You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
peelspls 's review for:
Red as Blood, or Tales from the Sisters Grimmer
by Tanith Lee
I'm trying not to judge a book by it's cover, but really the cover is somehow the most pleasant thing about this. This is a collection of re-interpreted fairy tales, which is a concept I endorse. Fairy tales tend to reflect major themes and cyclic patterns in myths that I find interesting.
Instead I've embarked on a week of exfoliating my brain with this trash. I'm enclosing the notes I took during my ordeal because (1) why should I suffer alone? (2) Let this be your warning (3) I am mourning the loss of the brain cells during reading this, so let's go.
1. Blood, Fire and Scene Work
Sometimes a mediocre story still shines because the author has style. Here's how to write like Lee: make every color comparison to red about blood, like so:
Yes, we got it. Bloody gems. People have blood-colored hair, and fire-colored blood and blood and fire, you get it? There is so much goth that you can invoke through the sheer repetition of the words blood and fire.
Imagine reading a whole book of:
I am a member of enough Discord servers to see what inspired the terrible LoTR fanfiction style that I keep reading. It is this: a tangle of daggers dripping the diamond rain upon my eyes. Lee's choice of words also throws me off sometimes. LAVAL fires? Hetaerae? "perfumed with lip paint"? Describing everything and anything as "sorcerous"?
2. Most Useless Form of Satanic Worship
I feel like if you went all the way to summon Satan himself from the depths of hell, you'd want to make it about something. I don't think Satan has time to sit around and listen to you be sad. Also the whole idea of women being sacrificed in the nude for Satan, just so that Satan can say, "nah" sounds extremely pointless. This would have been a sort of Good Omens-esque comedy, but I guess comedy ruins goth?
3. Dialog
There's one thing about trying to get a specific tone about your characters. But Lee's dialog is a pain to read. Here's one example from Thorns (Sleeping Beauty):
GET TO THE BLESSED POINT. The author has a general problem with pacing anyway, since plot elements are held back only to be revealed in the most anti-climactic moment ever.
4. Telling the important and Showing the obvious
The number of times a character has been scared "just because" is disappointing given the tacky atmospheric style of writing. "Here's a character, he's scared of his daughter because she's weird," does not give me any reason to believe why someone would be scared and what even makes her weird. After doing some research on Tanith Lee, it appears she was a feminist stronghold at the time. This makes sense because the weirdest things these goth women protagonist princesses keep doing is hiding their astonishing (white) beauty and reading stuff. There's something to unpack here about history but my brain has been exfoliated smooth so I do not care.
This also shows up when she talks about sexual attraction and desire. Things are sexy because she says they are. Sexual relationships are shamed quite openly: prostitutes are deemed as hexed idiots, there is shame attached to loss of chastity. All of which is fine as a story choice, but there's no reason for any of this to matter to the plot. Characters are attracted to each other or not, by default. They are so one-dimensional that there are absolutely no stakes to the stories. Even Satan (see above, the emergency contact for several witches and princesses) is one-dimensional because all he does is appear.
5. Sensitive Themes
Because everything is one-dimensional sorcery, it is hard to read through sections of domestic and alcohol abuse as events with serious consequences. They are explained away as random occurrences of the world, as opposed to unpacking and creating stories around them. In Wolflands (Red Riding Hood), the grandmother character endures domestic hardship. But her emergence, defeat and glory from it all fall flat when the consequences don't matter.
This also ties into weirder allegories, such as "capitalism is bad because people believe in Gods". Finally, there's a very clear distinction that what is dark, black, shadow, "black as ink" is bad and what is white, fair, blonde is appealing and pure. This is reflective of a very tired theme that whiteness and other colors ("singing green"), at a sociopolitical level and even in mythography, represents something positive and superlative whereas dark colors do not.
I will now exfoliate my eyeballs. Thank you for reading thus far.
Instead I've embarked on a week of exfoliating my brain with this trash. I'm enclosing the notes I took during my ordeal because (1) why should I suffer alone? (2) Let this be your warning (3) I am mourning the loss of the brain cells during reading this, so let's go.
