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Elephantasm
Left homeless in the wake of a series of family tragedies, sixteen-year-old Annie Ember is shipped off to serve as a scullery maid on the exotic Smolte estate, where she is introduced to a dark, decadent, and perverse world. Reprint.
341 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1993
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About the author
Tanith Lee
609 books1,955 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 - 17 of 17 reviews
April 30, 2013
oh the beguiling wonders of the Exotic East, the Ancient Orient, of heat and spice and jungle, of India!
oh the enchanting lures of Gold and Status!
oh the captivating charm of Power Over Women, to bend them to your will, to make of them your puppets!
oh the bewitching promise of Revenge, bold & bloody!
there is a family in Victorian England. the patriarch made his wealth in questionable ways, in India, at the cost of many lives. the matriarch is from the stage, now trapped in her body as she is trapped in her country estate. one son is piggish and priggish; the other son a self-pitying sadomasochist. the daughter is mad, stark raving mad - but the quiet kind of mad, the kind that has the bones of tiny animals sewn within her petticoats, shhh, no one need know. there is a fallen child, fallen from upper to lower, now from the slums, her sister a murdered murderess. she joins this family as a kitchen maid, and then more, a victim and a victimizer, an instrument of unearthly revenge.
Tanith Lee weaves a strange and brilliant tale out of disparate parts. colonial India, made dark and eerie and threatening, the stereotypical wonders of the Exotic East turned inside out, made into an Other that no mere englishman can hope to understand. victorian life in a country manor, all the upstairs-downstairs melodrama tarnished and not-so-charming, made malevolent, turned brittle until ready to crumble into pieces. sexual sadism, stripped of its romantic veneer, made ugly and sickening - there is no victim embracing her victimhood here, there is just a girl trying to survive. phantasmagoria, slowly creeping, lurking in the shadows of the narrative, longing to take over the tale, and finally doing so in the end, destroying that narrative and transforming its characters.
i appreciated much about this novel. its refusal to make a particular sexual scenario 'sexy', its anger at exploitation in all of its forms, and its disinterest in explaining its magic. but i especially appreciated the level of its writing. the author writes like a dream, a dark and gorgeous dream. such beautiful prose! Tanith Lee, you cruel and perfect lady.
there is a scene with trained monkeys at a formal dinner. they are dressed and are able to act just like their upper class dining companions. a brilliant scene, hallucinatory and full of malice. and, happily, full of compassion for those clever monkeys.
death follies on the foxhunt: sweet justice!
there is an elephant, of sorts. it is from the past. it is coming to get you, upper class, it will rear and roar and trumpet and destroy. there will be a massacre in the manor. huzzah!
oh the enchanting lures of Gold and Status!
oh the captivating charm of Power Over Women, to bend them to your will, to make of them your puppets!
oh the bewitching promise of Revenge, bold & bloody!
there is a family in Victorian England. the patriarch made his wealth in questionable ways, in India, at the cost of many lives. the matriarch is from the stage, now trapped in her body as she is trapped in her country estate. one son is piggish and priggish; the other son a self-pitying sadomasochist. the daughter is mad, stark raving mad - but the quiet kind of mad, the kind that has the bones of tiny animals sewn within her petticoats, shhh, no one need know. there is a fallen child, fallen from upper to lower, now from the slums, her sister a murdered murderess. she joins this family as a kitchen maid, and then more, a victim and a victimizer, an instrument of unearthly revenge.
Tanith Lee weaves a strange and brilliant tale out of disparate parts. colonial India, made dark and eerie and threatening, the stereotypical wonders of the Exotic East turned inside out, made into an Other that no mere englishman can hope to understand. victorian life in a country manor, all the upstairs-downstairs melodrama tarnished and not-so-charming, made malevolent, turned brittle until ready to crumble into pieces. sexual sadism, stripped of its romantic veneer, made ugly and sickening - there is no victim embracing her victimhood here, there is just a girl trying to survive. phantasmagoria, slowly creeping, lurking in the shadows of the narrative, longing to take over the tale, and finally doing so in the end, destroying that narrative and transforming its characters.
