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Birthgrave #2
Shadowfire
First publihsed in the United States of America under the title Vazkor, Son Of Vazkor.
He was the son of the witch woman, and of Vazkor the warrior lord. He was brought up by the barbarian tribes, but the mark of strangeness was with him always.
He cast off the tribes when he discovered his identity. His father was long dead, the witch-goddess Vastis had disappeared - and the hand of every man was turned against him...
He was the son of the witch woman, and of Vazkor the warrior lord. He was brought up by the barbarian tribes, but the mark of strangeness was with him always.
He cast off the tribes when he discovered his identity. His father was long dead, the witch-goddess Vastis had disappeared - and the hand of every man was turned against him...
220 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1978
18 people are currently reading
537 people want to read
About the author
Tanith Lee
608 books1,960 followersTanith Lee was a British writer of science fiction, horror, and fantasy. She was the author of 77 novels, 14 collections, and almost 300 short stories. She also wrote four radio plays broadcast by the BBC and two scripts for the UK, science fiction, cult television series "Blake's 7."
Before becoming a full time writer, Lee worked as a file clerk, an assistant librarian, a shop assistant, and a waitress.
Her first short story, "Eustace," was published in 1968, and her first novel (for children) The Dragon Hoard was published in 1971.
Her career took off in 1975 with the acceptance by Daw Books USA of her adult fantasy epic The Birthgrave for publication as a mass-market paperback, and Lee has since maintained a prolific output in popular genre writing.
Lee twice won the World Fantasy Award: once in 1983 for best short fiction for “The Gorgon” and again in 1984 for best short fiction for “Elle Est Trois (La Mort).” She has been a Guest of Honour at numerous science fiction and fantasy conventions including the Boskone XVIII in Boston, USA in 1981, the 1984 World Fantasy Convention in Ottawa, Canada, and Orbital 2008 the British National Science Fiction convention (Eastercon) held in London, England in March 2008. In 2009 she was awarded the prestigious title of Grand Master of Horror.
Lee was the daughter of two ballroom dancers, Bernard and Hylda Lee. Despite a persistent rumour, she was not the daughter of the actor Bernard Lee who played "M" in the James Bond series of films of the 1960s.
Tanith Lee married author and artist John Kaiine in 1992.
Before becoming a full time writer, Lee worked as a file clerk, an assistant librarian, a shop assistant, and a waitress.
Her first short story, "Eustace," was published in 1968, and her first novel (for children) The Dragon Hoard was published in 1971.
Her career took off in 1975 with the acceptance by Daw Books USA of her adult fantasy epic The Birthgrave for publication as a mass-market paperback, and Lee has since maintained a prolific output in popular genre writing.
Lee twice won the World Fantasy Award: once in 1983 for best short fiction for “The Gorgon” and again in 1984 for best short fiction for “Elle Est Trois (La Mort).” She has been a Guest of Honour at numerous science fiction and fantasy conventions including the Boskone XVIII in Boston, USA in 1981, the 1984 World Fantasy Convention in Ottawa, Canada, and Orbital 2008 the British National Science Fiction convention (Eastercon) held in London, England in March 2008. In 2009 she was awarded the prestigious title of Grand Master of Horror.
Lee was the daughter of two ballroom dancers, Bernard and Hylda Lee. Despite a persistent rumour, she was not the daughter of the actor Bernard Lee who played "M" in the James Bond series of films of the 1960s.
Tanith Lee married author and artist John Kaiine in 1992.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 43 reviews
October 21, 2022
4/5 stars
The sequel to The Birthgrave, set some twenty years later we return to the cruel world that Karrakaz journeyed through, but this time through the eyes of her son Tuvek.
Tuvek is raised among Ettook's red-headed barbarian people. He believes that he is the son of Ettook and his first wife Tathra, but if you read the previous book you know that he's actually Karrakaz and Vazkor's son, it will come as no surprise. Regardless, Tuvek is considered somewhat of an outcast because of his behavior and his black hair; he does not act like a true member of krarl. As he grows up, Tuvek tries to become the best warrior of his krarl and worthy heir to Ettook and a good son to Tathra. However, something strange is going on with Tuvek. It seems he can miraculous heal from any and all harm against his body and he's having strange dreams about a white-haired woman. As Tuvek tries to model himself as best as he can off Ettook, something hard for him to do due to almost everyone else hating him and how he hates how Etook treats his mother, some revelations are made. Kotta, the blind healing woman of the krarl, reveals that Tathra is not his true birth mother. His real mother, the white-haired woman (Karrakaz) gave birth to him, switched him for Tathra's dead baby, and then fled the krarl. Soon after, men from the other cities in the land come for Tuvek after he kills some of their soldiers. They believe he is Vazkor, the super-powered warrior who once terrorized the land along with his witch wife.
In a gender swapped version of the lost princess trope, Tuvek will go on a journey, but it is no hero's journey. Keeping in line with the many morally grey and self-centered protagonists of the sword and sorcery genre, Tuvek cares for only a few other people. Much like how his mother was in The Birthgrave, Tuvek is not a kind young man. He feels entitled to many things; power, inheritance, women, and vengeance. He will learn that his birth mother killed his true father Vazkor, the man who gave him some of his Power. Propelled by his father's influence and possibly spirit, he will go on a journey to find his wretched mother and kill her.
This was a good follow-up to The Birthgrave! It is shorter than The Birthgrave, but has much faster pacing. The themes and commentary that were present in the first book are still explored here. Shadowfire continues the exploration of gender that its predecessor did, but this time through the eyes of a man. In The Birthgrave, we learned how one woman could be just as cold-hearted and cruel as any of the men around her, or as any of the other male protagonists in the genre. We now see this world through the eyes of that woman's son, a young man who is a fierce and strong barbarian warrior who thinks he has a right to everything. Thankfully, Tanith Lee still has a lot of nuance and doesn't seek to constantly bash us over the head with the themes and commentary. It's subtle; if you understand what's she doing in a certain scene or part of the narrative, then you know. Additionally, she does not make Tuvek or most of the other male characters one dimensional. Whenever these kinds of stories are written, the male characters end up being cartoonishly evil or have some of most cringey, ham-fisted dialogue. The authors' attempt to make a criticism of patriarchy and misogyny, but the execution comes off laughable. Lee avoids this completely.
Tuvek starts off as a very arrogant bastard. He's still arrogant by the end of the book, but there's a hidden softness within him that has unearthed by the end. I will return to this later. In fact, Tuvek's perspective might be hard to read for some. As I said before, the world of this trilogy is a cruel one. Many of the men are not kind to women. The Lost Race, Karrakaz's people, treated their own women as equals, but horribly mistreated women of other races and cultures. The only race that treats their own women and other women as equals and without malice are the very dark-skinned people who live along the sea. We saw them at the end of The Birthgrave and they return here as well; keep in mind that they are the descendants of the people the Lost Race enslaved but who were able to flee the Lost Race's destruction. We witnessed some very cruel things through Karrakaz's eyes in the previous book, and we still witness those things through Tuvek's, but what makes it more difficult to read is that he sometimes perpetuates those things themselves. I will be upfront here and saw that besides killing people (pretty much all men), Tuvek does force himself on some women. It is not described in explicit detail, sometimes only mentioned in passing; but I do just want to make other readers aware of that. It's a rough read that will make you angry--seriously, Tuvek's a shit in the beginning. By the end of the book, Tuvek's perspective has changed somewhat. He's no champion of women's rights--neither was Karrakaz--and is still a bit arrogant, but he seems to realize the strength women have that most men ignore or try to repress.
As I said, Tuvek grows up thinking he's the strongest and best of Ettook's sons and believes he has the right to leadership once Ettook passes it on. He does was the typical macho warrior does: kills a lot, takes many wives, and sires many children. He also avoids superstition and mysticism, thinking they're emotional things, things only lesser societies and woman indulge in; a similar mode of thinking can be found on a lot of self-professed, hyper-logical men. However, we start to see cracks in Tuvek when he learns about his true parentage, when Kotta tells him who his real mother is and when he learns that the late, fearsome Vazkor is his father after he fights some of the warriors from the other cities; and this is also when his journey really begins. Tuvek has inherited the dream clairvoyance and healing abilities of Karrakaz, though it is not as strong (yet), but he believes he inherited these abilities from Vazkor instead. He did inherit Vazkor's lightning magic too, which I actually forgot Vazkor had in the previous book. Tuvek learns from Demizdor, a woman who is descended from the Lost Race, and the rulers of the other cities that his birth mother killed Vazkor. At first, he doesn't believe it because he believes no woman, even a witch woman, is that strong, but the evidence says otherwise. Because of how Karrakaz abandoned him and killed his true father, Tuvek believes he has a right to avenge his father. Why? Because that's what any noble warrior should do. The father is the one you seek approval and acceptance from, so any warrior would honor his memory.
Despite this, Tuvek does care for Tathra, the mother who raised him. In fact, he considers her his true mother because she raised him. And it is because of her that his journey also begins, but also when his perspective on women starts to change. Although Tuvek has his own children, no men in the krarl witness their women giving birth, they know nothing about it. When Tathra goes into labor to bear her next child, the birth becomes compromised. Against Kotta's advice, Tuvek enters the tent and hears the pain in Tathra's screams. He has no knowledge about the pain of birth and can do nothing to alleviate her pain. Tathra dies and so does her baby. Tuvek wants to weep for the mother who cared for him, but his warrior code has conditioned him to where he can't even weep:
It is hard or impossible for a warrior to weep; the ease of it is never taught him, rather he must consider it a failing, a weakness. Therefore I could not, though my body was wracked. There was no release for me, no purging of my anguish in grief.
Lee here seems to be talking about certain modes of stricter masculinity that prevent men from feeling deeply for their even most beloved ones. Never thought I'd see that in a sword and sorcery novel.
After Tuvek takes his own form of vengeance against Ettook and is banished from the krarl and then taken by Vazkor's enemies to another city, his journey truly begins and he is also depowered for the first time. Erran, Kortis, and the other leaders of city want to experiment on Tuvek's body to test his healing ability and even have half a mind to breed him out to see if his children will inherit it. Tuvek is stripped, prodded, tortured, and analyzed almost to the point where he feels like a lab rat. Karrakaz went through something similar in The Birthgrave. Some men forced themselves on her, exploited her "goddess" Power, and examined her. Although, Tuvek enjoys some of the concubines the leaders send him, he hates that he has no power here. But he is also frustrated by Demizdor. As mentioned, Demizdor is a descendant of the Lost Race, and Tuvek initially thought she resembled his mother in some way (*stares in Freud*) when he first saw her. Before he is taken to the city, Tuvek makes Demizdor his concubine in the krarl and mistreats her, but once the tables are turned the frustration grows between them. Demizdor finds herself both hating and loving Tuvek--oddly similar to Karrakaz and Darak in the first book--and Tuvek just cannot get her out of his mind. Demizdor doesn't seem to do much of anything, but she does help him escape, and yet she possesses Tuvek, as in the "he can't stop thinking about her" sense not the "she controlled his mind and body magically" sense.
It is with Demizdor that I have some of my criticisms. She is clearly an influence on Tuvek as he cannot stop thinking about her even after they part ways, however I am miffed that we only see so much of her. I kind of wish she was there till the end, but she wasn't. She feels like a missed opportunity. I'm guessing Lee didn't want a rehash of Karrakaz, but it would've been nice to see another female descendant of the Lost Race present in the story.
