The Book of the Damned
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4.0 • 3 Ratings
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
The award-winning author of The Birthgrave invites you to Paradys, an alternate Paris, with three tales of dark magic, eroticism, and gothic fantasy.
Three novellas from Tanith Lee—World Fantasy Award winner, Nebula finalist, and the first woman to win the British Fantasy Award for best novel—cast shadows on the history of the City of Light.
Stained with Crimson: In the nineteenth century, poet Andre St Jean comes into possession of a ruby scarab ring, only to discover it belongs to the pale-skinned, ebony-eyed Antonina von Aaron, the most beautiful woman in Paradys. Preying upon Andre, she taps into his deepest, darkest desires, drawing him into her vampiric world of gender shapeshifting and bloody nightmares . . .
Malice in Saffron: In the Middle Ages, young Jehanine has had her innocence torn from her by her brutal stepfather. Fleeing to Paradys, she seeks sympathy from her stepbrother, Pierre, who accuses her of lying and casts her out into the inhospitable streets. Finding refuge in a nunnery, Jehanine tries to live in God’s grace. But when dusk falls, she transforms into her male alter ego, Jehan. Prowling the alleyways with a gang of Devil-worshippers, he stalks the city’s denizens, unknowingly sowing the seeds for the fall of Paradys . . .
Empire of Azure: In the early twentieth century, writer Anna Sanjeanne receives a cryptic note from a mysterious man: “In a week or less, I shall be dead.” On the predicted date, Anna follows the stranger’s trail. A chain of clues—a shattered window, a hanging corpse, a leather-bound diary, and a portrait of an unknown woman—soon lead the young journalist toward a sinister and ancient force . . .
Told with lush fantastical prose and an acute aesthetic sense, The Book of the Damned ventures into a morbid and disquieting parallel world, exploring the recesses of identity, gender, and sexual transgression that lie within.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This fourth and final installment of filmmaker Jarman's journals is as forthright as the earlier ones (At Your Own Risk, Dancing Ledge and Modern Nature). Although at times the nitty-gritty details of filmmaking overwhelm (Jarman began work on The Last of England as he wrote this, and he worries over funding and wonders whether he is underfunded because he is openly gay), Jarman is always on sure footing when writing about his past. He describes his parents with painful candor: his mother was slightly wacky but sweet, the kind of housewife who served strawberries to her family only to realize she'd dipped them in mayonnaise rather than whipped cream. "Her life was as open as my father's was closed," Jarman writes. His father was an ill-tempered man, as well as a kleptomaniac, but Jarman delicately manages to describe his stern behavior without condemning him completely. Jarman's style of jumping from place to place and year to year can be confusing (particularly when people are mentioned without any background), but it is effective in providing snapshots of different times and places, such as a service in the 1960s in New York at a church nicknamed "Mary on the Verge" because it was such a cruising scene. In a voice free of self-pity, he recounts a childhood overshadowed by his fearsome father; the days spent grappling with his emerging sexuality and then with the diagnosis that he was HIV-positive. "It was almost with relief that I listened to the doctor's catalogue of do's and don'ts-shaving, hairdressing, all the little details (soap and water it seemed eliminated the virus outside the body)-but for all of medicine you might as well just wash your mouth out with carbolic."
