The Book of the Damned

By Tanith Lee

Three bizarre, spellbinding novellas comprise the first volume of this series. "Stained with Crimson" is an erotic, horror-filled vampire tale. In "Malice in Saffron," a young girl exacts vengeance against men as a result of being brutally raped, but then tells of her eventual redemption and horrible self-sacrifice. "Empires of Azure" is a grim tale of death and sorcery. The unifying element is the setting: the magical French city of Paradys during the medieval era. Lee's superb imagination and her creative use of language to convey mood has generated three fantastic tales.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Penguin Group
• Release date: Feb 1, 1997
• ISBN: 9781468307689

Tanith Lee

Tanith Lee (1947–2015) was a legend in science fiction and fantasy writing. She wrote more than 90 novels and 300 short stories, and was the winner of multiple World Fantasy Awards, a British Fantasy Society Derleth Award, the World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement in Horror.

Reviews for The Book of the Damned

[altheaann · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Re-reading...

The Books of Paradys are a set of four collections of novellas all set in a dark and hallucinatory version of a former Paris. In part they're an homage to various 19th-century authors, especially the French symbolists, but they showcase Tanith Lee's unique and strikingly original vision to perfection. Some of the best writing, by one of my favorite authors. They can be read in any order, but The Book of the Damned was first published... and as the title suggests, it gives us a collection of characters who will find no redemption.

Stained with Crimson
A dissipated young man develops an obsession with a cold and enigmatic woman - a newcomer to Paradys, a foreigner who has quickly become known for running a salon. But his interest is unrequited, and it seems that there may be something unsavory and ominous about her household. After a death, and a fateful duel, there is an inexplicable/supernatural, but neatly balanced, reversal of the situation.
Lush yet subtle, the gender-twisting vampire tale brings to mind both Oscar Wilde and Bram Stoker.

Malice in Saffron
This is the 'pilgrim's progress' of Jehanine, a young farm girl. Assaulted by her stepfather, she flees to the city to find her beloved brother - who repudiates her as a harlot. From there, her journey will take her through the extremes of sin and saintliness, theft and sacrifice. She will act as male and female, depraved murderer and holy nun, until she and her brother come full circle and around again. If you try to extract a moral message from the tale, you are likely to be stymied - and that's exactly the point.

Empires of Azure
A multilayered ghost story, with similar themes echoing through different lives.
A journalist who writes under a male pseudonym is approached by a man who makes his living as a cross-dressing performer. He tells her that soon he will die. Investigating, she finds him missing, and discovers that he was living in a notorious house of scandal, scene of the death of a wild young woman. Both of them were obsessed with an ancient Egyptian princess, whose Cleopatra-like life story ended in tragedy... but the story stretches back even further, to an ancient sorcerer (or sorceress?) whose influence has stretched through the ages.
I read in this one a mirrored acknowledgement of how we might romanticize the Paris of the past (as Lee blatantly does in the books of Paradys) just as her 19th-century-esque characters (and those they're based on) romanticize ancient Egypt...

I've read this volume before, but many thanks to Open Road Media and NetGalley for providing an eBook copy. As always, my opinions are solely my own.

[alaudacorax · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This work (like one or two others by [[Tanith Lee]]) has been simultaneously fascinating and baffling me for years. For instance, I’ve just read it through twice in succession, and I’ve read it a couple of previous times over the years, yet I’m still not sure if it is a novel in three parts or three, separate novellas on a common theme.Her characters move through different ages of her fictionalised version of Paris: a mediaeval cutthroat of the dark alleys and the night; a dissolute, self-destructive bohemian writer; an Edwardian drag queen. But her characters are often not what they seem – or, if they are, they are liable not to stay that way, metamorphosing into something else; for, in whatever age, the world of this novel is one where the supernatural is a reality. In fact, allied to my confusion over whether this is a single work or not, it’s difficult to work out how many separate characters there are – some may or may not be single beings reincarnated.I strongly suspect Ms Lee of allegory and symbolism, though I’m not even sure of that; so I’m simply offering for consideration the idea that the theme of the book could be the selfish, destructive passion and desire for possession we can have for another human being; the kind of passion that will do neither you nor its object much good but which makes for great opera or drama (or novels). Then again, a theme could be gender roles; for this is a world where characters are liable to move across gender boundaries in a variety of ways. The book is rich with rather oblique cultural references, too. You can catch a half-allusion to Joan of Arc, say, or a poem by Poe, and then you puzzle what, if any, may be the implication. One thing I am sure of is the quality of Ms Lee’s writing. She writes a colourful, poetic prose, rich with metaphor and simile, which carries your imagination through the book even while your intellect is struggling for meanings and patterns, and she can put striking pictures before your mind’s eye with just a few brush strokes. She has created a work poised somewhere between fantasy and fin-de-siècle and dark (very dark on times), gothic horror. If that appeals to you and you don’t mind being challenged and puzzled, I strongly recommend it.

[t1bnotown · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

The title of this one is apt- I admit I found it highly disturbing. Tanith Lee is the author of a few of my favorite books, but this one definitely doesn't make that list. It focuses on three different characters (two of whom begin to seem connected towards the end), who seem to be connected primarily by their combination of masculinity and femininity. The books have more of a swell of emotions than a story and are both gory and sexual.