Book Discussion: Death’s Master by Tanith Lee

Perhaps the gods had made Death.  Perhaps men had made him, the shadow of their terror thrown on a wall, a name that had taken on a shape.  How long had he existed?  Long enough to come, in however strange and opaque a manner, to an awareness of himself.  Or to an awareness of what himself must be.  And, as he was capable of dispassionate tears, as he was capable of emotionless grief, now he unfeelingly felt the pangs of a hollow disquiet.  Not at the notion of life, for life was susceptible to him...but at the notion of a life which was no longer susceptible, life which could negate death.  For even Death did not wish to die.

- Death’s Master by Tanith Lee

This is the next in the series of Tanith Lee’s epic Flat Earth books. The second book is about her anthropomorphic personification of death, Lord Uhlume. 

The story this time is an actual story (as in one continuous narrative), unlike Night’s Master which was effectively an anthology deliberately aping Burton’s The Book of a Thousand Nights and a Night where the stories only touch hands at the end and beginning.  However, the point of view characters continually shift throughout the story. ​​One critic called it "too splintered, too multi-stranded."  But since this same critic had nothing but praise for A Song of Ice and Fire, I can’t take her seriously. Not even a little bit.

The tale begins with the story of Narasen of Merh, a warrior-queen and hunter.  This is the fir creation of a lesbian I’ve run into in Lee’s stories and she does come across as being somewhat perverse in her inclinations.  She was placed under a curse that her land would be as barren as herself, for she could have a child by no living man.  After, to her fury, being forced to whore herself out to all and sundry, she comes to the conclusion that she will have to somehow bare the child by a dead man. 

She’ll have to make a deal for that. Narasen finds a woman who rejoices in the title, The Handmaiden of Death.  She makes contracts for Lord Uhlume, Death’s master.  Those that he grants a boon to, must serve him in his kingdom in Inner Earth for a thousand years. 

She agrees and is provided for one night with a dead man lover.  It’s closest to affection for any man she ever gets.  When she births her child, she is poisoned by the Handmaiden of Death out of Jealousy. Which doesn’t stop Narasen’s quest for power and revenge, she comes to hate her child in a very Tanith Lee, ‘I will burn the world to make a balm for my pain from its ashes’ kind of way.

Narasen goes to Uhlume’s domain furious that she has been cheated.  She and her child have one thing in common, they wish to harm the Lord of Death. Narasen does eventually injure him and from there move on to become his wife, Queen Death.  It’s not a great marriage.  But each seems to get what they desire out of it.  Narasen gets her Queendom to rule over with an iron hand, and the Lord of Death gets to avoid his domain.

Narasen’s child, Simmu has hatred of Death all of his life.  Eventually, Simmu begins a quest to steal immortality from the gods. Simmu like the perverse way they* were conceived can change their sex fully and completely at will and with great ease.  Simmu eventually does achieve immortality but gains nothing but ill from it.  Nonetheless, Death does for a time fear them.

All of the main characters get what they want although they all pay a price for it that is too high for something as pathetically small as gaining one’s heart’s desires.

Uhlume is a rather subtle personification of Death.  Death’s Master showed up just a few years before Terry Pratchett’s Death but you can see some strong influence Death’s Master had on the character.   First in that he is an anthropomorphic personification, rather than an angel. There is also an impersonal dedication to his vocation as well as a ‘Duty is heavier than mountains’ attitude about it, however, death can not be lighter than a feather. 

 Neither of them quite gets humanity, the difference being Pratchett’s Death wanted to and if Uhlume cared to do so at all it was merely a matter of aesthetics The other difference is that Uhlume genuinely feared his own death and one day his own death will come when the last living creature perishes.  

Uhlume the Lord of Death is the mirrored reflection of Azhrarn in every way. Physically they are identical but opposing. Where Azhrarn is white-skinned, black-haired and wears nothing but black, Uhulume looks just like Azhrarn the Beautiful but with jet black skin, white hair, and always wearing white.  Azhrarn is capable of great passion and Uhlume simply is not. They are as far apart as galaxies at opposite ends of the universe while at the same time being closer than the particles of an atom.

Sadly, since Azhrarn has come up I will also have to look at Neil Gaiman’s Death.

Neil Gaiman’s Death is about as close to being an original creation as he ever got with the Endless (excluding Desire and Despair).  Which is another way of saying someone else came up with her.

Including an avatar of death in Gaiman’s own pantheon was, again, legally not infringement. Although a mirror opposite of Morpheius would have been.  

His first choice was a Swinging London-era singer no one remembers today.  His artist Mike Dringenberg is the one who came up with Death. Or to be more exact Dringenberg modeled Death after his friend, performance artist Cinnamon Hadley.  

As near as I can tell, Gaiman’s Death is a one-to-one transfer of Cinnamon Hadley, to include her personality. She was one of the proto-goths that had broken away from the Punk rock scene. She had quite the following at one time. Lapsed Mormon, naturally.  One of many, many reasons Gaiman titanically screwed up by not fighting the absurd race swap in the Sandman TV series.  

It leaves me suspecting that the only reason Gaiman’s Death came across as a subtly layered character was that he was presented with a completed character in the person of Cinnamon Hadley. That and she looked like a female Morpheus, that’s creative, isn’t it?

The thing to remember when you are reading Tanith Lee is this.  While you are technically reading a story what you are truly doing is immersing yourself in the world of a master poet.

Discuss in the comments below:

*Yeah, I know. I hate using a plural pronoun for a single-person too but “He/She” is just too damn clunky.