i appreciated much about this novel. its refusal to make a particular sexual scenario 'sexy', its anger at exploitation in all of its forms, and its disinterest in explaining its magic. but i especially appreciated the level of its writing. the author writes like a dream, a dark and gorgeous dream. such beautiful prose! Tanith Lee, you cruel and perfect lady.
there is a scene with trained monkeys at a formal dinner. they are dressed and are able to act just like their upper class dining companions. a brilliant scene, hallucinatory and full of malice. and, happily, full of compassion for those clever monkeys.
death follies on the foxhunt: sweet justice!
there is an elephant, of sorts. it is from the past. it is coming to get you, upper class, it will rear and roar and trumpet and destroy. there will be a massacre in the manor. huzzah!
November 20, 2024
This is a fantastic book, Tanith Lee was a fantastic and fantastical author whose books are always dark and beautiful. In my opinion, this one is unique among her writing in several ways one of which it that, of all her earlier work it feels to me the most like 'literature' in the beauty of it's writing.
This review is based on the scrip I wrote for my youtube video which is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDvrY...
This is a lush, exotic story which is often cruel and barbaric I don't think that knowing the theme ruins the reading experience, after all I have been re-reading it for decades. The plot is subtle, wide open to personal interpretation and never over explained. Since the book itself does not really give it all away – I guess you could say that the book does not even spoiler itself - I am not worrying about spoilers in this review. Should this bother you I strongly urge you to go away and read it before reading this review. But I also just think everyone should try and read it anyway, it is dark magic, this book!
Tanith Lee is (I think) might known primarily for fantasy and horror of the subtler kind but she also wrote literature and I think you can find little bits of all there different styles in Elphantasm. There is certainly fantasy of the more supernatural variety but it also has a very solid wedge of horror to it and because it so thoroughly breaks all boundaries of expectations and themes, I am more than happy to claim it as Literary Fiction. I would say that this one edges more into psychological horror than some other Lee books.
It definitely requires a content warning; there is SA, some of it quite nasty and strong SM themes.
As it is quite difficult to find out much about Tanith Lee in general, I find and Elphamntasm is no exception all the casual google brings up nothing except the year of publication which is 1993, and that it us a standalone.
The novel starts in England which is one of the unusual features to it as I am not aware of any of her earlier work set in anything approaching the real world. England 1950's perhaps? I think so - it would seem to be set in the era where England still had the Raj of India, so before 1857 when the big mutiny took place. India, the orient and it's culture are very much the supernatural aspect of the story but an accurate description of India is not not the goal of this novel, all of the India sequences take place is a small outpost with few characters and are a lush and exotic setting that leads us into the subtle horrors of the past which set us up for the 'current' events.
In England then, our main character Annie Ember lives with her beloved sister Rose and Rose's horrible husband, ironically named Innocent. Rose is beaten by her husband, and when she kills him in a complicated combination of self defence and defence of her sister Annie, she is hung for murder. Grieving, numb and completely alone Annie is sent to be a maid in the remote house of a family that moved back from India and this is where a completely unconventional, Eastern type of fairy tale telling comes into the story. We see how Annie is trapped in her own grief as well as in her life which makes the stories internal logic strong. The family she serves has the India connection with the husband having served there in the army and who took his wife to India after marrying her. This wife had been a 'low' stage actress who is not accepted into society by the local gentry. Both sons, now both adults were born in India and each in their own way tainted. The daughter, one of Tanith's better psychopaths is just crazy. There are no nice characters! All bear characteristics that the reader must feel antipathy towards (though some are nastier than others) and all seem to have a huge curse hanging over them, the reasons for which as slowly and never entirely revealed by the story.
Annie, it becomes clear is the catalyst who is bringing an old revenge curse to roost in the family. If you are sensitive about people writing cultures that are not their own, this could rub you the wrong way. And the details from India are so pervasive that you will probably not be able to write it off as a 'fantasy land'. But essentially this is a revenge story, the Smoltes did bad things in India and India reaches through time and uses Annie, as through her, India rises up in the English countryside to create a jungle in which revenge is enacted by those wronged long ago. Or so we guess! Never over explained, always subtle and open to interpretation and very visceral
In this book one gets a casual brutality that is disconcerting in the extreme if you are not braced for it. We start with Annie and Rose living in grinding poverty and subjugation which has a solid historical background and which I think is very much a feminist theme, but not an obvious one. There is a harsh, completely unyielding feminism to this. No moral stance is taken or suggested, just the events and they are harsh.