I said in my review of The Birthgrave that the book, despite being a fantasy, shifted genres sometimes, and sometimes there was some diving into the Gothic genre. That continues here too, but in much briefer intervals. Tuvek, like Karrakaz, finds ruins of the Lost Race and learns some things about his heritage, but much of it is veiled in mystery and nefariousness.
Throughout the book, Tuvek propelled by the thought of killing his birth mother and avenging his father. He still wants to do this by the end of the book, but the more he learns about Karrakaz and Vazkor, the more muddied his goals seem. Can he even defeat his goddess-witch mother? Why is Vazkor's presence coming off more and more shadowy as the book goes on? Why is he so possessed by the thought to kill Karrakaz? The third question is answerable: Tuvek is still clinging to the idea that he has to live up to father's ideals and wishes and wants to fill the void that Tathra left. However, the stories about Karrakaz that Tuvek hears from others, and the lingering influence of Demizdor, seem to be causing this muddying. And they are also, along with Tathra's painful death, the reason Tuvek's views on women's strength are changing. All of this culminates in the final setting, when Tuvek meets the very dark-skinned people Karrakaz met at the end of The Birthgrave.
Among these people Tuvek is called Mordrak, which is interesting because they gave the name Morda to Karrakaz. These people have nothing but great praise for Karrakaz even though they knew she was wary of them and eventually left them. In The Birthgrave, before we learned her true name, Karrakaz was called by different names: Goddess, Uastis, Uasti, and Morda. The same happens with Tuvek: he's called Vazkor and Mordrak as well. The witch healing women among the dark-skinned people are called Uasti in her honor. The witch women, along with some of holy men of the people, possess the Power of the Lost Race, but they do not abuse it as they did. Tuvek meets Hwenit, the daughter of the chief. She is the final woman we meet in Shadowfire and the one will not truly put up with Tuvek's nonsense. When he tries to grab her, she swats him away and her fox cat scratches him with difficulty. He learns much from her though their relationship is tumultuous as she uses him to try and make the boy she really loves jealous. In the very final, and quick, battles of the book, Hwenit is able to hold her own but she is mortally injured in the process but Tuvek kills the attackers.
Distraught, Tuvek is uncertain what to do. Despite the difficulty between them, he doesn't want Hwenit to die, he cannot bear losing another woman. The former slave Long-Eye tells him and coaxes him what to do. Throughout the book, not only does Tuvek's body heal itself, but he learns he can heal others too, like his mother. He's done it mostly by accident. With Long-Eye's coaxing, Tuvek heals Hwenit and brings her back to life.
Tuvek's final moment of strength, after so much fighting and killing, is not fighting and killing again. It is healing. It is healing a woman, specifically a Black woman. This healing comes about because of his vulnerability. He doesn't want to lose Hwenit; he doesn't cry, but he is clearly emotionally disturbed by her pain. The tough, cruel, barbarian warrior's final action is to heal someone, to heal a woman.
As I said, this world is still cruel and I don't think things will be hearts and rainbows after the next and last book in the trilogy. Tuvek still wants to find Karrakaz and kill her, wherever she is and he sets off to do that. He's still a brutal, arrogant man, but the seedlings of that softer part of him are starting to sprout. And he knows women are not all as weak and pliable as he once believed.
It would have taken a woman who did not consider herself a milkcow to show me that women are not cattle.
It also Hwenit's decision to be with the boy that she loves that both confounds Tuvek but also confirms he changing views on women, even begrudgingly. It is revealed that the boy Hwenit loves, Qwef, is actually her brother. Tuvek is shocked by this incest and doesn't want it to happen, but it eventually does. It is both ironic and hypocritical for Tuvek to be aghast at this incest but not at his own treatment of women. Lee here is not condoning incest, nor am I, but merely tying Shadowfire's themes back into The Birthgrave's themes. Tuvek has learned--as we have learned--that women in this world too have their own desires that will shock others, but how shocking are they to such men like Tuvek and his desires and actions?
I wish we could've seen more of both Hwenit and Demizdor, for they had potential to be great characters. And I cannot wait to finish this trilogy.
The sequel to The Birthgrave, set some twenty years later we return to the cruel world that Karrakaz journeyed through, but this time through the eyes of her son Tuvek.
Tuvek is raised among Ettook's red-headed barbarian people. He believes that he is the son of Ettook and his first wife Tathra, but if you read the previous book you know that he's actually Karrakaz and Vazkor's son, it will come as no surprise. Regardless, Tuvek is considered somewhat of an outcast because of his behavior and his black hair; he does not act like a true member of krarl. As he grows up, Tuvek tries to become the best warrior of his krarl and worthy heir to Ettook and a good son to Tathra. However, something strange is going on with Tuvek. It seems he can miraculous heal from any and all harm against his body and he's having strange dreams about a white-haired woman. As Tuvek tries to model himself as best as he can off Ettook, something hard for him to do due to almost everyone else hating him and how he hates how Etook treats his mother, some revelations are made. Kotta, the blind healing woman of the krarl, reveals that Tathra is not his true birth mother. His real mother, the white-haired woman (Karrakaz) gave birth to him, switched him for Tathra's dead baby, and then fled the krarl. Soon after, men from the other cities in the land come for Tuvek after he kills some of their soldiers. They believe he is Vazkor, the super-powered warrior who once terrorized the land along with his witch wife.
In a gender swapped version of the lost princess trope, Tuvek will go on a journey, but it is no hero's journey. Keeping in line with the many morally grey and self-centered protagonists of the sword and sorcery genre, Tuvek cares for only a few other people. Much like how his mother was in The Birthgrave, Tuvek is not a kind young man. He feels entitled to many things; power, inheritance, women, and vengeance. He will learn that his birth mother killed his true father Vazkor, the man who gave him some of his Power. Propelled by his father's influence and possibly spirit, he will go on a journey to find his wretched mother and kill her.
This was a good follow-up to The Birthgrave! It is shorter than The Birthgrave, but has much faster pacing. The themes and commentary that were present in the first book are still explored here. Shadowfire continues the exploration of gender that its predecessor did, but this time through the eyes of a man. In The Birthgrave, we learned how one woman could be just as cold-hearted and cruel as any of the men around her, or as any of the other male protagonists in the genre. We now see this world through the eyes of that woman's son, a young man who is a fierce and strong barbarian warrior who thinks he has a right to everything. Thankfully, Tanith Lee still has a lot of nuance and doesn't seek to constantly bash us over the head with the themes and commentary. It's subtle; if you understand what's she doing in a certain scene or part of the narrative, then you know. Additionally, she does not make Tuvek or most of the other male characters one dimensional. Whenever these kinds of stories are written, the male characters end up being cartoonishly evil or have some of most cringey, ham-fisted dialogue. The authors' attempt to make a criticism of patriarchy and misogyny, but the execution comes off laughable. Lee avoids this completely.
Tuvek starts off as a very arrogant bastard. He's still arrogant by the end of the book, but there's a hidden softness within him that has unearthed by the end. I will return to this later. In fact, Tuvek's perspective might be hard to read for some. As I said before, the world of this trilogy is a cruel one. Many of the men are not kind to women. The Lost Race, Karrakaz's people, treated their own women as equals, but horribly mistreated women of other races and cultures. The only race that treats their own women and other women as equals and without malice are the very dark-skinned people who live along the sea. We saw them at the end of The Birthgrave and they return here as well; keep in mind that they are the descendants of the people the Lost Race enslaved but who were able to flee the Lost Race's destruction. We witnessed some very cruel things through Karrakaz's eyes in the previous book, and we still witness those things through Tuvek's, but what makes it more difficult to read is that he sometimes perpetuates those things themselves. I will be upfront here and saw that besides killing people (pretty much all men), Tuvek does force himself on some women. It is not described in explicit detail, sometimes only mentioned in passing; but I do just want to make other readers aware of that. It's a rough read that will make you angry--seriously, Tuvek's a shit in the beginning. By the end of the book, Tuvek's perspective has changed somewhat. He's no champion of women's rights--neither was Karrakaz--and is still a bit arrogant, but he seems to realize the strength women have that most men ignore or try to repress.
As I said, Tuvek grows up thinking he's the strongest and best of Ettook's sons and believes he has the right to leadership once Ettook passes it on. He does was the typical macho warrior does: kills a lot, takes many wives, and sires many children. He also avoids superstition and mysticism, thinking they're emotional things, things only lesser societies and woman indulge in; a similar mode of thinking can be found on a lot of self-professed, hyper-logical men. However, we start to see cracks in Tuvek when he learns about his true parentage, when Kotta tells him who his real mother is and when he learns that the late, fearsome Vazkor is his father after he fights some of the warriors from the other cities; and this is also when his journey really begins. Tuvek has inherited the dream clairvoyance and healing abilities of Karrakaz, though it is not as strong (yet), but he believes he inherited these abilities from Vazkor instead. He did inherit Vazkor's lightning magic too, which I actually forgot Vazkor had in the previous book. Tuvek learns from Demizdor, a woman who is descended from the Lost Race, and the rulers of the other cities that his birth mother killed Vazkor. At first, he doesn't believe it because he believes no woman, even a witch woman, is that strong, but the evidence says otherwise. Because of how Karrakaz abandoned him and killed his true father, Tuvek believes he has a right to avenge his father. Why? Because that's what any noble warrior should do. The father is the one you seek approval and acceptance from, so any warrior would honor his memory.
Despite this, Tuvek does care for Tathra, the mother who raised him. In fact, he considers her his true mother because she raised him. And it is because of her that his journey also begins, but also when his perspective on women starts to change. Although Tuvek has his own children, no men in the krarl witness their women giving birth, they know nothing about it. When Tathra goes into labor to bear her next child, the birth becomes compromised. Against Kotta's advice, Tuvek enters the tent and hears the pain in Tathra's screams. He has no knowledge about the pain of birth and can do nothing to alleviate her pain. Tathra dies and so does her baby. Tuvek wants to weep for the mother who cared for him, but his warrior code has conditioned him to where he can't even weep:
It is hard or impossible for a warrior to weep; the ease of it is never taught him, rather he must consider it a failing, a weakness. Therefore I could not, though my body was wracked. There was no release for me, no purging of my anguish in grief.
Lee here seems to be talking about certain modes of stricter masculinity that prevent men from feeling deeply for their even most beloved ones. Never thought I'd see that in a sword and sorcery novel.
After Tuvek takes his own form of vengeance against Ettook and is banished from the krarl and then taken by Vazkor's enemies to another city, his journey truly begins and he is also depowered for the first time. Erran, Kortis, and the other leaders of city want to experiment on Tuvek's body to test his healing ability and even have half a mind to breed him out to see if his children will inherit it. Tuvek is stripped, prodded, tortured, and analyzed almost to the point where he feels like a lab rat. Karrakaz went through something similar in The Birthgrave. Some men forced themselves on her, exploited her "goddess" Power, and examined her. Although, Tuvek enjoys some of the concubines the leaders send him, he hates that he has no power here. But he is also frustrated by Demizdor. As mentioned, Demizdor is a descendant of the Lost Race, and Tuvek initially thought she resembled his mother in some way (*stares in Freud*) when he first saw her. Before he is taken to the city, Tuvek makes Demizdor his concubine in the krarl and mistreats her, but once the tables are turned the frustration grows between them. Demizdor finds herself both hating and loving Tuvek--oddly similar to Karrakaz and Darak in the first book--and Tuvek just cannot get her out of his mind. Demizdor doesn't seem to do much of anything, but she does help him escape, and yet she possesses Tuvek, as in the "he can't stop thinking about her" sense not the "she controlled his mind and body magically" sense.
