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Empress of Dreams is an anthology collecting a selection of Tanith Lee’s short sword
and sorcery fiction, published by indie publisher DMR Press in January 2021.
The sixteen short stories collected here, originally published in a variety of
anthologies, span the majority of Lee’s forty year writing career, ranging from
Demoness (1976) to A Tower of Arkrondurl (2013, just two years
before her death).
The title of the anthology, Empress
of Dreams, is taken from a letter in praise of Lee by renowned SF&F editor Donald A Wollheim, who
was the co-founder of DAW and who published Lee’s first S&S novel, The
Birthgrave. Given the contents of this collection, it certainly serves as a
fitting sobriquet.
While all these stories fit within the
realms of sword and sorcery, they are happy to stretch and broaden that genre.
The reader will find no ‘clonans’ within this collection, no barbarian heroes
flexing their thews for riches and glory. There is often little combat to be
found in these stories. Lee writes sword and sorcery as gothic fable: the mood
is mysterious and macabre with the logic of the world serving the motif of the
story. This helps lend her work a timeless quality, as if they were lost
legends or folk tales, complete with dreamlike horror, luxuriant language, and
often wry or cruel humour, though at times the poetry of the story can come at
the expense of clarity.
Lee touches on many themes in the
stories collected here. Some that recur with regularity are the desire to make
one's own destiny, the repercussions of wrongdoing, and the capriciousness of
human nature. Stories such as "The
Three Brides of Hamid-Dar," "Mirage and Magia," and "The Pain of Glass" could slip almost without comment into a
copy of 1001 Arabian Nights, while tales such as "Southern Lights" would have been
appreciated by the Brothers Grimm.
My favourite of the anthology, "Winter White," is a horror tale.
The basic set up, that of a haunted object, is reminiscent of the works of M.R.
James (in particular, "Oh, Whistle
and I’ll Come for You, My Lad"). In Lee’s hands, this is no mere
ghost story. This is a tale of dark passions and darker happenings, a story set
in a land which may be ancient Britain, or maybe somewhere stranger. Lee’s
passion for the gothic and the fantastic shine here, creating a story that
lingers long after the pages are turned.
Another highlight is the story that
closes the anthology, "Evillo the
Uncunning." This tale originally appeared in Songs of the Dying Earth, an anthology honouring the work of Jack
Vance, and in it, Lee (a writer who counted Vance among her inspirations) tells
the story about Evillo, a youth living upon the Dying Earth, who is inspired by
stories he is told of Cugel (Vance’s protagonist in several Dying Earth
stories). Here Lee nails the tone of Vance’s work. The story is full of
adventure, weirdness, irony and magic, yet she brings enough of her own
sensibilities to make the story stand out as a joy to read, whether or not the
reader is conversant with Vance’s oeuvre. The reader may not look at snails the
same way again.
Tanith Lee remains an author whose large body of work is less well known or well-read among fantasy fans than her gift for writing or the regard in which her work is held should warrant. With this anthology, DMR has made her sword and sorcery work available to a new audience, and the tales within do well to demonstrate the breadth and scope possible within the genre. For anyone whose appetite has been wetted by it, her Birthgrave trilogy remains available from DAW (in the U.S.). However, this anthology’s appeal is not restricted to those of an S&S persuasion, but has much to offer any fan of fantasy and gothic horror. Lee’s exotic prose and gifted imagination, on display here, demonstrates that she truly deserves her title. She is the Empress of Dreams.
About the Reviewer: Hailing from the UK, George Jacobs is a railway industry worker by day and short story writer by night. He lives with his wife and pets, is a fan of all things adventurous and spooky, and enjoys spending his time in nature. His fiction can be found at:
https://georgejacobsauthor.wordpress.com/
