TITLE: Night’s Master (Tales of the Flat Earth #1)
AUTHOR: Tanith Lee
GENRE: Fantasy
PUBLISHED: 01/11/1978
RATING: ★★★★★
PURCHASE LINKS: Amazon
MOBILISM LINK: Mobilism
Review: Night’s Master embodies the trumpet-sounding words ‘arabesque’ and ‘baroque’ in all the best ways. This was my first foray into the incredibly numerous works of Tanith Lee, and I’m glad this is where I started because it ticked each and every one of my fantasy-fan buttons; wonderful world-building, fantastic characters, convoluted plots, and most of all, a writing style that is both magical and decadent...
Beyond the palace walls lay the vast and marvellous city, its towers of opal and steel and brass and jade rising up into the glow of the never-altering sky.
He seemed lapped by the heatless burning of the garden fountain of fire.
What gems those tears would make…bright as diamonds, yet softer; more like pearls, yet clearer than pearls, spangled; rather like opals, yet purer than opals; more like pale sapphires, though not spoiled with color.
The entire book reads like a fairy tale – which at times can be disturbing, because the content can disturb. It’s not really a novel; Night’s Master is really a collection of interlocking novellas, with characters and objects appearing in numerous stories and tying them together into a single arc. The main character, if there can be said to be one, is Azhrarn – the Prince of demons and one of the five Lords of Darkness. Each book in the series is meant to revolve around one of these Lords, but so far (I’ve read the first three), Azhrarn features predominantly. And I’m glad he does, because he’s a fantastic character; not quite a villain, but definitely not any kind of ‘good guy’ either. I think this sense of moral ambiguity (not real moral ambiguity, because he is a demon and entirely unapologetic about doing evil) comes about because he loves, which we rarely see villains do. But on the other hand…
"Now you will listen to me," said Azhrarn, "for this is the only harsh lesson I shall teach you… I will love you; for such as I am, I do not give my love lightly, but once given it is sure. Only remember this, if ever you make an enemy of me, your life shall be as dust or sand in the wind. For what a demon loves and loses he will destroy, and my power is the mightiest you are ever likely to know."
Starts off lovely and romantic, and ends on a pretty dark note. Azhrarn in a nutshell.
The first story is all about Azhrarn and his strange love; after rescuing a human infant, he brings the baby to the demon realm of Underearth to be raised by the strange and silent but beautiful Eshva, one of the three races of demonkind. When the child becomes a man, Azhrarn takes him for a lover and showers him with magical gifts – until the human inevitably longs for the sun, which is anathema to demons. He leaves Azhrarn for the earth, and things don’t go well.
The Prince of Demons had spoken truly from the first. What a demon desired and lost, he would destroy. It was as natural to him as it was to a mortal to burn the sheets of the sick man after fever, or to bury the dead.
In one way or another, most of the other stories link back to this one; one features a cursed necklace made of the tears of the human’s wife; another sets the wife herself front and centre after her husband has left Underearth; and even in the final story, when the world is ending, it is Azhrarn’s link to the human boy he loved that changes everything.
Describing Night’s Master – really, any book in this series – is incredibly difficult. It’s beautiful. It’s rich and exotic in all the best ways. It’s seductive in every sense of the word; sexuality and love in all their facets are, in my opinion, the two strongest themes of the book, even though the most obvious theme is probably tragedy. In this world of the Flat Earth, humans are constantly driving themselves to destruction (I suppose not that’s not so different from the real world in that sense). Worse, even though some manner of demon is always involved in these stories, there’s no question that it’s the humans themselves who bring about their fates. This should be incredibly depressing, but it’s not, and I’m not sure I can put into words what it is that keeps a ribbon of something hopeful and sweet running through all these sensual, terrible, beautiful stories.
On the blue lawns lions gambolled – they were the color of fresh cream with hyacinth manes – they ran to the magician and playfully licked his hands like dogs.
Tanith Lee is weird. Really, really weird. The images and ideas she comes up with are like nothing else I’ve ever read before, but they’re magical in the true sense of the word. There’s a thread of wonder running through Night’s Master, something that makes you think back to when you were a child and magic was everywhere. (Lions! Miniature lions with hyacinth manes! Who comes up with that?) I don’t know how Lee manages this effect, because as I hope I’ve made clear, nothing about these stories is childish. They’re dark and sensual and there’s a great deal of cruelty and sadness in them: happy endings are not at all guaranteed. And yet…
Night’s Master was published back in 1978. It shows. Modern fantasy has lost something since Lee’s day, something rich and wonderful; I’d almost say that most modern fantasies are tamer in comparison. Night’s Master is anything but tame: it’s pure wild magic, and the only tragedy would be in passing it up. Definitely not to be missed.