The Empress of Dreams Paperback – 31 Jan. 2021

I have been a devotee of Tanith Lee's fiction in my youth, and was greatly saddened by her passing. Her short fiction in particular has woven a spell over my imagination for a number of years. For me, this tome is a veritable treasure trove of short stories I had not yet discovered. Just don't be put off by the atrociously lurid cover. Within you will find stories of wit that are possessed of an enchantment in vocabulary and grammar that was typical of her written style.

Tanith lee was awesome and this is a very good collection of her short stories; but I think if you are interested in s & s her Cyrion collection is much better.Still, a few real classics here, and nothing worse than “ok cool”

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.