It is with Demizdor that I have some of my criticisms. She is clearly an influence on Tuvek as he cannot stop thinking about her even after they part ways, however I am miffed that we only see so much of her. I kind of wish she was there till the end, but she wasn't. She feels like a missed opportunity. I'm guessing Lee didn't want a rehash of Karrakaz, but it would've been nice to see another female descendant of the Lost Race present in the story.
I said in my review of The Birthgrave that the book, despite being a fantasy, shifted genres sometimes, and sometimes there was some diving into the Gothic genre. That continues here too, but in much briefer intervals. Tuvek, like Karrakaz, finds ruins of the Lost Race and learns some things about his heritage, but much of it is veiled in mystery and nefariousness.
Throughout the book, Tuvek propelled by the thought of killing his birth mother and avenging his father. He still wants to do this by the end of the book, but the more he learns about Karrakaz and Vazkor, the more muddied his goals seem. Can he even defeat his goddess-witch mother? Why is Vazkor's presence coming off more and more shadowy as the book goes on? Why is he so possessed by the thought to kill Karrakaz? The third question is answerable: Tuvek is still clinging to the idea that he has to live up to father's ideals and wishes and wants to fill the void that Tathra left. However, the stories about Karrakaz that Tuvek hears from others, and the lingering influence of Demizdor, seem to be causing this muddying. And they are also, along with Tathra's painful death, the reason Tuvek's views on women's strength are changing. All of this culminates in the final setting, when Tuvek meets the very dark-skinned people Karrakaz met at the end of The Birthgrave.
Among these people Tuvek is called Mordrak, which is interesting because they gave the name Morda to Karrakaz. These people have nothing but great praise for Karrakaz even though they knew she was wary of them and eventually left them. In The Birthgrave, before we learned her true name, Karrakaz was called by different names: Goddess, Uastis, Uasti, and Morda. The same happens with Tuvek: he's called Vazkor and Mordrak as well. The witch healing women among the dark-skinned people are called Uasti in her honor. The witch women, along with some of holy men of the people, possess the Power of the Lost Race, but they do not abuse it as they did. Tuvek meets Hwenit, the daughter of the chief. She is the final woman we meet in Shadowfire and the one will not truly put up with Tuvek's nonsense. When he tries to grab her, she swats him away and her fox cat scratches him with difficulty. He learns much from her though their relationship is tumultuous as she uses him to try and make the boy she really loves jealous. In the very final, and quick, battles of the book, Hwenit is able to hold her own but she is mortally injured in the process but Tuvek kills the attackers.
Distraught, Tuvek is uncertain what to do. Despite the difficulty between them, he doesn't want Hwenit to die, he cannot bear losing another woman. The former slave Long-Eye tells him and coaxes him what to do. Throughout the book, not only does Tuvek's body heal itself, but he learns he can heal others too, like his mother. He's done it mostly by accident. With Long-Eye's coaxing, Tuvek heals Hwenit and brings her back to life.
Tuvek's final moment of strength, after so much fighting and killing, is not fighting and killing again. It is healing. It is healing a woman, specifically a Black woman. This healing comes about because of his vulnerability. He doesn't want to lose Hwenit; he doesn't cry, but he is clearly emotionally disturbed by her pain. The tough, cruel, barbarian warrior's final action is to heal someone, to heal a woman.
As I said, this world is still cruel and I don't think things will be hearts and rainbows after the next and last book in the trilogy. Tuvek still wants to find Karrakaz and kill her, wherever she is and he sets off to do that. He's still a brutal, arrogant man, but the seedlings of that softer part of him are starting to sprout. And he knows women are not all as weak and pliable as he once believed.
It would have taken a woman who did not consider herself a milkcow to show me that women are not cattle.
It also Hwenit's decision to be with the boy that she loves that both confounds Tuvek but also confirms he changing views on women, even begrudgingly. It is revealed that the boy Hwenit loves, Qwef, is actually her brother. Tuvek is shocked by this incest and doesn't want it to happen, but it eventually does. It is both ironic and hypocritical for Tuvek to be aghast at this incest but not at his own treatment of women. Lee here is not condoning incest, nor am I, but merely tying Shadowfire's themes back into The Birthgrave's themes. Tuvek has learned--as we have learned--that women in this world too have their own desires that will shock others, but how shocking are they to such men like Tuvek and his desires and actions?
I wish we could've seen more of both Hwenit and Demizdor, for they had potential to be great characters. And I cannot wait to finish this trilogy.
July 17, 2018
3.5 stars
Still good but still a hard read like the first book. Unlike the first book though, we're no longer following the mysterious nameless woman who emerged from a volcano, broke the world into pieces, and set a host of apocalyptic things into motion.
Instead, we move on to her son's perspective, Vazkor (son of Vazkor). He's an angry young man who was raised in a society that valued violence, might, and masculinity. He grew up without his mother, only having heard tales of her in a destructive, demeaning light all his life. So when he grows up, he does the expected thing. He sets out to kill her.
I'm not saying he isn't within his rights, but the reason behind his revenge journey is... weak. His mother would not have approved.
Still an interesting story and still well written, but maybe not as compelling as the nameless woman's story because it lacks the nuanced, alien feel of her narration. Vazkor is more in line with the series' old Conan the Barbarian inspired book covers. He's more human in his wants, needs, and motivations, and therefore not as interesting to me.
These books though... when I see or hear people say "pillars of the genre" and then name the usual names and list the usual books, I always wondered what my pillars of the genre would have been if I had grown up reading sci-fi and fantasy. I think this series would have easily made my list.
Some thoughts on the first two books of this trilogy https://covers2covers.wordpress.com/2...
Still good but still a hard read like the first book. Unlike the first book though, we're no longer following the mysterious nameless woman who emerged from a volcano, broke the world into pieces, and set a host of apocalyptic things into motion.
Instead, we move on to her son's perspective, Vazkor (son of Vazkor). He's an angry young man who was raised in a society that valued violence, might, and masculinity. He grew up without his mother, only having heard tales of her in a destructive, demeaning light all his life. So when he grows up, he does the expected thing. He sets out to kill her.
I'm not saying he isn't within his rights, but the reason behind his revenge journey is... weak. His mother would not have approved.
Still an interesting story and still well written, but maybe not as compelling as the nameless woman's story because it lacks the nuanced, alien feel of her narration. Vazkor is more in line with the series' old Conan the Barbarian inspired book covers. He's more human in his wants, needs, and motivations, and therefore not as interesting to me.
These books though... when I see or hear people say "pillars of the genre" and then name the usual names and list the usual books, I always wondered what my pillars of the genre would have been if I had grown up reading sci-fi and fantasy. I think this series would have easily made my list.
Some thoughts on the first two books of this trilogy https://covers2covers.wordpress.com/2...
March 26, 2021
First point: I much prefer the original title of this book, Vazkor, Son of Vazkor.
(I also prefer the Ken Kelly art that was on my original paperback.)
Second point: This is 1970s heroic/barbarian fantasy, so it has a fairly ... casual attitude towards sexual violence and sexual assault, sometimes committed by the narrator, which I know can be a problem for some readers.
All that having been said, this is a sequel to The Birthgrave, Tanith Lee's first adult novel, although it takes a while for the linkages between the two books to become obvious. Our narrator is one Tuvek, son of Ettook, chieftain of a clan of relatively primitive nomadic horsemen. And there is no love lost between Ettook and Tuvek (his ostensible heir) because of Tuvek's out-clan mother, Tathra. So the early part of the book is Tuvek's trials and tribulations growing up in the tribe, until he discovers his true heritage (spoiler: Ettook is not his father, nor Tathra his mother) after the village is raided by warriors from one of the decadent city-states on the plain; and then Tuvek (well, his name is actually Vazkor) sets out to find the mother who abandoned him.
This is a pretty grim book about nasty people doing bad things to each other but, because it's by Tanith Lee, it's told very well and written beautifully.
(I also prefer the Ken Kelly art that was on my original paperback.)
Second point: This is 1970s heroic/barbarian fantasy, so it has a fairly ... casual attitude towards sexual violence and sexual assault, sometimes committed by the narrator, which I know can be a problem for some readers.
All that having been said, this is a sequel to The Birthgrave, Tanith Lee's first adult novel, although it takes a while for the linkages between the two books to become obvious. Our narrator is one Tuvek, son of Ettook, chieftain of a clan of relatively primitive nomadic horsemen. And there is no love lost between Ettook and Tuvek (his ostensible heir) because of Tuvek's out-clan mother, Tathra. So the early part of the book is Tuvek's trials and tribulations growing up in the tribe, until he discovers his true heritage (spoiler: Ettook is not his father, nor Tathra his mother) after the village is raided by warriors from one of the decadent city-states on the plain; and then Tuvek (well, his name is actually Vazkor) sets out to find the mother who abandoned him.
This is a pretty grim book about nasty people doing bad things to each other but, because it's by Tanith Lee, it's told very well and written beautifully.
March 22, 2016
While the story is nominally about Tuvek son of Vazkor, who gropes toward identity in a journey that parallels his mother Uastis from The Birthgrave, it threads through the lives of three women confined by and defined by their culture and roles. Whether Tuvek shapes their roles as they shape him, as Uastis unconsciously shaped the dominating men in her life, is left as an exercise to the reader.
Tuvek never seems to understand these women until after the fact: he is blind to their struggles and concerns, and it is only through close reading that one gets insight into their predicaments. In particular, the use of masks--'shireen' in parlance--reflects how inner natures are being concealed or ignored.
The symbolism behind the three women and their roles appears significant as well. Tuvok detaches himself from Tathra his mother, despite her great need for him as her sole connection to the Dagkta tribe. Demizdor the wife and lover is consumed by her attachment to Tuvok yet hates that attachment. Hwenit the youth whose path is risky and crooked requires protection and guidance. Each one batters herself against Tuvek, and his response reflects his own journey of self-knowledge. All that is left is for him to seek out and confront Uastis his birth mother.
In terms of pure spectacle, the story takes flight with the broken city of Eshkorek, a luxurious vision that I could have wallowed in forever. With the death of the elder Vazkor, the cities he drew into alliance turned against one another in mutual cataclysm. The survivors still squat in the crumbling ruins, clad in their ragged finery while stooping to a subsistence boosted by raids on other tribes. They are possessed of an unjustifiable arrogance and near-insanity, consumed by factional power squabbles.
Tuvek never seems to understand these women until after the fact: he is blind to their struggles and concerns, and it is only through close reading that one gets insight into their predicaments. In particular, the use of masks--'shireen' in parlance--reflects how inner natures are being concealed or ignored.
The symbolism behind the three women and their roles appears significant as well. Tuvok detaches himself from Tathra his mother, despite her great need for him as her sole connection to the Dagkta tribe. Demizdor the wife and lover is consumed by her attachment to Tuvok yet hates that attachment. Hwenit the youth whose path is risky and crooked requires protection and guidance. Each one batters herself against Tuvek, and his response reflects his own journey of self-knowledge. All that is left is for him to seek out and confront Uastis his birth mother.
