Legenda Maris
Whilst Tanith Lee is rightly celebrated for her many fine novels, I personally think that when she was composing in the short form she excelled . Over the last few years many fine collections of Tanith Lee's short stories have been issued, but this new gathering is particularly poignant because it appears to possibly be the final one that she personally assembled. The theme here is the sea and it weaves through these tales in all its various guises, temperaments and hues. The earliest story is Paper Boat (1978) based on the final days of Shelley. The opening lines are gloriously feverish: The summer heat had come. It burned the hills to blocks of standing smoke. It filled the bowl of the shore and the spoon of the bay with its opium, it painted the terracotta of the house in progressively darkening washes of red and umber. The sea, a throbbing indigo, pulled itself to the beach and tumbled there as if drugged. The latest work in Legenda Maris are two short pieces