Horror at it's most insidious, but the reading experience is lush and beautiful and I thoroughly recommend it. As I said this is one of the Tanith Lee books I re-read most often. In one other way it stands out; there is something approaching a happy end for one of the characters. I think this is the only one I have ever read where Tanith does this.
This review is based on the scrip I wrote for my youtube video which is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDvrY...
This is a lush, exotic story which is often cruel and barbaric I don't think that knowing the theme ruins the reading experience, after all I have been re-reading it for decades. The plot is subtle, wide open to personal interpretation and never over explained. Since the book itself does not really give it all away – I guess you could say that the book does not even spoiler itself - I am not worrying about spoilers in this review. Should this bother you I strongly urge you to go away and read it before reading this review. But I also just think everyone should try and read it anyway, it is dark magic, this book!
Tanith Lee is (I think) might known primarily for fantasy and horror of the subtler kind but she also wrote literature and I think you can find little bits of all there different styles in Elphantasm. There is certainly fantasy of the more supernatural variety but it also has a very solid wedge of horror to it and because it so thoroughly breaks all boundaries of expectations and themes, I am more than happy to claim it as Literary Fiction. I would say that this one edges more into psychological horror than some other Lee books.
It definitely requires a content warning; there is SA, some of it quite nasty and strong SM themes.
As it is quite difficult to find out much about Tanith Lee in general, I find and Elphamntasm is no exception all the casual google brings up nothing except the year of publication which is 1993, and that it us a standalone.
The novel starts in England which is one of the unusual features to it as I am not aware of any of her earlier work set in anything approaching the real world. England 1950's perhaps? I think so - it would seem to be set in the era where England still had the Raj of India, so before 1857 when the big mutiny took place. India, the orient and it's culture are very much the supernatural aspect of the story but an accurate description of India is not not the goal of this novel, all of the India sequences take place is a small outpost with few characters and are a lush and exotic setting that leads us into the subtle horrors of the past which set us up for the 'current' events.
In England then, our main character Annie Ember lives with her beloved sister Rose and Rose's horrible husband, ironically named Innocent. Rose is beaten by her husband, and when she kills him in a complicated combination of self defence and defence of her sister Annie, she is hung for murder. Grieving, numb and completely alone Annie is sent to be a maid in the remote house of a family that moved back from India and this is where a completely unconventional, Eastern type of fairy tale telling comes into the story. We see how Annie is trapped in her own grief as well as in her life which makes the stories internal logic strong. The family she serves has the India connection with the husband having served there in the army and who took his wife to India after marrying her. This wife had been a 'low' stage actress who is not accepted into society by the local gentry. Both sons, now both adults were born in India and each in their own way tainted. The daughter, one of Tanith's better psychopaths is just crazy. There are no nice characters! All bear characteristics that the reader must feel antipathy towards (though some are nastier than others) and all seem to have a huge curse hanging over them, the reasons for which as slowly and never entirely revealed by the story.
Annie, it becomes clear is the catalyst who is bringing an old revenge curse to roost in the family. If you are sensitive about people writing cultures that are not their own, this could rub you the wrong way. And the details from India are so pervasive that you will probably not be able to write it off as a 'fantasy land'. But essentially this is a revenge story, the Smoltes did bad things in India and India reaches through time and uses Annie, as through her, India rises up in the English countryside to create a jungle in which revenge is enacted by those wronged long ago. Or so we guess! Never over explained, always subtle and open to interpretation and very visceral
In this book one gets a casual brutality that is disconcerting in the extreme if you are not braced for it. We start with Annie and Rose living in grinding poverty and subjugation which has a solid historical background and which I think is very much a feminist theme, but not an obvious one. There is a harsh, completely unyielding feminism to this. No moral stance is taken or suggested, just the events and they are harsh.