In terms of pure spectacle, the story takes flight with the broken city of Eshkorek, a luxurious vision that I could have wallowed in forever. With the death of the elder Vazkor, the cities he drew into alliance turned against one another in mutual cataclysm. The survivors still squat in the crumbling ruins, clad in their ragged finery while stooping to a subsistence boosted by raids on other tribes. They are possessed of an unjustifiable arrogance and near-insanity, consumed by factional power squabbles.
July 22, 2009
Tanith Lee surprised me. I did the prototypical dumb thing and judged the book by it cover (a barbarian type holding a babe in pasties in one hand and a bloodied sword in the other) and assumed this would be another power fantasy/boy's adventure. But while Robert E. Howard's Conan series (which I haven't read since I was a pimply adolescent) was more of a symptom of a male author's fraught relationship between violence and sexuality (ubber Conan cutting his enemies down and bedding the babes) Vazkor, Son of Vazkor is about a Conan type having to confront his mother issues, the fall of civilization and the nature of destiny (both biological and historical). Lee sees the thwarted male power image in the barbarian fantasy and explores how this really relates to the feminine.
(Ooops: I read Vazkor thinking it was the first in a series, but of course if I had done a little web-search I would have discovered that Birthgrave was the first in the Birthgrave trilogy. [I just looked at the back of the couple of Lee's I had and picked one.:] That said, hey, it is like coming in on a movie a third of the way through: your brain gets more exercise trying to figure out what happened before. Lee does a good job of filling the reader in. I just thought she'd done a good back-story.)
It took me a little while to warm up to Vazkor, the novel and the character. The story is all grim barbarian 1st-person, especially at first and it took me a while to settle down and stop hoping for Terry Pratchett's Cohen the Barbarian to hobble out from behind a rock and kick Vazkor in the nuts. That and I find a lot of Lee's names to be too much of the 'STEVE-AAR' variety. Or maybe her foreign names are too foreign for me. There is a fine line between the odd and abstruse in naming characters in fantasy. But all this passed and the book went places your average barbarian fantasy book would never have the imagination to go.
For a book about a big bad warrior the novel is actually organized around the hubs of various female characters starting with Tathra (Vaz's adopted mother), Demizdor (a city woman), Hwenit (the black witch) and finally, above all Uastis (his white haired witch mother), who betrayed his father before he was born.
Such is the intensity of Vazkor's passion (a hatred) for Uastis that it's not surprising that a incestuous brother/sister relationship shows up – a signal of the damaging primal currents running underneath the story. There are other places in the story, such as Vazkor's unusual closeness to his adopted mother where one wonders if Vazkor is straying into Oedipal territory. Again, not stuff that your average barbarian writer would want to touch with a ten-foot phallic stick. I guess there would be a lot of barbarian readers out there that wouldn't want to go there either, but I found this stuff is what saved the novel for me – sick bastard.
One of the other striking places in the book comes near the end. Vazkor has passed through a symbolic underground (tunnels under the city of Eshkiri) and comes to a village by the sea. There is a great mood of serenity and peace embodied especially in Hwenit's father, Peyuan, chief of the village. It is all very good for a book to pull off bloodshed, but even more impressive when the peace and centeredness of a character comes off as grounded and profound, not just – airy and new age. This section takes places at the meeting of water and land, very fitting, and makes the ending all the more surprising for me.
Vazkor struggles to emerge as an individual amongst all the hero-destiny palaver. This is both a function of the novel where the character tries to break free of the history his father and mother have laid for him and also as someone who possibly isn't a Conan knock-off. The females in this book do a good job of standing out as individuals and trying to coax something more out of the brooding barbarian. Yet, in the end the book is about archetypes and the places these paths take a hero. Poor Vazkor, he doesn't even have his own name. Maybe he'll get one in the next book.
(Ooops: I read Vazkor thinking it was the first in a series, but of course if I had done a little web-search I would have discovered that Birthgrave was the first in the Birthgrave trilogy. [I just looked at the back of the couple of Lee's I had and picked one.:] That said, hey, it is like coming in on a movie a third of the way through: your brain gets more exercise trying to figure out what happened before. Lee does a good job of filling the reader in. I just thought she'd done a good back-story.)
It took me a little while to warm up to Vazkor, the novel and the character. The story is all grim barbarian 1st-person, especially at first and it took me a while to settle down and stop hoping for Terry Pratchett's Cohen the Barbarian to hobble out from behind a rock and kick Vazkor in the nuts. That and I find a lot of Lee's names to be too much of the 'STEVE-AAR' variety. Or maybe her foreign names are too foreign for me. There is a fine line between the odd and abstruse in naming characters in fantasy. But all this passed and the book went places your average barbarian fantasy book would never have the imagination to go.
For a book about a big bad warrior the novel is actually organized around the hubs of various female characters starting with Tathra (Vaz's adopted mother), Demizdor (a city woman), Hwenit (the black witch) and finally, above all Uastis (his white haired witch mother), who betrayed his father before he was born.
Such is the intensity of Vazkor's passion (a hatred) for Uastis that it's not surprising that a incestuous brother/sister relationship shows up – a signal of the damaging primal currents running underneath the story. There are other places in the story, such as Vazkor's unusual closeness to his adopted mother where one wonders if Vazkor is straying into Oedipal territory. Again, not stuff that your average barbarian writer would want to touch with a ten-foot phallic stick. I guess there would be a lot of barbarian readers out there that wouldn't want to go there either, but I found this stuff is what saved the novel for me – sick bastard.
One of the other striking places in the book comes near the end. Vazkor has passed through a symbolic underground (tunnels under the city of Eshkiri) and comes to a village by the sea. There is a great mood of serenity and peace embodied especially in Hwenit's father, Peyuan, chief of the village. It is all very good for a book to pull off bloodshed, but even more impressive when the peace and centeredness of a character comes off as grounded and profound, not just – airy and new age. This section takes places at the meeting of water and land, very fitting, and makes the ending all the more surprising for me.
Vazkor struggles to emerge as an individual amongst all the hero-destiny palaver. This is both a function of the novel where the character tries to break free of the history his father and mother have laid for him and also as someone who possibly isn't a Conan knock-off. The females in this book do a good job of standing out as individuals and trying to coax something more out of the brooding barbarian. Yet, in the end the book is about archetypes and the places these paths take a hero. Poor Vazkor, he doesn't even have his own name. Maybe he'll get one in the next book.
February 21, 2017
This is the second in the Birthgrave trilogy and takes a different approach than the first volume, also lacking the science fantasy elements that figured largely in the conclusion of that volume. As with book 1, the writing has the powerful language and imagery typical of Tanith Lee, and the strange cultures are well realised. It is much shorter and more focused than the first volume, being one man's journey of self discovery. It revolves around his relationship to three women: his mother, his captive-wife Demizdor from the cities, and a healer/witch woman of the sea community who attempts to use him to make someone else jealous.
The story is told in the first person viewpoint of Tuvek, a warrior in the making, but readers of volume one will realise he is the child left behind by the nameless protagonist of book 1 when she escaped the brutal tribal community in which she was enslaved. Tuvek is an outsider, partly because his (adoptive) mother is an out-tribe woman, taken on a raid by his supposed father, the leader of the tribe. The antipathy between himself and his 'father' is mutual, worsening to outright hatred on the part of his 'father' when Tuvek proves himself an exceptional warrior. Tuvek has more regard for the woman he thinks is his mother than do most of his contemporaries for their mothers, but ultimately he takes her for granted and only realises what he has lost when it is too late. This is a repeating pattern, as he later makes the same mistake with another key woman in the book, Demizdor.
Tuvek learns of his real nature when the degenerated remnants of city folk - reduced to a tawdry and declining splendour after the war triggered by a man called Vazkor - attack and capture many tribesmen to use as slaves. Only he has the courage to track them and free their captives, at which point he discovers not only that he understands their language instinctively, but also that he strongly resembles Vazkor whom they once revered and now hate. So begins his identification with the spirit of his real father, Vazkor, whom he learns was 'betrayed' and 'murdered' by his real mother - although we know from book 1 that the situation was far from being so simple. Late in the book, he encounters a seaside community established by one of the bodyguards who became his mother's last set of protectors. Their chief explains his mother's kindness and how she saved his life, but Tuvek clings to his 'knowledge' of her rejection of him and treachery to his father.
The women in the story apart from the third one are ambivalent characters because his mother relies on him to protect her within the tribe where she is the outsider and is crushed when he grows up and involves himself with other women, and Demizdor, although supposedly an independent woman who can ride horses and enjoy culture - very different from the trodden down semi-slaves of his people - ultimately defines herself by her relationship with him, to her ultimate destruction. Tuvek is changed by his encounters: he becomes more gentle by the time he meets the third woman, but is still stubbornly set on hero worship of a father he knows very little about and automatically assumes to be right since women are inferior and wrong. Despite his greater solicitude for his mother, he absorbed the attitudes in his tribe, seeing nothing wrong with rape and killing, starting both around age fourteen, so he doesn't come over as a very attractive character. His vow at the end of this volume bodes ill for the well-being of his true mother.
The story is told in the first person viewpoint of Tuvek, a warrior in the making, but readers of volume one will realise he is the child left behind by the nameless protagonist of book 1 when she escaped the brutal tribal community in which she was enslaved. Tuvek is an outsider, partly because his (adoptive) mother is an out-tribe woman, taken on a raid by his supposed father, the leader of the tribe. The antipathy between himself and his 'father' is mutual, worsening to outright hatred on the part of his 'father' when Tuvek proves himself an exceptional warrior. Tuvek has more regard for the woman he thinks is his mother than do most of his contemporaries for their mothers, but ultimately he takes her for granted and only realises what he has lost when it is too late. This is a repeating pattern, as he later makes the same mistake with another key woman in the book, Demizdor.
Tuvek learns of his real nature when the degenerated remnants of city folk - reduced to a tawdry and declining splendour after the war triggered by a man called Vazkor - attack and capture many tribesmen to use as slaves. Only he has the courage to track them and free their captives, at which point he discovers not only that he understands their language instinctively, but also that he strongly resembles Vazkor whom they once revered and now hate. So begins his identification with the spirit of his real father, Vazkor, whom he learns was 'betrayed' and 'murdered' by his real mother - although we know from book 1 that the situation was far from being so simple. Late in the book, he encounters a seaside community established by one of the bodyguards who became his mother's last set of protectors. Their chief explains his mother's kindness and how she saved his life, but Tuvek clings to his 'knowledge' of her rejection of him and treachery to his father.
The women in the story apart from the third one are ambivalent characters because his mother relies on him to protect her within the tribe where she is the outsider and is crushed when he grows up and involves himself with other women, and Demizdor, although supposedly an independent woman who can ride horses and enjoy culture - very different from the trodden down semi-slaves of his people - ultimately defines herself by her relationship with him, to her ultimate destruction. Tuvek is changed by his encounters: he becomes more gentle by the time he meets the third woman, but is still stubbornly set on hero worship of a father he knows very little about and automatically assumes to be right since women are inferior and wrong. Despite his greater solicitude for his mother, he absorbed the attitudes in his tribe, seeing nothing wrong with rape and killing, starting both around age fourteen, so he doesn't come over as a very attractive character. His vow at the end of this volume bodes ill for the well-being of his true mother.
June 28, 2017
This review originally appeared on my blog, Books Without Any Pictures: http://bookswithoutanypictures.com/20...
