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The Blood of Roses #1
The Blood of Roses Volume 1: Mechail, Anillia
The first volume of Tanith Lee's grimdark fantasy duology, set in an alternatate Medieval world where the Church clashes with ancient Pagan beliefs.
292 pages, Kindle Edition
Published June 27, 2020
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45 people want to read
About the author
Tanith Lee
616 books1,981 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 - 5 of 5 reviews
June 15, 2022
Tanith Lee (1947-2015) acclaimed Fantasy & Horror writer known for her poetic weirdness and mature content (i.e. sexual situations). The Blood of Roses Volume 1: Mechail, Anillia sequence follows suit; originally available only in the UK, a more-global audience can now access her take on a milieu featuring the conflict between a Christian religion and naturalistic pagans. The Back Cover Blurb below from Immanion Press summarizes the contents and the re-publishing of the single book into two volumes (each ~300pages with sub-books focused on key characters; Volume 1 Contents: “Mechail” and “Anilla”; Volume 2 Contents, “Jun”, “Eujasia”, “Mechailus”).
Read this is as part of a Goodreads Sword & Sorcery Group Read [The Blood of Roses is not classic S&S, but Lee has written in that genre and this is focused on a dark fantasy environment that is tangential; it falls into the “”dark epic fantasy” category instead]. The key thing to note for candidate readers is that Lee adores presenting mysterious worlds, blurring the lines between myth, reality, and dreams. So, reading becomes more like deciphering a puzzle, and the reading less easy.
Here, she does the following:
• Presents a fantasy world in which magic truly exists
• Presents many mysteries (i.e., riddles) that are unexplainable to the characters...such that even their understanding of their world is insufficient, so the reader’s will be too
• Changes perspectives at chapter & scene breaks
• Changes time too between chapter & scene breaks (going forward or backward days or decades between chapters)
• Use pronouns at the beginning of scenes, avoiding explicitly identifying who “She” or “He” are for several paragraphs.
• No map is provided; reading each chapter reveals the land more, so it is like a fog-of-war approach in video games; its all a mystery until you unveil it
• The conflict is complex: it is not simple “single protagonist vs single enemy”, nor is it the more intangible "protagonist vs world-nature." Here are many characters here and each struggles against a variety of forces
• Writes at a high Reading Level using an intellectual vocabulary and archaic & dreamy descriptions (metaphor similes). She literally mixes dreams in with "reality."
Anyway, The Blood of Roses Volume 1: Mechail, Anillia is expertly written and enjoyable. If you are looking for digestible, guilty-pleasure reading, this won’t be for you. Lee demands her reader to be immersed and attentive. Like Celtic fantasy, but want something more deep? Then you will adore this.
Back Cover Blurb
Excerpts: Anthropomorphized Nature, Similes, &Metaphors Abound
[1] "Warm, deceiving and sad, the light of Autumn lit the courtyard and chapel building. But the berries were thick as red drops of blood all over the bushes at the door. It would be a wicked winter. The forest, standing behind and about like an army of bears, its darkness still green, would change rapidly to a place of snows. Marika feared the winter. Her uncomfortable joints turned painful…"p185
[2] "She led him to the hearth and sat down there on the slave’s stool. He looked up, at her eyes, and away again. Time was like the snow. It had no enduring substance and might thaw to mud in one spring day." p246
[3] "...she offered her whispering cry to the soldier, the captain of her husband’s garrison, twenty-nine years of age, Carg Vrost, strayed broken-handed and partly mad, from terrifying night to chaos night…He looked young, the captain, and old. Agony – the broken hand – had pulled his face against its bones." p253
[4] "That evening, sunset was not red but angrily overcast, with leaden clouds that promised boiling summer rain. Veins beat in the grey forehead of the sky." p292
Read this is as part of a Goodreads Sword & Sorcery Group Read [The Blood of Roses is not classic S&S, but Lee has written in that genre and this is focused on a dark fantasy environment that is tangential; it falls into the “”dark epic fantasy” category instead]. The key thing to note for candidate readers is that Lee adores presenting mysterious worlds, blurring the lines between myth, reality, and dreams. So, reading becomes more like deciphering a puzzle, and the reading less easy.
