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A review by mafiabadgers
Sabella, or The Blood Stone by Tanith Lee
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
First read 09/2024
Although this is the eighth Tanith Lee book I've read, it's the first since I signed up to Storygraph, so perhaps some background is in order. Lee steadily built up a name for herself in the 70s and 80s, writing primarily dark fantasy, dark sci-fi, and gothic horror, and was particularly known for her luscious, sensual writing (often called purple prose, but, in Lee's case, that was rarely a criticism). Her career struggled through the 90s and 00s as publishers became leery of her work, but began to pick up again before her death in 2015, thanks to the rise of small presses and internet sales. In an interview she went so far as to say that one editor-in-chief had told her, "I think this book is terrific. It ought to be in print. I can't publish it—I've been told I mustn't." So why the dropoff? My theory is that Lee's horror was too disquieting; rather than throwing in a few monsters and some gratuitous bloodshed, it often revolved around sexuality and power. The rapes are not dwelt on in detail, but neither are they elegantly insinuated and alluded to. They are an unmistakable blot upon the page, impossible to overlook. But her works cannot be neatly placed in the category of feminist fiction. The women are typically beautiful, delicate, and more-or-less passive. The rapes rarely lead into revenge plots, and when they do, vengeance comes not in the form of straightforward, enjoyable violence, but may well be more disturbing than the inciting event (I am thinking particularly of Jehanine from The Book of the Damned). When revenge comes from external sources, it seems less to be cosmic retribution than a continuation of the senseless violence that pervades the world (Johanos Martin, The Book of the Mad). But in both these cases, there are plenty of complicated sex/gender politics to be teased out.
Was Lee tapping into misogynistic fantasies by depicting the perpetration of sexual violence against highly sexualised women? Was she pursuing a feminist agenda all of her own, delving into messy mysteries of desire and eroticism in relation to femininity and victimhood? Was she a tasteless horror writer who churned out sensationalist books by the dozen? Perhaps a little of all of these.
I am overstating the sexual element of Lee's work, because it's an aspect I think particularly makes it stand out from the crowd—but it is only an aspect. She also has a knack for using Christianity, not in the evangelical mode of many Christian writers, but in the style of fantasy authors who plunder Celtic and Norse mythology for deeply rooted symbols and narratives, and this appears in full force in Sabella. The prose often seems to take on a brusque, punchy style reminiscent of crime noir, before slipping back into Lee's habitual descriptive habits. It works, as does Sabella's tendency to refer to herself occasionally in the third person. The setting is retrofuturistic, even by the standards of 80s sci-fi: the self-playing cassette tapes are typical of other books written at the time, but Christian Revivalism, ore-mining boomtowns, and mail delivered once a month to colonial houses all evoke the period of the American Wild West, a little way behind the frontier. Even the sci-fi fans who like to complain that the inaccuracy of writers' 'predictions' have tarnished their works should be willing to go along with this one. All the old Gothic staples have been given a fresh coat of pain: terrible passion, loss of control, revenge, day and night, light and shadow, inheritances (both mundane and supernatural), domination and manipulation, struggling against one's very nature, against one's faith... It's tremendously compelling, and the introduction to this edition gives away just the right amount of information. It plays constantly with sexual politics of power, and while I wouldn't say it gets it right per se, it never fails to be interesting.
I have to laugh every time the protagonist is referred to as Bella. I wonder what Stephanie Meyer and her Mormonism would have made of all this.
Although this is the eighth Tanith Lee book I've read, it's the first since I signed up to Storygraph, so perhaps some background is in order. Lee steadily built up a name for herself in the 70s and 80s, writing primarily dark fantasy, dark sci-fi, and gothic horror, and was particularly known for her luscious, sensual writing (often called purple prose, but, in Lee's case, that was rarely a criticism). Her career struggled through the 90s and 00s as publishers became leery of her work, but began to pick up again before her death in 2015, thanks to the rise of small presses and internet sales. In an interview she went so far as to say that one editor-in-chief had told her, "I think this book is terrific. It ought to be in print. I can't publish it—I've been told I mustn't." So why the dropoff? My theory is that Lee's horror was too disquieting; rather than throwing in a few monsters and some gratuitous bloodshed, it often revolved around sexuality and power. The rapes are not dwelt on in detail, but neither are they elegantly insinuated and alluded to. They are an unmistakable blot upon the page, impossible to overlook. But her works cannot be neatly placed in the category of feminist fiction. The women are typically beautiful, delicate, and more-or-less passive. The rapes rarely lead into revenge plots, and when they do, vengeance comes not in the form of straightforward, enjoyable violence, but may well be more disturbing than the inciting event (I am thinking particularly of Jehanine from The Book of the Damned). When revenge comes from external sources, it seems less to be cosmic retribution than a continuation of the senseless violence that pervades the world (Johanos Martin, The Book of the Mad). But in both these cases, there are plenty of complicated sex/gender politics to be teased out.
Was Lee tapping into misogynistic fantasies by depicting the perpetration of sexual violence against highly sexualised women? Was she pursuing a feminist agenda all of her own, delving into messy mysteries of desire and eroticism in relation to femininity and victimhood? Was she a tasteless horror writer who churned out sensationalist books by the dozen? Perhaps a little of all of these.
I am overstating the sexual element of Lee's work, because it's an aspect I think particularly makes it stand out from the crowd—but it is only an aspect. She also has a knack for using Christianity, not in the evangelical mode of many Christian writers, but in the style of fantasy authors who plunder Celtic and Norse mythology for deeply rooted symbols and narratives, and this appears in full force in Sabella. The prose often seems to take on a brusque, punchy style reminiscent of crime noir, before slipping back into Lee's habitual descriptive habits. It works, as does Sabella's tendency to refer to herself occasionally in the third person. The setting is retrofuturistic, even by the standards of 80s sci-fi: the self-playing cassette tapes are typical of other books written at the time, but Christian Revivalism, ore-mining boomtowns, and mail delivered once a month to colonial houses all evoke the period of the American Wild West, a little way behind the frontier. Even the sci-fi fans who like to complain that the inaccuracy of writers' 'predictions' have tarnished their works should be willing to go along with this one. All the old Gothic staples have been given a fresh coat of pain: terrible passion, loss of control, revenge, day and night, light and shadow, inheritances (both mundane and supernatural), domination and manipulation, struggling against one's very nature, against one's faith... It's tremendously compelling, and the introduction to this edition gives away just the right amount of information. It plays constantly with sexual politics of power, and while I wouldn't say it gets it right per se, it never fails to be interesting.
I have to laugh every time the protagonist is referred to as Bella. I wonder what Stephanie Meyer and her Mormonism would have made of all this.