Shadowfire (originally published as Vazkor, Son of Vazkor) is the second book in Tanith Lee’s Birthgrave Trilogy. In the first book, a nameless woman awakens from her slumber in a volcano. She was the last of a doomed race, and wandered the world in search of her past and her future. At one point in The Birthgrave, she has a child, whom she abandons with a barbarian tribe. Tuvek, that son, is the protagonist of Shadowfire.
Like his mother, Tuvek isn’t entirely human. But Tuvek himself doesn’t know that his mother isn’t the woman who raised him, and the beginning of his life is pretty much what you’d expect from the son of a barbarian chief, up until the tribal coming of age ritual. Because Tuvek and his birth mother have otherworldly healing abilities, the ritual tattoos refuse to stick to his body. At that point, Tuvek is branded as someone other. He also begins to see himself as an outsider. Then, when he stumbles upon the truth of his parentage, he sets out on his own journey to discover his heritage.
It’s fascinating to watch Tuvek learn about himself, because once you’ve read The Birthgrave, you know a lot more about him than he knows about himself. You know that a man named Vazkor imprisoned his mother in order to try to breed a powerful child. You know about the complicated emotional baggage that came with his birth. And so when you see Tuvek begin to hate his mother for abandoning him and to seek out his father’s legacy, you know that the full story is a lot bigger than the narrative that Tuvek is constructing in his head.
I liked Shadowfire a lot better than I liked The Birthgrave. The Birthgrave was Tanith Lee’s first novel, and you can tell. Whiled I love the aesthetics of the novel as the protagonist is wandering through haunted ancient cities or living among barbarian tribes, the character herself left much to be desired, as she kept falling into the same relationship trap where she was victimized by powerful men, over and over again for the entire book. With Shadowfire, we instead have a lead character who is multi-faceted, and the story feels like a progression rather than a repeat of the same scenario over and over again.
Shadowfire (originally published as Vazkor, Son of Vazkor) is the second book in Tanith Lee’s Birthgrave Trilogy. In the first book, a nameless woman awakens from her slumber in a volcano. She was the last of a doomed race, and wandered the world in search of her past and her future. At one point in The Birthgrave, she has a child, whom she abandons with a barbarian tribe. Tuvek, that son, is the protagonist of Shadowfire.
Like his mother, Tuvek isn’t entirely human. But Tuvek himself doesn’t know that his mother isn’t the woman who raised him, and the beginning of his life is pretty much what you’d expect from the son of a barbarian chief, up until the tribal coming of age ritual. Because Tuvek and his birth mother have otherworldly healing abilities, the ritual tattoos refuse to stick to his body. At that point, Tuvek is branded as someone other. He also begins to see himself as an outsider. Then, when he stumbles upon the truth of his parentage, he sets out on his own journey to discover his heritage.
It’s fascinating to watch Tuvek learn about himself, because once you’ve read The Birthgrave, you know a lot more about him than he knows about himself. You know that a man named Vazkor imprisoned his mother in order to try to breed a powerful child. You know about the complicated emotional baggage that came with his birth. And so when you see Tuvek begin to hate his mother for abandoning him and to seek out his father’s legacy, you know that the full story is a lot bigger than the narrative that Tuvek is constructing in his head.
I liked Shadowfire a lot better than I liked The Birthgrave. The Birthgrave was Tanith Lee’s first novel, and you can tell. Whiled I love the aesthetics of the novel as the protagonist is wandering through haunted ancient cities or living among barbarian tribes, the character herself left much to be desired, as she kept falling into the same relationship trap where she was victimized by powerful men, over and over again for the entire book. With Shadowfire, we instead have a lead character who is multi-faceted, and the story feels like a progression rather than a repeat of the same scenario over and over again.
Read
March 25, 2021I'm pretty sure I read this, back in the day.... I definitely remember that cover! http://www.isfdb.org/wiki/images/6/62...
Artist was Ken Kelly, https://www.kenkellyfantasyart.com/
From Joseph's review, below: "This is a pretty grim book about nasty people doing bad things to each other but, because it's by Tanith Lee, it's told very well and written beautifully."
Not planning a reread. Most likely, recycled to Bookman's. Left unrated, since I remember so little of it. May have been a DNF.
Artist was Ken Kelly, https://www.kenkellyfantasyart.com/
From Joseph's review, below: "This is a pretty grim book about nasty people doing bad things to each other but, because it's by Tanith Lee, it's told very well and written beautifully."
Not planning a reread. Most likely, recycled to Bookman's. Left unrated, since I remember so little of it. May have been a DNF.
January 7, 2022
Leesbaarder dan deel 1. Nieuwsgierig of in deel 3 de verhalen samen komen.
March 16, 2019
Once again I find myself reading a #2 in the series and not even realizing it's part of a series. But it does what a good middle-of-the-series book should do (at least back in the day): It doesn't require you to know what the rest of the series is about, feels like a complete adventure, but above-and-beyond that tantalizes you into reading the rest of it.
I will actually be seeking out the other books because I want to know what happens in the next one, but I'm even more interested in what happened in the previous one. (These paperback writers weren't indulged by their publishers so that they could write longer and longer books, they had to get the job done in around 200.) Apparently, The Birthgrave was Lee's first adult book, so I'll be very interested to see how that set up this one.
The beauty of this, from a writing viewpoint, is that of all the allusions to the past in this book, I don't know which ones were actually covered in the first book, which ones are novel and just further world-building, etc.
There were a couple of points which I felt would probably have resonated better if I had read the first book, so when I read the trilogy (?), I'll probably read this one again.
OK, so beyond this historical/pragmatic nonsense, this starts off as a bog-standard Conan-style barbarian story of a child/young man who's mother is "out-tribe" and who therefore is shunned by the rest of the tribe. But his differences include considerable fighting prowess, and some other mysterious aspects.
The wordcraft is good, as is the pacing and the action—though it's not as action heavy as others in this genre—but where the books excels is in the depth of the main character's relationships with women. His mother, the women he rapes/seduces/marries, and...the relationships get complicated actually because it's not clear who he really is, as the title hints. Is he Vazkor (and who the hell is Vazkor!) or is he the son of Vazkor?
It's not done to be cute, fortunately, or the story wouldn't work. There is a sense of emotional depth and a real picture emerges of how the hero views women is tied strongly to the society that he's in, and as he emerges somewhat from his barbarian mindset, to his own personal sense of ethics.
As I say, it emerges, as opposed to the reader being lectured. In fact, you could easily miss this and just enjoy some sword-and-sorcery. I ended up being impressed, hence the five stars. I thought I had read some Lee before but I think I was confusing her with Lin Carter. But I will look forward to reading her in the future.
I will actually be seeking out the other books because I want to know what happens in the next one, but I'm even more interested in what happened in the previous one. (These paperback writers weren't indulged by their publishers so that they could write longer and longer books, they had to get the job done in around 200.) Apparently, The Birthgrave was Lee's first adult book, so I'll be very interested to see how that set up this one.
The beauty of this, from a writing viewpoint, is that of all the allusions to the past in this book, I don't know which ones were actually covered in the first book, which ones are novel and just further world-building, etc.
There were a couple of points which I felt would probably have resonated better if I had read the first book, so when I read the trilogy (?), I'll probably read this one again.
OK, so beyond this historical/pragmatic nonsense, this starts off as a bog-standard Conan-style barbarian story of a child/young man who's mother is "out-tribe" and who therefore is shunned by the rest of the tribe. But his differences include considerable fighting prowess, and some other mysterious aspects.
The wordcraft is good, as is the pacing and the action—though it's not as action heavy as others in this genre—but where the books excels is in the depth of the main character's relationships with women. His mother, the women he rapes/seduces/marries, and...the relationships get complicated actually because it's not clear who he really is, as the title hints. Is he Vazkor (and who the hell is Vazkor!) or is he the son of Vazkor?
It's not done to be cute, fortunately, or the story wouldn't work. There is a sense of emotional depth and a real picture emerges of how the hero views women is tied strongly to the society that he's in, and as he emerges somewhat from his barbarian mindset, to his own personal sense of ethics.
As I say, it emerges, as opposed to the reader being lectured. In fact, you could easily miss this and just enjoy some sword-and-sorcery. I ended up being impressed, hence the five stars. I thought I had read some Lee before but I think I was confusing her with Lin Carter. But I will look forward to reading her in the future.
April 9, 2018
A classic must-read sciFi/fantasy masterpiece
Tanith Lee’s mastery of storytelling is unmatched. She weaves light, color, sound, violence, love, and every human feeling together in a tapestry of pure magnificence. Begin with book one, of course, but the 2nd is just as good, perhaps tighter. Enjoy!
Tanith Lee’s mastery of storytelling is unmatched. She weaves light, color, sound, violence, love, and every human feeling together in a tapestry of pure magnificence. Begin with book one, of course, but the 2nd is just as good, perhaps tighter. Enjoy!
June 11, 2017
More focused than the first volume in the trilogy, yet this book resonates with the same poetry, the same startling turns of phrase that make Lee's best work rise above the genre. Why the need to change the title from its original form for this 2015 reprint, I do not know.
April 21, 2025
In Tanith Lee's first novel written for adults, "The Birthgrave" (1975), Book #1 in her BIRTHGRAVE TRILOGY, the reader had been introduced to a very unusual young woman. Petite, albino, in command of a range of superhuman abilities, and with no memory of her past or even her own name, she had awoken in the heart of a dormant volcano and ventured forth on an epic journey of self-discovery. In the medieval-seeming world in which she'd traveled, she was hailed as a healer by some, a goddess by others, and had entered into a forced marriage with a magician/warlord named Vazkor. In one of the truly shocking moments of Book #1 (unavoidable spoiler ahead), our heroine had given birth to her son and left him as a changeling of sorts at the hill tribe where she'd been staying; her baby, thus, taking the place of the stillborn boy begat by Tathra, the chieftain's wife. Our itinerant albino had thus gone on with her journeying, leaving the reader to later wonder (to quote the title of an old Grateful Dead song) "What's become of the baby?" Fortunately for Tanith Lee's many fans, the answer to that question was not too long in coming, in Book #2 of the series, "Vazkor, Son of Vazkor."
This middle volume, as had "The Birthgrave," was initially released as a DAW paperback, in 1978, this time with cover art from one Gino D'Achille, in full Frank Frazetta/Boris Vallejo mode; DAW would reissue the book in 1982 and '84, with faithful cover art by Ken W. Kelly, and most recently in 2015, with the book's title changed, for some unknown reason, to "Shadowfire." Internationally, the novel would see editions in the U.K. ('78 and '85, as "Shadowfire"), Italy (also '78, as "Vazkor, Figlio di Vazkor," or "Vazkor, Son of …" well, you know), Holland ('79 and '86, as "Schaduwvuur," or "Shadowfire"), Germany ('79, as "Vazkor") and France ('84 and '89, as "Vazkor"). This sequel was a much shorter affair as compared to its predecessor (90,000 words, rather than the original's 185,000) but still managed to cram a remarkable abundance of detail and plot into its compact package.
