Book Review: NIGHT'S MASTER (Tales from the Flat Earth # 1) by Tanith Lee

Night's Master by Tanith Lee

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


"Hate fed on hate, and now perforce it fed on love, and love choked it."

I'd been hearing a lot about Tanith Lee from my Creative Writing/ English major twin and other book club pals, so I FINALLY gave in and read Book 1 of her "Tales from the Flat Earth" series. And WHOOOAAA the hype is real!

First page in, I knew I was in the hands of a master wordsmith. After the first couple of paragraphs, I realized that Lee's writing evoked the same sense of wonder and magic that Oscar Wilde's fairy tales did. Even the rhythm of the sentences seemed very similar!

"East and west he flew, beating with his vast wings, north and south, to the four edges of the world, for in those days the earth was flat and floated on the ocean of chaos. He watched the lighted processions of men crawling by below with lamps as small as sparks, and the breakers of the sea bursting into white blossoms on the rocky shores. He crossed, with a contemptuous and ironic glance, over the high stone towers and pylons of cities, and perched for a moment on the sail of some imperial galley, where a king and a queen sat feasting on honeycomb and quails while the rowers strained at the oars; and once he folded his inky wings on the roof of a temple and laughed aloud at men's notions of the gods."

The difference lies in their definition of taboo, and morals. What I loved about Oscar Wilde's stories were the lessons they imparted.

Tanith Lee's tales (for that is what the Flat Earth series is... a Scheherazade-like collection of stories about ... Night's Master, in the case of Book 1) don't always contain lessons... at least, not any that school children ought to learn. And perhaps this is the give-away that this book was written in the 1970's, a more permissive time... the fact that this reader was quite shocked at the events portrayed ... so vividly! too. Nothing is taboo in Tanith Lee's Flat Earth. And thus, the series is MOST DEFINITELY for adult readers only.

(And yet... the penultimate tale spoke of how even an evil creature is capable of sacrifice and good.)

Rated 4 out of 5 stars because I'm a school teacher and I love books with morals, ahahaha. But gosh darn it, this is fiiiiiiine writing! You'd be hardpressed to find any better! Now, which one of my book club friends has Book 2?? :)



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