1. Blood, Fire and Scene Work
Sometimes a mediocre story still shines because the author has style. Here's how to write like Lee: make every color comparison to red about blood, like so:
"...garbed in a black outer mantle of ancient Parsua, diagonally cut and fringed with silver, with a broad belt that flashed large bloody gems. Gems of blood and ink and blue water also crusted the shoes carved on his feet and stared from his long fingers."
Yes, we got it. Bloody gems. People have blood-colored hair, and fire-colored blood and blood and fire, you get it? There is so much goth that you can invoke through the sheer repetition of the words blood and fire.
Imagine reading a whole book of:
"a vast, rearing stronghold of thorns, taller than tall trees, black as night, thick stems interwoven and sharp with blades. A tangle of daggers dripping the diamond rain."
I am a member of enough Discord servers to see what inspired the terrible LoTR fanfiction style that I keep reading. It is this: a tangle of daggers dripping the diamond rain upon my eyes. Lee's choice of words also throws me off sometimes. LAVAL fires? Hetaerae? "perfumed with lip paint"? Describing everything and anything as "sorcerous"?
2. Most Useless Form of Satanic Worship
I feel like if you went all the way to summon Satan himself from the depths of hell, you'd want to make it about something. I don't think Satan has time to sit around and listen to you be sad. Also the whole idea of women being sacrificed in the nude for Satan, just so that Satan can say, "nah" sounds extremely pointless. This would have been a sort of Good Omens-esque comedy, but I guess comedy ruins goth?
3. Dialog
There's one thing about trying to get a specific tone about your characters. But Lee's dialog is a pain to read. Here's one example from Thorns (Sleeping Beauty):
"You are of no importance except that you are Royal Born. This I could see, having a gift for such things. One who is Royal Born was expected."
"Why? And for what?"
"To enter the place you saw, and to go in to what lies beyond the briars"
"What, then, lies there?"
GET TO THE BLESSED POINT. The author has a general problem with pacing anyway, since plot elements are held back only to be revealed in the most anti-climactic moment ever.
4. Telling the important and Showing the obvious
The number of times a character has been scared "just because" is disappointing given the tacky atmospheric style of writing. "Here's a character, he's scared of his daughter because she's weird," does not give me any reason to believe why someone would be scared and what even makes her weird. After doing some research on Tanith Lee, it appears she was a feminist stronghold at the time. This makes sense because the weirdest things these goth women protagonist princesses keep doing is hiding their astonishing (white) beauty and reading stuff. There's something to unpack here about history but my brain has been exfoliated smooth so I do not care.
This also shows up when she talks about sexual attraction and desire. Things are sexy because she says they are. Sexual relationships are shamed quite openly: prostitutes are deemed as hexed idiots, there is shame attached to loss of chastity. All of which is fine as a story choice, but there's no reason for any of this to matter to the plot. Characters are attracted to each other or not, by default. They are so one-dimensional that there are absolutely no stakes to the stories. Even Satan (see above, the emergency contact for several witches and princesses) is one-dimensional because all he does is appear.
5. Sensitive Themes
Because everything is one-dimensional sorcery, it is hard to read through sections of domestic and alcohol abuse as events with serious consequences. They are explained away as random occurrences of the world, as opposed to unpacking and creating stories around them. In Wolflands (Red Riding Hood), the grandmother character endures domestic hardship. But her emergence, defeat and glory from it all fall flat when the consequences don't matter.
This also ties into weirder allegories, such as "capitalism is bad because people believe in Gods". Finally, there's a very clear distinction that what is dark, black, shadow, "black as ink" is bad and what is white, fair, blonde is appealing and pure. This is reflective of a very tired theme that whiteness and other colors ("singing green"), at a sociopolitical level and even in mythography, represents something positive and superlative whereas dark colors do not.
I will now exfoliate my eyeballs. Thank you for reading thus far.