The story commences a full 14 years following the events of Book #1, and is narrated this time by the mystery woman's son himself, Tuvek. His tale is divided into two lengthy and discrete sections, the first of which largely transpires among the barbarous hill tribe where we'd last seen him as a newborn. Thus, we once again meet Ettook, the piggish chief of the tribe whom Tuvek despises but acts civilly to; Tathra, the out-of-tribe headwife of Ettook and Tuvek's supposed mother; Kotta, a blind nurse who yet sees more than most; Seel, the malicious head priest; and Seel-Na, the priest's lustful yet spiteful daughter. On the arrival of his 14th year, Tuvek is declared a warrior when he bests four adult males in combat, but to the tribe's dismay, it turns out that the young man cannot receive his ceremonial tattooing, his skin seemingly rejecting the ink somehow. As our narrator's story progresses, he discovers that he possesses several other physical anomalies as well: His wounds heal remarkably quickly, he can somehow understand foreign tongues, and, most distressing of all, he can kill with just a glance (all powers that his unsuspected mother commanded, as well). By the time he is 19, Tuvek, we learn, possesses three wives, has fathered 13 sons, and has killed over 40 men. When a band of soldiers from the White Desert city of Eshkorek-Arnor arrives from across the mountains with cannon, attacks Ettook's tribe as well as some of the neighboring tribes, and captures many men to be used as slaves, Tuvek follows them, single-handed. He frees the captured men and with them slays their Eshkor attackers, a task made easier by the city men's stunned reaction to finding the spitting image of the long-dead Vazkor in their midst. Tuvek returns to his tribe a hero, bringing with him Demizdor, a beautiful city woman whom he soon makes his fourth wife. All seems well, until the dark day when Tathra dies giving birth to another stillborn; Kotta tells Tuvek of his actual origin; Tuvek kills Ettook using the unsuspected mental powers that are his; and Demizdor's cousins, Zrenn and Orek, arrive in force to rescue the young lady and take vengeance on Tuvek himself. So ends the first section.
In the second, Tuvek is brought to Eshkorek-Arnor, a city-state much degraded after the martial events of Book #1. There, he is held by one of the city's competing princes, Kortis, before being abducted by Prince Erran, who plans to use Tuvek as a horse breaker as well as the sire of a new race of indestructible supermen. But when our narrator kills an Eshkorek nobleman in anger, Erran decides to change his plans, and instead perform some radical body amputations on Tuvek, as a scientific study in regeneration. With Demizdor's assistance, Tuvek escapes the city via a miles-long underground tunnel built by the dead race known as the Lost Ones, from which race, he has learned, his actual mother sprang. After a weeks-long chase, our hero manages to slay most of his pursuers, and makes his way to the edge of the sea, where he meets a young witch/healer named Hwenit. At Hwenit's village, he meets her father, Peyuan, who had been one of his mother's nine protectors in Book #1. From this kindly black man, now the head of his own village, Tuvek (who has come to identify more and more with his father, even thinking of himself as Vazkor by name) learns even more of his mysterious mother, who had vanished so completely two decades earlier. Along with Hwenit and one other, Vazkor, uh, Jr. retreats to an empty island some miles offshore to hide from his remaining pursuers. And it is on that lonely island that the final showdown will eventually come....
Now, if I seem to have given away too much of Tanith Lee's astonishing story line here, please rest assured that what you have just read is merely the sketchiest of outlines of what is actually a fairly complex and beautifully detailed affair. Unlike Book #1, which can rightly be labeled an epic fantasy with a distinct leavening of sci-fi, this sequel contains not a trace of science fiction to speak of, and I suppose might be termed a heroic fantasy, perhaps of the sword & sorcery ilk, with a decided debt to Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian. As in the first book, Lee's extraordinary use of language is a major selling point here; thus, the reader might expect to encounter such sentences as these: "The seasons slunk past like people in a mist." "The gate between her thighs was golden as her hair, and the road beyond the gate was made for kings." "The night had turned chill, blue-black as raven's wings with stars caught in the feathers of it." It would seem that the unschooled Tuvek, like his mother, wrote surpassingly well, a fact that might cause the reader to wonder how this barbarous warrior is capable of penning his story so impressively. But then again, we must recall that Tuvek was somehow capable of understanding all tongues, and that we have no idea how old he is when he sat down to write his story. All I know is, he employs some words here that even I had to break out the ol' Merriam-Webster’s to look up: "dawson," "jink," "byre," "smalt," "carious," "equerry" and "clepsydra." And I just love his term for a dead person: "crowpie"! I'll try to remember that one going forward!
Again to her great credit, Tanith Lee does a marvelous job at switching from a female narrator's voice to a male POV, and writes convincingly as a young man with a fairly brutal attitude toward life and women. Thus, we get sentences such as these: "May you eat dung and pass blood, and may the ravens squabble for your liver." "Presently, I had a city sword, red to its hilt, and I was bathed with blood." "These men who had jeered as they watched me writhe in Eshkorek now ended their quest on my blades." You'd never guess these words were written by a 30-year-old woman, would you? To give Tuvek his due, the character does change over the course of his story, and the tragedies he suffers, as well as his love affair with Demizdor, do ultimately reveal a more compassionate side to his nature...not that he ever loses his ability to mete out death and destruction in a wholesale manner! Speaking of which, Tuvek's grim story does contain much in the way of strong violence (Erann's description of his proposed plan for scientific study is especially grisly), and the book contains a fairly high body count. Indeed, more than half of the novel's main players lie dead by its conclusion, so perhaps it would be best to not grow overly attached to any one character!
"Vazkor, Son of Vazkor" does not feature quite as many scenes of thrilling action, intense drama or astonishing revelation as had "The Birthgrave," but again, the sequel is only half as long! (Plus, nothing could possibly top that amazing chariot race in Book #1!) Still, any number of sequences do manage to make an impact. Among them: Tuvek's fight with four adult men during the Boys' Rite; the Eshkorians' stunning cannon attack; Tuvek's daring rescue of the kidnapped men, and his victorious return to the tribe that was already conducting his funeral rites; Tuvek's falling out with his beloved "mother," Tathra; a poisoning attempt on Tuvek's wedding night; the back-to-back-to-back death of Tathra/revelation of Kotta/slaying of Ettook (a very tough day for our young narrator!); the breaking of a drugged and murderous horse in Prince Erran's stable; the 10-day chase through the underground Worm's Way; Tuvek's slaying of 18 of his pursuers via sword, knife and mind; Peyuan's wonderful recounting of the events he witnessed in Book #1; and finally, Tuvek's showdown with Zrenn and Orek on that desert island. Prospective readers should also prepare themselves for a surprising bit of brother-sister incest, some casually brutal treatment of female tribe members, and three scenes of unexpected suicide. Truly, nothing seemed to be off-limits for the young Tanith Lee!
For the rest of it, this sequel also features some wonderful details regarding Tuvek's tribal life: the Boys' Rite, weddings, migrations, burials, even divorce. (As for the latter, it seems to be largely a matter of bringing the Mrs. back to her father's tent, saying "Here is your daughter...You may have her back," renouncing the kids you had with her, throwing down some gold, and that's it! Easy-peasy! I love it!) And, I might add, it really is nice seeing those half dozen characters from Book #1 again! All told, the novel is another fairly remarkable piece of work from Tanith Lee, concerning which I only have two minor quibbles. First, her repeated confusing of the words "turgid" and "turbid." (Sometimes, I feel like I'm one of the few who can discern the difference!) And second, this Book #2 of THE BIRTHGRAVE TRILOGY fails to reveal which world we are on (Earth? Who knows?) and what happened to Tuvek's mother after the events of "The Birthgrave." Hopefully, these matters will be addressed in Book #3. But really, these are my only quibbles here!
At the tail end of his narrative, Tuvek--in full hatred of his mother for having abandoned him 19 years earlier, and for having killed the father he now fully identifies with--swears an oath to avenge Vazkor by seeking out his mother and killing her! Along with the Eshkorian slave Long-Eye, he pushes off from that barren island, heading for an unknown land to the southeast, as his new quest begins. What in the world (whichever world this might be) could possibly happen next? I suppose I'll just have to proceed on to Book #3, the culmination of the trilogy, "Quest for the White Witch" (also released in 1978), to find out more. Stay tuned....
(By the way, this review originally appeared on the FanLit website at https://fantasyliterature.com/ ... a most ideal destination for all fans of Tanith Lee....)
This middle volume, as had "The Birthgrave," was initially released as a DAW paperback, in 1978, this time with cover art from one Gino D'Achille, in full Frank Frazetta/Boris Vallejo mode; DAW would reissue the book in 1982 and '84, with faithful cover art by Ken W. Kelly, and most recently in 2015, with the book's title changed, for some unknown reason, to "Shadowfire." Internationally, the novel would see editions in the U.K. ('78 and '85, as "Shadowfire"), Italy (also '78, as "Vazkor, Figlio di Vazkor," or "Vazkor, Son of …" well, you know), Holland ('79 and '86, as "Schaduwvuur," or "Shadowfire"), Germany ('79, as "Vazkor") and France ('84 and '89, as "Vazkor"). This sequel was a much shorter affair as compared to its predecessor (90,000 words, rather than the original's 185,000) but still managed to cram a remarkable abundance of detail and plot into its compact package.
The story commences a full 14 years following the events of Book #1, and is narrated this time by the mystery woman's son himself, Tuvek. His tale is divided into two lengthy and discrete sections, the first of which largely transpires among the barbarous hill tribe where we'd last seen him as a newborn. Thus, we once again meet Ettook, the piggish chief of the tribe whom Tuvek despises but acts civilly to; Tathra, the out-of-tribe headwife of Ettook and Tuvek's supposed mother; Kotta, a blind nurse who yet sees more than most; Seel, the malicious head priest; and Seel-Na, the priest's lustful yet spiteful daughter. On the arrival of his 14th year, Tuvek is declared a warrior when he bests four adult males in combat, but to the tribe's dismay, it turns out that the young man cannot receive his ceremonial tattooing, his skin seemingly rejecting the ink somehow. As our narrator's story progresses, he discovers that he possesses several other physical anomalies as well: His wounds heal remarkably quickly, he can somehow understand foreign tongues, and, most distressing of all, he can kill with just a glance (all powers that his unsuspected mother commanded, as well). By the time he is 19, Tuvek, we learn, possesses three wives, has fathered 13 sons, and has killed over 40 men. When a band of soldiers from the White Desert city of Eshkorek-Arnor arrives from across the mountains with cannon, attacks Ettook's tribe as well as some of the neighboring tribes, and captures many men to be used as slaves, Tuvek follows them, single-handed. He frees the captured men and with them slays their Eshkor attackers, a task made easier by the city men's stunned reaction to finding the spitting image of the long-dead Vazkor in their midst. Tuvek returns to his tribe a hero, bringing with him Demizdor, a beautiful city woman whom he soon makes his fourth wife. All seems well, until the dark day when Tathra dies giving birth to another stillborn; Kotta tells Tuvek of his actual origin; Tuvek kills Ettook using the unsuspected mental powers that are his; and Demizdor's cousins, Zrenn and Orek, arrive in force to rescue the young lady and take vengeance on Tuvek himself. So ends the first section.