Horror at it's most insidious, but the reading experience is lush and beautiful and I thoroughly recommend it. As I said this is one of the Tanith Lee books I re-read most often. In one other way it stands out; there is something approaching a happy end for one of the characters. I think this is the only one I have ever read where Tanith does this.
May 5, 2020
I adore Lee's style. It's lush and evocative, sensuous and lyrical. I'm not one to read style over substance, but Lee creates intriguing plots that keep my attention over just reading her books for the words. But the words are awfully good.
The plot here takes a while to understand, but once it comes together, it's shocking and horrifying. It appears to meander (the first section of the book sets up a setting and character before shifting to a new location and to a new protagonist), but it's all significant. It just takes a little patience.
I'm a little uncomfortable that Lee's horror lies in the exotic, the foreign, the OTHER of India. It feels like novels that use Native American mysticism to create their horror, especially when they're written by white folks. India takes its due from the main characters, and for good reason (Lee doesn't flinch from showing the entitlement that white people had when "conquering" India), but it still feels like appropriation to use the religion and mysticism of that continent, especially when it's used to evoke horror.
Fans of Lee will like what she does here, but it's not the kind of book I would recommend without some caveats or reservations. I enjoyed it a lot more this time around than when I first read it, about 25 years ago.
The plot here takes a while to understand, but once it comes together, it's shocking and horrifying. It appears to meander (the first section of the book sets up a setting and character before shifting to a new location and to a new protagonist), but it's all significant. It just takes a little patience.
I'm a little uncomfortable that Lee's horror lies in the exotic, the foreign, the OTHER of India. It feels like novels that use Native American mysticism to create their horror, especially when they're written by white folks. India takes its due from the main characters, and for good reason (Lee doesn't flinch from showing the entitlement that white people had when "conquering" India), but it still feels like appropriation to use the religion and mysticism of that continent, especially when it's used to evoke horror.
Fans of Lee will like what she does here, but it's not the kind of book I would recommend without some caveats or reservations. I enjoyed it a lot more this time around than when I first read it, about 25 years ago.
January 8, 2019
Yucky. Didn't like it. There was a main character for a little while but then she was forgotten so I'm not sure who we were supposed to care about.
I won't lie, I wanted more sex. It was just a TEASE! A TEASE I SAY.
I won't lie, I wanted more sex. It was just a TEASE! A TEASE I SAY.
December 31, 2020
This novel began promisingly with the story of Annie, a young girl from the slums of Victorian London, who stumbles upon a curio shop where the mysterious proprietor offers her the chance to purchase anything for one penny. Having memories of being told by her elder sister that their deceased father had spent time in India, she buys a sliver of ivory carved with an elephant. Shortly afterwards, tragedy occurs due to her sister's abusive husband. As a result, Annie is sent as a maidservant to a house in the country, an unusual property built in the Indian style by a man called Smolte who somehow made a fortune in India. The Smolte family are all dysfunctional in various ways, the elder son worst of all, and Annie soon finds herself caught up in the family's violence and perversion.
After about a third of the book, the story switches to the various viewpoints of the Smoltes and through flashbacks it is shown exactly what Smolte did in India, and the atrocities of which he was the prime cause. Although there are small sections from Annie's POV afterwards, it never recaptures the interest of the early part of the book. The writing style and descriptions are at times magnificent, but there is so much cruelty in the story, especially violence against women, that I could not enjoy it.
The book also suffers badly from the grinding gear change from Annie's story into that of the Smoltes, and I think would have worked better if their story had been interwoven with hers from the start so that it could have been foreshadowed that at some point the two would join up. As it is, it comes across as two disparate stories grafted together with the aid of a few hints about India in Annie's family background to make it somehow possible that her presence is the catalyst to bring a very rough justice to the Smoltes. From being a story about the deprivation of the Victorian working class, especially the girls and women, and the injustice to which they are subjected, it switches to a post-colonial guilt trip, brought about by supernatural means, that is not very convincing.
