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4.0étoiles sur 5
"Malice in Saffron" excellent, Avril 7 2002
The Book of the Damned is perhaps the best of Tanith Lee's Books of Paradyse series, if only for the presence of the second novella, "Malice in Saffron". The first novella, "Stained with Crimson" begins with an interesting encounter, but becomes so mired in atmosphere and more atmosphere that the plot becomes indecipherable. Still, it evokes such a sense of hopelessness (in me at least!) that it's worth a read just to feel one's emotions tugged so. The third novella, "Empires of Azure", is less compelling. The characters feel caricatured despite Lee's typically stylish prose. It should be for "Malice in Saffron" that you buy this book. Jehanine, a peasant girl who's raped by her (step?)father, undergoes a personality split when she flees to Paradyse. Her nighttime persona of a carousing, murderous young man is a gripping portrayal of repressed rage finally unleashed. Late in the story, Lee introduces a plague to the city, and her subsequent descriptions rank with Camus, in my opinion, for depicting mass reaction to that particular fear of death (obviously, I like Lee very much). Finally, the twist of the "miracle" meal caps the story in a very satisfying manner. I think readers of various genres, fantasy, horror, even history, will get a kick out of this story.
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3.0étoiles sur 5
Too much of a good(?) thing, Mai 31 2001
The first novella ("Stained with Crimson") rambled along deliriously until it had long overstayed its welcome. The second ("Malice in Saffron") was relentlessly, unapologetically violent. After slogging through those two, I dragged my feet at reading the third ("Empires of Azure"), but it was best, evoking the spine-tingling suspense of a Gothic horror tale. Throughout, there was too much emphasis on gender-bending in all its permutations. It would have been a nice touch, if it hadn't been so liberally applied. You had your men with women, men with men, women with women, men with women dressed as men, men with men dressed as women, men turning into women, women turning into men, people of the either/or variety turning into... well I guess they were pretty contented as-is. As for myself, I was more than ready to simply call everyone "a person" and never mind who they slept with, but that would have eliminated two thirds of the book. There you have it. It was fantasy, it was horror, and it was a blatant call for publicly-funded sex change surgery.
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5.0étoiles sur 5
Bizarre, compelling, and original!, Aoû 1 1999
Par Un client
First in the Paradys Tetralogy, "The Book of the Damned" is a three-part exploration into the dark, decadent, and thoroughly bizarre (but completely enjoyable) world of Paradys, something of an alternate-world Paris steeped in sorcery and darkness since its earliest days. The first story, "Stained With Crimson," is a less-than-conventional vampire tale. Andre St. Jean, a poet living in Paradys shortly after the Revolution, becomes the owner of a ruby ring in the shape of a scarab and is shortly thereafter introduced to the owner of the ring, the beautiful Antonina Scarabin. His obsession with Antonina leads to her death and his...and their dual gender-bending resurrection as Anthony and Anna. Pursued becomes pursuer, predator becomes prey, and it all grows surreal and cyclical. While not my personal favorite of the three, the story is excellent. The language, rich with color, is descriptive and disturbing; the reader views Andre/Anna's story through the poet's dream-darkened eyes. "Stained With Crimson" is expertly told, dark and ironic, and maintains its dreamlike quality up to and past the last line of the story. The second novella, "Malice in Saffron" is my personal favorite of the three and, to tell the truth, one of my all-time favorite short stories. Taking place in medieval times, it follows a young woman named Jehanine from her country farm, where she is raped by her brutal step-father, to the City Paradys, where her disbelieving brother Pierre--gifted with a topaz cross by the same doting father that so abused Pierre's sister--rejects her violently. She is then led by a mysterious dwarf into a bizarre double life: by day she lives as Jhane in the Nunnery of the Angel, a quiet female penitent; by night she is Jehan, a beautiful and cruel young man who leads a gang of thieves and cutthroats to greater and greater atrocities. When the Black Death comes to Paradys, Jehanine is forced to confront the conjunction of her two lives...add a holy vision, an enigmatic, and a bizarre redemption, and you have some idea of the complexity of Jehanine's story. Stark, painful, and ultimately beautiful, "Malice in Saffron" is a fascinating tale that deserves at least two re-readings: once for the story and once to understand it, or at try and unravel the stunning weave Tanith Lee has set before you. The last story, "Empires of Azure," is a ghost story set in 1930's Paradis, but hearkening back to a time when the city was known as Par Dis, a community of silver mines at the fringe of the Roman Empire. Told through the eyes of a journalist, a young woman who uses the male pseudonym St. Jean--a tribute to Andre St. Jean of the first story--"Empires of Azure" follows Louis de Jenier, a cross-dresser who moves into a house said to be haunted by the girl who was murdered there years ago. In time, the house with its blue-stained windows yields up two things to Louis: a spider-shaped earring made of sapphires, and visions of Timonie, the murdered young woman. Timonie herself possessed the earring, believing it to be a link to Tiy-Amonet, an Alexandrian sorceress and the mistress to the Roman commander of Par Dis...but neither Tiy-Amonet nor Louis de Jenier are what they appear, as Mademoiselle St. Jean soon discovers. Most of the story seems distanced from the reader, as all but the very beginning and ending are Louis' actions as told by the journalist St. Jean, but the language is no less flawless and the story, despite its odd structure, holds together masterfully. Elements from all three stories interweave among the others--the name St. Jean, the church known as Our Lady of Ashes--but the three stories are fully distinct from each other. Common elements such as gender reversals and jewelry form another set of links, as well as the triad of primary colors that provide the novellas' names. "The Book of the Damned" is a look at Paradys at three different times in its history, at the people who live in that dark and fascinating city--and a story well worth the reading. If you have a taste for darkness and flawlessly crafted prose, read "The Book of the Damned" and its three sequels. They may disturb, but they will not disappoint.
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