The Secret Books of Paradys -- Tanith Lee

This book contains the complete cycle of Paradys, an alternate world fiction by Tanith Lee.  There are four books here:  The Book of the Damned, The Book of the Beast, The Book of the Dead and The Book of the Mad.  They've now been published in one single volume.

Paradys is a city where morals have disintegrated to depravity, where citizens prey upon each other, where killings and maimings are routine matters and part of the societal structure.  Paradys is made up of three cities, each with varying degrees of chaos and meltdowns - Paradise, Paradis and Paradys, interconnected through magic channels that only a few can traverse.  Here beasts live with people and within people.  In Paradys, the sun no longer rises, there is perpetual rainfall and the spirits are consistently gloomy.

This collection of stories capture the various facets of the city of Paradys through the viewpoint of some of its citizens as well as the odd person who has migrated for better prospects.

The Book of the Damned has three stories, all themed around a particular color:  crimson, emerald and azure.  There is a symmetrical pattern to the stories, mostly about gender interchange, one of them actual, one of them in spirit.  Written rather tastefully.  The stories do not have much substance to them, but the visual imagery and the language really drew me in with their beauty.  I found it very hard to put down the book after that.

The Book of the Beast is a novella dealing with a beastly curse that is transferred from generation to generation.  It originates with the transfer of a cursed stone to the hands of a Roman soldier from his paramour.  Because he is unaware of the curse at the time he receives it, it manages to entwine itself on his soul, damning him forever.  A wiseman grinds it and forces it down his throat in the form of a potion that he claims will destroy its hold on him forever, and he seems free of it for a long while, but when his son is born, he can see immediately that the baby is cursed and will send it down to his progeny forever.  The story is fascinating enough to read right through the end.

The Book of the Dead is a collection of short stories about various citizens who now lie beneath tombstones that dot Paradys.  Their history is noteworthy enough to narrate to us.  The stories were alright, though not as strongly interesting as those in the previous Books.

The Book of the Mad is another novella and my least favorite of the collection.  In fact, I found myself just skimming through it, with boredom and dislike.  It deals with the death of an uncle who leaves behind a strange inheritance to selective nieces and nephews.  His revelation leads them through a secret paranormal passage of ice.  I didn't really find the story noteworthy and won't go into it. 

The language style deeply impressed me.  The sexual content seemed excessive at times but as another horror fiction writer Clive Barker says, horror fiction is generally highly erotic and this sexuality is used as a weapon of force in various power struggles.  I read the book in stages over three months, reading other stuff in between, because I just wanted to absorb the wordplay. It would have been impossible to take in all that in one go, in any case.  Small doses of the book would be better enjoyed.

I doubt I will find any of Ms Lee's other works equally good.  (I found an interesting interview of hers on the internet, dated over 15 years ago, speaking on what she felt about her writing career that has spanned many decades.)  It is possible I've read some of her very best writing in this book alone.  It is presumptuous of me to say so, but I don't know if I will really pick up any of her other works unless there is something compelling about them because horror is not really my genre.    The Secret Books of Paradys nonetheless is a magnificent piece of work.