Another oddity is that the punishment dished out to various characters is often out of proportion to what they have done. The ending also comes across as rather an anti climax. So all in all, I can only award this an OK 2 stars despite the beauty of the writing in places.
After about a third of the book, the story switches to the various viewpoints of the Smoltes and through flashbacks it is shown exactly what Smolte did in India, and the atrocities of which he was the prime cause. Although there are small sections from Annie's POV afterwards, it never recaptures the interest of the early part of the book. The writing style and descriptions are at times magnificent, but there is so much cruelty in the story, especially violence against women, that I could not enjoy it.
The book also suffers badly from the grinding gear change from Annie's story into that of the Smoltes, and I think would have worked better if their story had been interwoven with hers from the start so that it could have been foreshadowed that at some point the two would join up. As it is, it comes across as two disparate stories grafted together with the aid of a few hints about India in Annie's family background to make it somehow possible that her presence is the catalyst to bring a very rough justice to the Smoltes. From being a story about the deprivation of the Victorian working class, especially the girls and women, and the injustice to which they are subjected, it switches to a post-colonial guilt trip, brought about by supernatural means, that is not very convincing.
Another oddity is that the punishment dished out to various characters is often out of proportion to what they have done. The ending also comes across as rather an anti climax. So all in all, I can only award this an OK 2 stars despite the beauty of the writing in places.
June 18, 2015
I think I am becoming less tolerant of orientalism in fiction, and hence I enjoyed this novel less than I otherwise might have; the self-absorption and tyranny of English colonists in India might be the ultimate intended takeaway of Elephantasm, but there's a lot of 'exotic', potentially demonic Hindu rituals before we get there.
It is, peculiarly, among the most traditionally constructed of the Tanith Lee novels that I have so far read; her works often melt like sugar on the tongue, elusive concoctions of imagery and speculative premise, but this one had more substance, a wider focus on the cast of characters, a plot which moved back and forth between past and present. This didn't entirely work - at the beginning we find ourselves in Annie Ember's consciousness, as we often are within that of Lee's young heroines, and the fictional world, from Annie's perspective, reads like a gothic fantasia of Victorian London, dim and narrow and bleak and full of forces outside of Annie's own knowledge or control. When we start getting narration from the perspective of various members of the family she is expected to serve, the transition doesn't entirely work, it feels like a letdown, like we're getting a different kind of novel than we initially were offered. I think I would have enjoyed Elephantasm more, found a tighter narrative, if we had stayed within the confines of Annie's narrow knowledge, if we had learned our revelations of the characters and their backstory as she did (or maybe adding just one other pov character - Lady Flower, perhaps? Not Darius, who never seemed really believable as a character to me anyway).
Is the sexual violence meant to be erotic? Sensationalized? Terrifying? The blurb on my edition made the whole book sound like soft-core bdsm erotica (Lee blurb writers always seem to do this, how did it happen?), and some of the sex description induces groans of vicarious embarrassment as erotica often does. But everyone within the narrative misreads Annie as enjoying it, while the narration makes it clear that she is miserable, is just trying to survive and use every tool available to her to get through. Was it my own lens which made me see this as simply realistic? I don't know.
It is, peculiarly, among the most traditionally constructed of the Tanith Lee novels that I have so far read; her works often melt like sugar on the tongue, elusive concoctions of imagery and speculative premise, but this one had more substance, a wider focus on the cast of characters, a plot which moved back and forth between past and present. This didn't entirely work - at the beginning we find ourselves in Annie Ember's consciousness, as we often are within that of Lee's young heroines, and the fictional world, from Annie's perspective, reads like a gothic fantasia of Victorian London, dim and narrow and bleak and full of forces outside of Annie's own knowledge or control. When we start getting narration from the perspective of various members of the family she is expected to serve, the transition doesn't entirely work, it feels like a letdown, like we're getting a different kind of novel than we initially were offered. I think I would have enjoyed Elephantasm more, found a tighter narrative, if we had stayed within the confines of Annie's narrow knowledge, if we had learned our revelations of the characters and their backstory as she did (or maybe adding just one other pov character - Lady Flower, perhaps? Not Darius, who never seemed really believable as a character to me anyway).
