee does a clever job of dancing around this secret in the first part of the story, while not really hinting that there’s anything to dance around) and goes through a strange transformation halfway through the story. The ending was unclear; I had the sense that everything went back to the beginning, but I wasn’t completely sure what the whole point had been.
The story set in the Middle Ages is Malice in Saffron. Trigger warning for rape, although I think that should be in bold: TRIGGER WARNING. Tanith Lee often explores themes of women having to survive horrible situations, in eras where they have next to no power, in societies where sexual attacks are usually considered the victim’s fault. So what the main character goes through isn’t all that surprising, but it’s still pretty unpleasant. Jehanine runs away from abuse to the big city of Paradys and ends up living a double life, spending her days in a nunnery and her nights as a boy in a band of thieves and cutthroats. It’s not really a women’s empowerment sort of story; Jehanine (or Jhane) uses her life as a boy to try to become all the horrible things that men have already been in her own life. There are so many hallucinations of Satan and saints and angels, that it’s impossible to figure out what’s really happening and what’s a dream or a delusion. And the ending of this one is also fairly unclear.
Empires of Azure was the shortest and possibly the easiest to understand. It’s a mystery set around a haunting and a possession (the idea that it could be a demon possession is hinted at, but not stated outright), and more instances of someone identifying with both the male and female parts of their personality. The writing is a little less flowery here, since it’s set in modern-day Paradys, but you still don’t get to find out exactly everything that happened, or what might have happened next.
The second half of the collection is taken up by The Book of the Beast, and it was the part I enjoyed the most. There’s much more of a coherent story line, even with at least three separate sets of characters linked together over three different time periods, with the earliest going back to when Paradys was known as Par Dis, a secluded outpost of the Roman Empire. There’s one tie-in with a character from Empires of Azure, but mostly it’s a sprawling story of a family curse that runs mostly through the male line, one that’s not only inherited, but spread like an infection via sex. Violent, passionate, generally forbidden and usually non-consensual sex. There’s a lot of sex in this story, as you can imagine. There’s also one of Lee’s other favorite tropes: the innocent maiden who’s desperately in love with a cold and cruel gentleman who only returns her interest when it becomes clear that this would be a bad idea. After yet another transformation the story turns tragic and violent, and yet oddly satisfying. And I was pleasantly surprised with the ending, especially after the way the other three stories wrapped up.
I’ve always found Tanith Lee’s writing to be elegantly grotesque, or grotesquely elegant, and this book was no different. If you haven’t read any Tanith Lee before then this might not be the best introduction. A lot of times Lee’s writing feels like it’s being weird for its own sake. And while I think things may become a little clearer once I’ve read the next two books of the series (The Book of the Dead and The Book of the Mad), the author’s already shown in her other stories that she doesn’t necessarily think everything needs to be neatly explained and resolved. The flowery style and the heavy use of symbolism may put some people off.
Out of the more than ninety novels and collections that Lee’s written I’ve only read nine, so I’ll happily accept any recommendations for new ones to try (are the Claidi Journals any good?) For the ones I have read, if you like your symbolism with a little bit more of a narrative flow (and you happen to like reading authors that your book club might not approve of), try Tanith Lee’s Snow White adaptation, White as Snow, or her collection of fairy tales, Red as Blood. Those two are my favorites, and they’re definitely not for the easily offended.