Tales from the Flat Earth (Magill’s Guide to Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature)
At a glance:
- Author: Tanith Lee
- First Published: 1978
- Type of Work: Novels
- Type of Plot: Fantasy—high fantasy
- Time of Work: Indeterminate, but before formation of current Earth
- Setting: Various locations on flat “pre-Earth”
- Genres: Long fiction, Fantasy
- Subjects: Antiheroes, Mental illness, Death or dying, Good and evil, Devils or demons
- Locales: Earth, alternate versions of
The Plot
Although the Tales from the Flat Earth were first published as separate novels, they comprise sets of interlocking short stories. Each book loosely focuses on the action of a “Lord of Darkness”—a personification of a disruptive force such as wickedness, death, or madness—but particular human characters rarely appear in more than one section of each of the books. The result is closer to a set of collected myths than a trilogy, although there is a clear chronological order to the stories. Like myths, they are set in a dream time, a prehistory when the world...
[The entire page is 1489 words long]
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