Is the sexual violence meant to be erotic? Sensationalized? Terrifying? The blurb on my edition made the whole book sound like soft-core bdsm erotica (Lee blurb writers always seem to do this, how did it happen?), and some of the sex description induces groans of vicarious embarrassment as erotica often does. But everyone within the narrative misreads Annie as enjoying it, while the narration makes it clear that she is miserable, is just trying to survive and use every tool available to her to get through. Was it my own lens which made me see this as simply realistic? I don't know.
November 11, 2015
The mythology of India never sparked my interest until I encountered its lush traditions transported into the eerie, secluded, country estate in Elephantasm. Artfully written fantasy merges Dickensian England with living Hindu myths in a tale of poetic justice for colonial misdeeds.
May 6, 2015
2.5 stars. Good writing (as usual for Lee) but I didn't end up caring much for the story.
October 16, 2017
So very, very good. I can’t recommend this dark, strange, beguiling novel enough.
March 28, 2018
It’s like 50 shades of grey were set during the industrial era and the author actually acknowledged that the Christian Grey character is an abusive pig. With some serious fetishising of India.
I think you could read through most of this book and not even realise that it’s fantasy or there’s any kind of supernatural element to the story.
I mostly enjoyed this book. It was slow to start and most of the characters are really unlikable, and there are parts I would have changed if I were the author, just to make things tie in a little better. And mother of baby raptor Jebus, does Tanith have to pair up every single one of her heroines with some semi-developed supporting male character?
The baddies and their actions did make me angry though, and eliciting emotion from your audience is half the goal of an author, and there were some female empowering moments that I enjoyed.
Don’t know that I’d read it again.
I think you could read through most of this book and not even realise that it’s fantasy or there’s any kind of supernatural element to the story.
I mostly enjoyed this book. It was slow to start and most of the characters are really unlikable, and there are parts I would have changed if I were the author, just to make things tie in a little better. And mother of baby raptor Jebus, does Tanith have to pair up every single one of her heroines with some semi-developed supporting male character?
The baddies and their actions did make me angry though, and eliciting emotion from your audience is half the goal of an author, and there were some female empowering moments that I enjoyed.
Don’t know that I’d read it again.
April 18, 2019
Take one resourceful girl with a bad past and add a cursed family, a secluded country manor house embellished with items stolen from another country, some playful monkeys and a talisman and you have Elephantasm. Am a huge fan of Tanith Lee and her writing. This is one of my favourite novels from her I wish it would be reissued in so it can find new readers.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 21, 2013
Typical Tanith Lee, it's chock full of strangeness.
Spectacular imagery (as always!), beautiful and inventive use of language. This novel also featured a common type of character for Lee; the strong silent stone. Annie has a bit more spark than some of Lee's other ladies, but mostly she does nothing to move herself around in her own fate.
I loved the twists and turns of this novel, I loved the monkey show, (and of course the way the monkeys were described.) I loved the coldness of all the family members to one another--it smacks strongly of reality. I never expected the reason for the Smolte's for leaving India, and the chaos that followed Smolte's actions.
Tanith Lee needs more recognition in North America.
Spectacular imagery (as always!), beautiful and inventive use of language. This novel also featured a common type of character for Lee; the strong silent stone. Annie has a bit more spark than some of Lee's other ladies, but mostly she does nothing to move herself around in her own fate.
I loved the twists and turns of this novel, I loved the monkey show, (and of course the way the monkeys were described.) I loved the coldness of all the family members to one another--it smacks strongly of reality. I never expected the reason for the Smolte's for leaving India, and the chaos that followed Smolte's actions.
Tanith Lee needs more recognition in North America.
July 10, 2008
Dark and interesting book.
August 25, 2008
A strong main character, and another excellent dark tale. I love the theme of Indian culture that permeates the text.
December 10, 2008
Another heroine's adventure dealing with the supernatural & the philosophy of progression (resolution of karma) which comes up in a lot of Tanith Lee's stories.
October 31, 2012
Hectic but very good
January 8, 2009
Fantasy/Old fashioned Horror reminiscent of Stoker
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews