Dancing Through the Fire

Life, death, love, and truth: major themes that frequently appear in Grandmaster Tanith Lee's fiction, are all represented in Dancing Through the Fire, one of the last collections she put together before her untimely death. The stories in this book have never before been collected, and four of them have never before been published. These tales will transport you from mystical lands to mystical worlds, corporeal manifestations of myth, and mythical interpretations of life, into realms you've never visited (and in some cases, could never have imagined visiting).

Among the reprinted stories are:
"Comfort and Despair", which Publishers Weekly called "eloquent."
"Fold," which editor Mike Allen called "surreal and haunting."
"That Glisters Is," which, according to Voya, "leaves a disturbing aftertaste."
"The Death of Death," which Colleen Anderson said is "rich with personality and style."

The four new stories include:
"My Lovely," a chilling little tale of a house where people drop in.
"Last Dancer," which tells of an annual commemoration that just may be the social ticket of the year.
"Lora," the story of a god gazing lovingly upon one of her subjects.
"Burn Her," which may be a semi-autobiographical telling of the life (and afterlife) of an artist.

In her obituary, the Guardian called Tanith Lee "one of the most influential revisionist and feminist voices in contemporary fantasy writing," and said her work has a "sensibility in which the relentless pursuit of personal autonomy and sensual fulfilment leads her characters to the brink of delirium, as well as to a fierce integrity that can co-habit with self-sacrificing empathy." The Village Voice called her "the Princess Royal of Fantasy," and enotes says she is "an accomplished technician and stylist. Her sophisticated presentations carry the reader along breathlessly, yet her style invites reading aloud."

Tanith Lee was born in the UK in 1947. Though she couldn't read until she was eight, she began writing at nine, and never stopped. She wrote over ninety novels and more than three hundred short stories. She wrote for television (Blake's 7) and various BBC radio plays. She won the World Fantasy Award for her novel Death's Master (1980). Endless awards followed, and she was made a Grand Master of Horror and honored with the World Fantasy Convention Lifetime Achievement Award in 2013. Tanith died peacefully at home in 2015. She was married to the artist/writer John Kaiine, who will continue to keep her work in print via numerous short story collections and much more.

"Lee's decadent, Gothic-inflected pieces range from delicate fantasias about the whims of a personified death to straightforward, suspenseful sword-and-sorcery featuring resourceful but outmatched thieves... The collection's most emotional and most recent pieces are meditations on the power of art... But it's difficult to read the stunning new piece 'Burn Her,' in which a dead painter's right arm refuses to either stop painting or succumb to fire, as anything other than Lee's graceful acknowledgement and defiance of her own mortality, a very high point in this uneven swan song." - Publishers Weekly

"This is no random gathering. Tanith Lee selected, introduced, and arranged these works before she died in May, also writing the prologue that gives the book its title, plus three new pieces suited to its symphony of shifting moods. The novelette 'Burn Her' seems particularly bold. The tales themselves can be eloquent, inspiring, wry - skewed takes on famous Lovers(?) - often, marvelously, all of the above. 'Burn Her' dances through the flame to glimpse a beauty that can only be suggested - not revealed or understood, while we still live." - Faren Miller, Locus Magazine


Genre: Fantasy