In the second, Tuvek is brought to Eshkorek-Arnor, a city-state much degraded after the martial events of Book #1. There, he is held by one of the city's competing princes, Kortis, before being abducted by Prince Erran, who plans to use Tuvek as a horse breaker as well as the sire of a new race of indestructible supermen. But when our narrator kills an Eshkorek nobleman in anger, Erran decides to change his plans, and instead perform some radical body amputations on Tuvek, as a scientific study in regeneration. With Demizdor's assistance, Tuvek escapes the city via a miles-long underground tunnel built by the dead race known as the Lost Ones, from which race, he has learned, his actual mother sprang. After a weeks-long chase, our hero manages to slay most of his pursuers, and makes his way to the edge of the sea, where he meets a young witch/healer named Hwenit. At Hwenit's village, he meets her father, Peyuan, who had been one of his mother's nine protectors in Book #1. From this kindly black man, now the head of his own village, Tuvek (who has come to identify more and more with his father, even thinking of himself as Vazkor by name) learns even more of his mysterious mother, who had vanished so completely two decades earlier. Along with Hwenit and one other, Vazkor, uh, Jr. retreats to an empty island some miles offshore to hide from his remaining pursuers. And it is on that lonely island that the final showdown will eventually come....
Now, if I seem to have given away too much of Tanith Lee's astonishing story line here, please rest assured that what you have just read is merely the sketchiest of outlines of what is actually a fairly complex and beautifully detailed affair. Unlike Book #1, which can rightly be labeled an epic fantasy with a distinct leavening of sci-fi, this sequel contains not a trace of science fiction to speak of, and I suppose might be termed a heroic fantasy, perhaps of the sword & sorcery ilk, with a decided debt to Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian. As in the first book, Lee's extraordinary use of language is a major selling point here; thus, the reader might expect to encounter such sentences as these: "The seasons slunk past like people in a mist." "The gate between her thighs was golden as her hair, and the road beyond the gate was made for kings." "The night had turned chill, blue-black as raven's wings with stars caught in the feathers of it." It would seem that the unschooled Tuvek, like his mother, wrote surpassingly well, a fact that might cause the reader to wonder how this barbarous warrior is capable of penning his story so impressively. But then again, we must recall that Tuvek was somehow capable of understanding all tongues, and that we have no idea how old he is when he sat down to write his story. All I know is, he employs some words here that even I had to break out the ol' Merriam-Webster’s to look up: "dawson," "jink," "byre," "smalt," "carious," "equerry" and "clepsydra." And I just love his term for a dead person: "crowpie"! I'll try to remember that one going forward!
Again to her great credit, Tanith Lee does a marvelous job at switching from a female narrator's voice to a male POV, and writes convincingly as a young man with a fairly brutal attitude toward life and women. Thus, we get sentences such as these: "May you eat dung and pass blood, and may the ravens squabble for your liver." "Presently, I had a city sword, red to its hilt, and I was bathed with blood." "These men who had jeered as they watched me writhe in Eshkorek now ended their quest on my blades." You'd never guess these words were written by a 30-year-old woman, would you? To give Tuvek his due, the character does change over the course of his story, and the tragedies he suffers, as well as his love affair with Demizdor, do ultimately reveal a more compassionate side to his nature...not that he ever loses his ability to mete out death and destruction in a wholesale manner! Speaking of which, Tuvek's grim story does contain much in the way of strong violence (Erann's description of his proposed plan for scientific study is especially grisly), and the book contains a fairly high body count. Indeed, more than half of the novel's main players lie dead by its conclusion, so perhaps it would be best to not grow overly attached to any one character!
"Vazkor, Son of Vazkor" does not feature quite as many scenes of thrilling action, intense drama or astonishing revelation as had "The Birthgrave," but again, the sequel is only half as long! (Plus, nothing could possibly top that amazing chariot race in Book #1!) Still, any number of sequences do manage to make an impact. Among them: Tuvek's fight with four adult men during the Boys' Rite; the Eshkorians' stunning cannon attack; Tuvek's daring rescue of the kidnapped men, and his victorious return to the tribe that was already conducting his funeral rites; Tuvek's falling out with his beloved "mother," Tathra; a poisoning attempt on Tuvek's wedding night; the back-to-back-to-back death of Tathra/revelation of Kotta/slaying of Ettook (a very tough day for our young narrator!); the breaking of a drugged and murderous horse in Prince Erran's stable; the 10-day chase through the underground Worm's Way; Tuvek's slaying of 18 of his pursuers via sword, knife and mind; Peyuan's wonderful recounting of the events he witnessed in Book #1; and finally, Tuvek's showdown with Zrenn and Orek on that desert island. Prospective readers should also prepare themselves for a surprising bit of brother-sister incest, some casually brutal treatment of female tribe members, and three scenes of unexpected suicide. Truly, nothing seemed to be off-limits for the young Tanith Lee!
For the rest of it, this sequel also features some wonderful details regarding Tuvek's tribal life: the Boys' Rite, weddings, migrations, burials, even divorce. (As for the latter, it seems to be largely a matter of bringing the Mrs. back to her father's tent, saying "Here is your daughter...You may have her back," renouncing the kids you had with her, throwing down some gold, and that's it! Easy-peasy! I love it!) And, I might add, it really is nice seeing those half dozen characters from Book #1 again! All told, the novel is another fairly remarkable piece of work from Tanith Lee, concerning which I only have two minor quibbles. First, her repeated confusing of the words "turgid" and "turbid." (Sometimes, I feel like I'm one of the few who can discern the difference!) And second, this Book #2 of THE BIRTHGRAVE TRILOGY fails to reveal which world we are on (Earth? Who knows?) and what happened to Tuvek's mother after the events of "The Birthgrave." Hopefully, these matters will be addressed in Book #3. But really, these are my only quibbles here!
At the tail end of his narrative, Tuvek--in full hatred of his mother for having abandoned him 19 years earlier, and for having killed the father he now fully identifies with--swears an oath to avenge Vazkor by seeking out his mother and killing her! Along with the Eshkorian slave Long-Eye, he pushes off from that barren island, heading for an unknown land to the southeast, as his new quest begins. What in the world (whichever world this might be) could possibly happen next? I suppose I'll just have to proceed on to Book #3, the culmination of the trilogy, "Quest for the White Witch" (also released in 1978), to find out more. Stay tuned....
(By the way, this review originally appeared on the FanLit website at https://fantasyliterature.com/ ... a most ideal destination for all fans of Tanith Lee....)
September 15, 2016
This book was slightly better than the first novel in the series. It had a better maintained plot. One of the things I was confused about and I'm probably not the only one was that I was thinking Demizdor was actually his mother and he never realized it, but eventually this proved not to be the case. I read the blurb on the back and had the impression that he was going to be searching for his mother to kill her, but it's only in the final 2-3 pages in which Tuvek vows to find her and kill her. I liked the character of Demizdor (thought it was his mother, Uastis, and really liked her), but really disliked the way she came to an end. It seemed like most of the characters were simply thrown in to add a little color to Tuvek's life. That was okay with most I guess, but I wish Lee had developed and maintained more of them. The plot was still a bit wishy-washy, but was a bit firmer than Birthgrave. The story stayed in locales a bit longer than in the first novel, which gave you a better feel of the world. I didn't really like most of the aspects of Tuvek's personality and the culture in which he was raised. It made for an interesting story, but also made it harder to really like the "hero". I little more of the history of Uastis's people was revealed, but it's still largely a mystery. I wish his mother had actually made an appearance, even if just briefly. She was the source of Tuvek's ire, but when the first novel was completely about her and then to have nothing really of substance about her in this one is a bit depressing when you have come to root for her. I was having a problem with the fact that I thought Demizdor was actually Uastis and was sleeping with Tuvek. I'm glad this proved incorrect because I was having a hard time accepting incest. The novel was good, but not outstanding. It was an improvement over Birthgrave, but still could have been better. I assume in book 3 Tuvek and Uastis actually meet. That could prove interesting, especially if Tuvek's ire has not abated at all. The novels seem a bit dark... futuristic apocalypse where a race of beings with near godlike abilities have all but a few died off. The remainder of the world is based on the lore of these godlike beings and those with heritages closer to them are higher in the hierarchy of the world. Reminds me of the McAuley Confluence series a bit. I'll probably read final novel eventually. Books haven't been bad and most people would probably get some enjoyment out of them.
July 12, 2015
3.5
Tuvek is the son of a tribal leader and somewhat of an outcast due to his mother's "out-tribe" status. Growing up, he began to notice his body could heal itself and that he required very little nourishment. More powerful than the men of the tribe, he is viewed as potentially dangerous competition. Once his mother becomes pregnant again, he learns he is not a true member of the tribe and he sets out to discover his real parents and true heritage, learning more about his strange powers along the way.
This novel is told from Tuvek's point of view as he comes to terms with his powers and his history and struggles to understand his real parents, both of whom are missing from his life. He has dreams and visions and swears vengeance against his mother, who he believes wronged his father. His hatred for her shapes who he is and with his incredible powers he becomes a very arrogant character. I didn't find Tuvek (who also goes by many names, like his mother before him) to be as intriguing of a character as Uastis because he was a little one note. Tanith does showcase more of the world Tuvek and Uastis are in though Tuvek's journeys and I enjoyed reading about the different locals he encountered.
Tuvek is the son of a tribal leader and somewhat of an outcast due to his mother's "out-tribe" status. Growing up, he began to notice his body could heal itself and that he required very little nourishment. More powerful than the men of the tribe, he is viewed as potentially dangerous competition. Once his mother becomes pregnant again, he learns he is not a true member of the tribe and he sets out to discover his real parents and true heritage, learning more about his strange powers along the way.
This novel is told from Tuvek's point of view as he comes to terms with his powers and his history and struggles to understand his real parents, both of whom are missing from his life. He has dreams and visions and swears vengeance against his mother, who he believes wronged his father. His hatred for her shapes who he is and with his incredible powers he becomes a very arrogant character. I didn't find Tuvek (who also goes by many names, like his mother before him) to be as intriguing of a character as Uastis because he was a little one note. Tanith does showcase more of the world Tuvek and Uastis are in though Tuvek's journeys and I enjoyed reading about the different locals he encountered.
April 22, 2010
This is the middle book of a trilogy that started in Birthgrave, Lee's first novel. That one was a phantasmagorical journey of a woman without any memory of herself through a landscape with that pulp fiction feel of H Rider Haggard tales of lost civilizations, or perhaps even more akin, Jane Gaskell's Atlan Saga. This one, as signaled by it's title, is centered on a Conan-like character called Vazkor, son of the heroine of Birthgrave. He retraces her steps, like her tells the story in his own voice, and if the fascination of the first book lies in the mystery of her identity, the fascination of this one lies a great deal in his so very different perspective. Vazkor is very hard to like, at least at first--a raping sword-swinging barbarian. But there is a more than physical journey here, and I think where Vazkor winds up inwardly is worth taking the trip. Lee's style and her world could both be described as lush. Though along with Tanith Lee's poetic prose you're going to get a psychological complexity you're not going to find in Conan the Barbarian.
April 19, 2018
You know how so many fantasy authors have a fantastic story, but just fail the deliver it well? Well that is not the case for this book. Tanith is very eloquent and very clever with words, but this story is awful. The main character is repulsive and details several occasions he has raped women just in the first few pages before raping and threatening to rape more throughout the story, (and yet just about every woman he encounters throws her self at him) and all of the women in the story are either raped or threatened with it and, for the most part, treated really poorly. And racism, holy cow so much horrific racism! From the ‘red’ people who call their warriors ‘braves’ and are violent and stupid, to the ‘ugly’ dark-skinned slave race and their white-skinned, fair-haired masters who are book learned and have superior technology, and let’s not get into how the only rape of people who treat their women decently and aren’t horrible, are also the only race that don’t force their women to wear veils over their faces.