Here, she does the following:
• Presents a fantasy world in which magic truly exists
• Presents many mysteries (i.e., riddles) that are unexplainable to the characters...such that even their understanding of their world is insufficient, so the reader’s will be too
• Changes perspectives at chapter & scene breaks
• Changes time too between chapter & scene breaks (going forward or backward days or decades between chapters)
• Use pronouns at the beginning of scenes, avoiding explicitly identifying who “She” or “He” are for several paragraphs.
• No map is provided; reading each chapter reveals the land more, so it is like a fog-of-war approach in video games; its all a mystery until you unveil it
• The conflict is complex: it is not simple “single protagonist vs single enemy”, nor is it the more intangible "protagonist vs world-nature." Here are many characters here and each struggles against a variety of forces
• Writes at a high Reading Level using an intellectual vocabulary and archaic & dreamy descriptions (metaphor similes). She literally mixes dreams in with "reality."
Anyway, The Blood of Roses Volume 1: Mechail, Anillia is expertly written and enjoyable. If you are looking for digestible, guilty-pleasure reading, this won’t be for you. Lee demands her reader to be immersed and attentive. Like Celtic fantasy, but want something more deep? Then you will adore this.
Back Cover Blurb
In a rich, complex epic set in a grim fantasy world, Tanith Lee explores in her distinctive style the excesses of religion as well as the dark pagan roots of earlier times. There are disturbing similarities between the rites of apparently conflicting beliefs – the blood and body of Christ and the divine blood of the World Tree.
While the Christerium might believe it wields the greater power and keeps the people under control through brutality and oppression, the older cunning ways lie hidden in every forest glade and in the hearts of those who worship the Great Tree, nourished by the blood of willing sacrifice. But then the Tree is destroyed, in the midst of a sacred rite, unleashing a potent and vengeful magic.
From the ruin of this atrocity, the enigmatic dark priest Anjelen arises. He deftly works his way into the heart of the Christerium, bewitching its most powerful administrators. He is like an angel, beautiful and charismatic – yet to be feared. People are drawn to follow him into any darkness he claims to be the Light of God. The rites he introduces to the inner cabal of the Christerium change all who take part in them, not least invoking a thirst for blood.
Characters with mysterious origins, damaged in body and mind, assemble to enact a world-changing drama. Anillia wakes within an old abbey, knowing she is 15 years old, but with no idea who she is or how she got there. She feels safe with the ageing nuns until sons of a local forest clan arrive at her sanctuary, claiming she is their sister, lost long ago in the woods. She is married off to a local clan leader, thereby becoming part of Anjelen’s plan. Mechail, the crippled son of a powerful forest lord is murdered yet rises from death to follow an unknown destiny. It seems he was never quite human to begin with. Jasha, a wild woods girl, more animal than human is drawn into
Anjelen’s entourage, witness to strange and terrifying events, knowing she too has a part to play in the savage rites of blind belief and raw desire.
This vivid, macabre epic was only ever published in the UK in a hardback edition – to most readers it will be a completely new title, which Immanion Press is proud to present in two paperback volumes, with illustrations by Danielle Lainton and cover art by John Kaiine.
Excerpts: Anthropomorphized Nature, Similes, &Metaphors Abound
[1] "Warm, deceiving and sad, the light of Autumn lit the courtyard and chapel building. But the berries were thick as red drops of blood all over the bushes at the door. It would be a wicked winter. The forest, standing behind and about like an army of bears, its darkness still green, would change rapidly to a place of snows. Marika feared the winter. Her uncomfortable joints turned painful…"p185
[2] "She led him to the hearth and sat down there on the slave’s stool. He looked up, at her eyes, and away again. Time was like the snow. It had no enduring substance and might thaw to mud in one spring day." p246
[3] "...she offered her whispering cry to the soldier, the captain of her husband’s garrison, twenty-nine years of age, Carg Vrost, strayed broken-handed and partly mad, from terrifying night to chaos night…He looked young, the captain, and old. Agony – the broken hand – had pulled his face against its bones." p253
[4] "That evening, sunset was not red but angrily overcast, with leaden clouds that promised boiling summer rain. Veins beat in the grey forehead of the sky." p292
November 14, 2022
Yeah, she gets the full 5-stars.
Absolutely wonderful prose. She has a knack for descriptive prose, emotive prose. I'm sure there are readers who chafe at the resulting slow pace, but it sets an atmosphere and creates mystery. This is not three pages describing an empty sea, more like three sentences describing a place or a character. She has the poet's eye for the telling detail, for the proper phrasing.
Because of the slower pace and her poet's sensibility, she has epic world building. And the same is true for characterization.
The story is told slowly, deliberately, chaotically. My reading was interrupted and I kind of lost the thread for who begat whom for a couple of the characters. A good excuse for a reread!
And this thing has a theme and everything is in service to that theme. How does the Trinity work, you might ask. Tanith Lee has a suggestion.
Looking forward to part 2.
Absolutely wonderful prose. She has a knack for descriptive prose, emotive prose. I'm sure there are readers who chafe at the resulting slow pace, but it sets an atmosphere and creates mystery. This is not three pages describing an empty sea, more like three sentences describing a place or a character. She has the poet's eye for the telling detail, for the proper phrasing.
Because of the slower pace and her poet's sensibility, she has epic world building. And the same is true for characterization.
The story is told slowly, deliberately, chaotically. My reading was interrupted and I kind of lost the thread for who begat whom for a couple of the characters. A good excuse for a reread!
And this thing has a theme and everything is in service to that theme. How does the Trinity work, you might ask. Tanith Lee has a suggestion.
Looking forward to part 2.
January 18, 2021
Disturbing. Reads like a fever dream: dark, monstrous, profoundly odd and with disturbing horrific imagery. This is only part 1 of 2. Like all of Tanith Lee’s work, exquisitely written, like dark poetry.
November 1, 2021
DNF at 100ish pages. I don't know what exactly I expected, but I'm not into the weird inc*st stuff and absolutely everyone being unlikeable.
November 20, 2020
These are not Twilight vampires, that much is for certain. I wish I had found Tanith Lee earlier in my life, as I feel wrapping myself in the living darkness of her worlds as a youth would have been a welcome experience.
Even so, at a more advanced "thirties" age grouping - there is a page turning quality to her work. In the early part of the story, she is very effective at getting you to despise certain characters, wishing them ill, then when it happens, perhaps feeling pangs of guilt at the form such vengeance takes. The medieval world she creates is as violent and often cruel as "Game of Thrones", but feels more genuine, especially from the perspective of the women who make their way in it.
It can be hard to follow, at least for me sometimes, as part of the vampires power in this world is to have "living puppets". More than that, protagonist and antagonist both blur in terms of "who should I be rooting for?", but eventually that crystallizes.
If you are seeking something very different in vampire mythology that steers away from cliche, or a dark fantasy that is distinct and surreal, you can hardly go wrong here.
Even so, at a more advanced "thirties" age grouping - there is a page turning quality to her work. In the early part of the story, she is very effective at getting you to despise certain characters, wishing them ill, then when it happens, perhaps feeling pangs of guilt at the form such vengeance takes. The medieval world she creates is as violent and often cruel as "Game of Thrones", but feels more genuine, especially from the perspective of the women who make their way in it.
It can be hard to follow, at least for me sometimes, as part of the vampires power in this world is to have "living puppets". More than that, protagonist and antagonist both blur in terms of "who should I be rooting for?", but eventually that crystallizes.
If you are seeking something very different in vampire mythology that steers away from cliche, or a dark fantasy that is distinct and surreal, you can hardly go wrong here.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews