Book Review: DEATH'S MASTER (Tales from the Flat Earth # 2) by Tanith Lee

Death's Master by Tanith Lee

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


"There is no benefit which has not a sister in misfortune."

This was my second Tanith Lee book, and it took a while to finish because I've been finding it most difficult to focus ever since the quarantine lockdown started in Manila. Tanith Lee's voluptuous writing demands a great deal of focus, her books aren't the kind that can be skimmed quickly. Each sentence is to be savored. Each paragraph is a work of art.

But that's just it.

At the end of the day, gorgeous writing isn't enough for me. I want to be changed by what I read, hopefully for the better. This book didn't serve that purpose, apart from showing me how to write exquisitely.

Tanith Lee's characters are horrible people, though masterfully depicted. The world she constructs is terrible in its horrors and savage in its beauty. There are no happy endings, no easy morals. Rather, there are themes in the intertwined stories of lost men and monsters.

This book's theme is death and immortality. "But after the conquest, what? A sedentary world of clockwork immortals." "No jest, to live forever, your lives worthless, spent in goalless atrophy. The rat in the cage, running from one corner to another and back again, lives better."

Perhaps one possible reason Tanith Lee wrote such unsympathetic characters is that she is driving home the message about BALANCE. Too much beauty and power exists in these greater-than-life characters. They love too deeply, with too many! And when they drink the draught of immortality, they live too long.

I much prefer the first Flat Earth book (Night's Master) because there was a redemptive act of grace towards the end. This second one lacked that. Upon closing it, I kept thinking, "Was that it??!" All that suffering, that build-up... for what???

We with such short years demand meaning, and reading this book in this difficult time... when death is everywhere... might not have been the best use of what little time I have, mortal that I am.



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View my review for the first book in the series