Urg. I can’t believe I finished this book.
Urg. I can’t believe I finished this book.
January 11, 2011
One of my all time favorites. I've re read this countless times. Great trilogy.
May 27, 2025
I gave this a shot, but I just couldn't enjoy it. Part of my problem is that I didn't realize this was #2 in a series, but since the first book happened 20 years before this, I imagine it didn't have a huge impact on my reading experience.
This book focuses on Turek, a young man in a nomadic warrior tribe. Turek hates his father, the clan chief, and loves his mother.... almost too much, sometimes. His mother is an outlander, so he feels that he is treated differently because of it (although we don't see much evidence of this), and so he fights extra hard to become the most feared warrior in the tribe, although he struggles to gain any respect. Despite the fact being revealed on the back cover, Turek doesn't realize that he actually has other parents until over halfway through the book... and by that point, I had started skimming. Turek's mother was a sorceress/witch/goddess thing, who murdered his father, Vazkor, and so he sets out to find her and get revenge.
Eventually.
After we've already had several chapters focusing on his childhood, his manhood ceremony, his first three wives, his prowess in battle, his antagonistic and distant relationship with his father, his somewhat oedipal relationship with his mother, and oh yeah, the fact that he is a r*pist as well.
Turek is cruel, selfish, arrogant, and believes himself and his mother to be better than anyone. He has absolutely no positive thoughts or any kind of respect for women; he is essentially a caveman when it comes to them, and this book doesn't shy away from his horrible behavior.
I tried giving this book a chance, thinking that maybe Turek would change and grow, but by the halfway point with no hint of change, I decided to skip it. Not interested in continuing.
This book focuses on Turek, a young man in a nomadic warrior tribe. Turek hates his father, the clan chief, and loves his mother.... almost too much, sometimes. His mother is an outlander, so he feels that he is treated differently because of it (although we don't see much evidence of this), and so he fights extra hard to become the most feared warrior in the tribe, although he struggles to gain any respect. Despite the fact being revealed on the back cover, Turek doesn't realize that he actually has other parents until over halfway through the book... and by that point, I had started skimming. Turek's mother was a sorceress/witch/goddess thing, who murdered his father, Vazkor, and so he sets out to find her and get revenge.
Eventually.
After we've already had several chapters focusing on his childhood, his manhood ceremony, his first three wives, his prowess in battle, his antagonistic and distant relationship with his father, his somewhat oedipal relationship with his mother, and oh yeah, the fact that he is a r*pist as well.
Turek is cruel, selfish, arrogant, and believes himself and his mother to be better than anyone. He has absolutely no positive thoughts or any kind of respect for women; he is essentially a caveman when it comes to them, and this book doesn't shy away from his horrible behavior.
I tried giving this book a chance, thinking that maybe Turek would change and grow, but by the halfway point with no hint of change, I decided to skip it. Not interested in continuing.
December 25, 2017
Vazkor son of Vazkor by Tanith Lee - After a long time, entering a book with no pre knowledge. That too middle of a trilogy. That's how I used to when I started. But nowadays too much into reviews and stuff. But this one came to me from a friend who wanted me to try this author - second book of a trilogy. It is an ugly duckling tale of sorts - the son of the chief of a barbarian tribe who seems different from the rest but survives mainly due to his superheroic powers till the uncivilised barbarians run into a bunch of 'civilized' barbarians. What follows is a tale of heart throbbing action- fights, imprisonment, torture and escape. In the background the boy learns of his true legacy. But that part is not complete as this is middle book of a trilogy. Overall an exciting read that kept me awake to finish it before dropping off to sleep. A true blue sword and sorcery fantasy as against the modern ones that seem to increasingly want to step into litfic space.
August 14, 2025
Brilliantly conceived classic fantasy that explores violence and male female relationships in a provocative and challenging way. No simplistic worthy signalling of how politically correct the author is, Tanith Lee makes you think for yourself about what’s right and wrong, all the while knowing you’ll come to the right conclusion. The writing and characterisations are so much more believable and emotionally engaging than most other sword and sorcery of the period. You need to read the first book; The Birthgrave, as this one follows on directly from that, which is twice the (size 400 pages) of this sequel. It’s a thrilling, fast paced read which sets you up wonderfully for the final book; Quest for the White Witch, which I am now really looking forward to.
December 18, 2020
This is a book about the main narrator's son, Turek. It's full of lightly described sexual assault (women are raped, and there's slavery as well). He discovers that who his mother is, as well as his inheritance of the Power .
It's ok - Turek is an adult, but he's also driven by emotions (rage and pride). He slowly discovers more about his history - or rather, the history that has been spread around, which is different from what we've seen in the first book. It's a rather short book, and we end with him going to look for his mother.
It's ok - Turek is an adult, but he's also driven by emotions (rage and pride). He slowly discovers more about his history - or rather, the history that has been spread around, which is different from what we've seen in the first book. It's a rather short book, and we end with him going to look for his mother.
November 2, 2024
Excellent worldbuilding, though it took me a long time to warm to the narrative.
Vazkor's tale starts as the archetypical barbarian battling with the arrogance of youth. As he unravels his origins, he finds his power and his purpose - to seek the one who abandoned him.
Much like the previous book, Lee's narrative is sprawling, detailed and thick with occult themes and folk magic.
Ultimately Vazkor just isn't as interesting as Uastis, the main perspective of the first novel. Despite this I will continue to see what happens when these two forces collide.
Vazkor's tale starts as the archetypical barbarian battling with the arrogance of youth. As he unravels his origins, he finds his power and his purpose - to seek the one who abandoned him.
Much like the previous book, Lee's narrative is sprawling, detailed and thick with occult themes and folk magic.
Ultimately Vazkor just isn't as interesting as Uastis, the main perspective of the first novel. Despite this I will continue to see what happens when these two forces collide.
November 14, 2016
While not as interesting as her first novel, Shadowfire, allows the reader to explore the world of The Birthgrave in depth. Through Turvek's perspective, we see a radically different view of the world, tumultuous, and patricentric. His relationships with women in the book are given particular focus that illustrates his thoughts and feelings about women as a whole. The book is ripe with expressive beautiful language, and Freudian imagery.
February 4, 2019
I liked this installment more than the first one. Tanith Lee was a master at painting landscapes to match the mood of her stories. This is a story about love, and the various threads she wove in this book broke my heart with their poignancy. By the way, I prefer the original title as it resonates more with the story - I still have no idea what ‘Shadowfire’ refers to.
July 20, 2025
This was surprisingly good. Tanith Lee's use of language in inventive ways is extra ordinary.
I may write a longer review on my blog -- Sense of Doubt at Blogger -- and will cross post here.
Very entertaining read!!
I may write a longer review on my blog -- Sense of Doubt at Blogger -- and will cross post here.
Very entertaining read!!
June 29, 2022
I do not like Tuvek anymore than I liked his father in the previous book. I hope his birth mother kicks his ass, but I know the next book is also primarily from his perspective.
December 31, 2022
Birthfire continues. Story is good and flows better then Birthfire.
November 14, 2024
I don't know if I've ever read a fantasy author who hates her female characters more than Tanith Lee aside from maybe Bernard Cornwell.
July 31, 2016
Where The Birthgrave took many tropes of high fantasy fiction and turned them on their head, Shadowfire, on the surface, reads like a standard high-fantasy novel. It has tribes and war, conquests and pillaging, and centers on a very masculine warrior who defines his worth in his strength, skill, and virility. In short, it begins by being the complete opposite of The Birthgrave, a book that revels in its feminism.
Tanith Lee, however, is a better writer than that.
With Shadowfire, Lee runs a bit of a risk starting out telling us the tale of Turek, whom, if we've read The Birthgrave, we know is the son of the nameless narrator from that book. In Shadowfire, Turek's knowledge of his heritage is unknown for a large part of the story, meaning that we know more than Turek for that time. Luckily, Lee uses this knowledge in the reader's favor, dropping clues in our path as the story progresses while showing us how Turek's upbringing factors so much into his character.
Turek, being male and part of a tribe, is not nearly as likable a narrator as the one from the previous book. As much as The Birthgrave features a feminist main character, Shadowfire features a character who is a part of the patriarchy, and sees no qualm in how he treats women. They have no stature in his culture, and even Demizdor, his second wife, who hearkens back to the feminist theme of the first book, becomes involved with him out of necessity, not desire. This isn't a dismissal of her character, though; instead it reinforces the dislike we have toward Turek.
The thing is, Turek grows because of his attachment to this woman, and to the other two women who features predominantly in his life. Each is strong-willed, more of a character than Turek himself, and each is only understood by Turek after they pass from his life. Turek's character development is dependent on these women, making the story as much about them as it is about him. In turn, the story takes on a theme of men being shaped by the strong women in their lives.
The original title of this book was Vazkor, Son of Vazkor, a rather meaningless title once you've finished the book, but Shadowfire, while having more shelf appeal, gives no further meaning into the book itself. The original title is certainly more lurid, but suggests a different feel than the novel turns out to be. Shadowfire is at least ambiguous enough to embody the feminist angle the story takes, but it still doesn't evoke anything of the story itself.
There's a parallel of story between Shadowfire and The Birthgrave, in that we have a character who is ignorant of their upbringing and heritage, who takes on different names as the story progresses, and who is treated, by turns, as slave and god, aggressor and healer. Both are worthwhile, not just in story but also in theme, and I'm eager to see how the third book will play on the story Lee established with these two books.
Tanith Lee, however, is a better writer than that.
With Shadowfire, Lee runs a bit of a risk starting out telling us the tale of Turek, whom, if we've read The Birthgrave, we know is the son of the nameless narrator from that book. In Shadowfire, Turek's knowledge of his heritage is unknown for a large part of the story, meaning that we know more than Turek for that time. Luckily, Lee uses this knowledge in the reader's favor, dropping clues in our path as the story progresses while showing us how Turek's upbringing factors so much into his character.
Turek, being male and part of a tribe, is not nearly as likable a narrator as the one from the previous book. As much as The Birthgrave features a feminist main character, Shadowfire features a character who is a part of the patriarchy, and sees no qualm in how he treats women. They have no stature in his culture, and even Demizdor, his second wife, who hearkens back to the feminist theme of the first book, becomes involved with him out of necessity, not desire. This isn't a dismissal of her character, though; instead it reinforces the dislike we have toward Turek.
The thing is, Turek grows because of his attachment to this woman, and to the other two women who features predominantly in his life. Each is strong-willed, more of a character than Turek himself, and each is only understood by Turek after they pass from his life. Turek's character development is dependent on these women, making the story as much about them as it is about him. In turn, the story takes on a theme of men being shaped by the strong women in their lives.
The original title of this book was Vazkor, Son of Vazkor, a rather meaningless title once you've finished the book, but Shadowfire, while having more shelf appeal, gives no further meaning into the book itself. The original title is certainly more lurid, but suggests a different feel than the novel turns out to be. Shadowfire is at least ambiguous enough to embody the feminist angle the story takes, but it still doesn't evoke anything of the story itself.
There's a parallel of story between Shadowfire and The Birthgrave, in that we have a character who is ignorant of their upbringing and heritage, who takes on different names as the story progresses, and who is treated, by turns, as slave and god, aggressor and healer. Both are worthwhile, not just in story but also in theme, and I'm eager to see how the third book will play on the story Lee established with these two books.
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