Book Discussion: Delusions Master by Tanith Lee

“Azhrarn the Beautiful," said Chuz lovingly, "it is your beautiful madness I have come to see.” -Delusion’s Master by Tanith Lee

We now live in a world where women who covered up their Ravenclaw tattoo with Neil Gaiman’s Death are having to figure out what can be used to cover that up or if they should just look into skin grafts.  

Gaiman himself finally went radio silent in December, although it’s clear that he has hired a Chinese bot farm to flood Twitter with quotes of his in foreign languages as well as praise for Coraline and the movie it’s based on. I suspect but cannot prove that Neil is trying astroturf himself out of the pit he now finds himself in. He’s probably told himself that OJ did worse and he came out alright. 

Gaiman is beginning to find what contentment he can in the realm of Prince Chuz whose realm consists of those who are afflicted with madness. 

Delusion’s Master is the third of Tanith Lee’s arabesque fantasy series of books that take place on her creation of the Flat Earth. This book is the start of a major variation for this series as it is the beginning of a continuous narrative that goes forward in the next book in the series, Delirium’s Mistress.  It is also the first story where two of the Lords of Darkness come into open conflict. In Death’s Master there was a lowkey conflict between Azhrarn and Uhlume but that had the feel of a contest more than anything else.

In this story, Madness personified goes to war with the Prince of Demons because Azhrarn had been fostering unsanctioned madness. Prince Chuz appeared to regard that as poaching on what is rightfully his. 

The book starts in a somewhat unusual place for Tanith Lee, namely a recasting of biblical tale. A beautiful queen who is a bit unstable tries to abandon her infant son.  When the baby is accidently  killed, she loses her mind and spends day after day awaiting the return of her husband, the king, who will never return to her.  Finally, a king does come to visit her but it’s Chuz. In a moment of lucidity, she acknowledges the truth of her situation and as Chuz has granted her a boon, she demands that her husband be made mad as well. Chuz promises that his madness will be legend.

Her husband sets out to challenge the gods by building a tower that will reach the realm of Upper Earth where the gods reside. 

Flat Earth’s gods are famously disinterested in the doings of man, but for once this level of hubris prodded them into the minimum effort needed to destroy the tower utterly. 

Centuries pass and the holy city of Belshevid is built on its ruins. The holy men of the city have constructed many parables extolling the goodness of the gods and how they deeply care for mankind.  Also, how they easily defeat and drive from the Earth in humiliation an ugly creature known to them as a Prince of Demons.  Azrarhn is surprisingly hurt by this. His one unselfish act in his endless existence was to burn himself to death facing the sun to save the world and that act is now credited to the uncaring gods of Flat Earth.

He begins to drive the denizens of Belshevid to madness.  Chuz regards this as a trespass on his realm and it’s the start of a conflict between these two Lords of Darkness.  

A perfect (perfect in literally every way) young woman who was sent to the holy city to be a priestess, through her purity sees Azrahan’s plan and offers herself to the Prince of Demons as a human sacrifice to save Belshevid.

Azrarhan falls in love with her, although this never ends well for the mortal.  But he falls in love with her to a depth he had never known before.  He gets a child on her, although he has no love at all for the child. When Chuz sends a mad seeress to denounce the mother and her half-demon child, Azrarhn kills her.

Chuz in retaliation compels the people of Belshevid to stone the priestess.  Azrarhn takes up his daughter and vows eternal war on Chuz. 

  

Prince Chuz is an intriguing construct. Lee made the prince of lunacy a being of duality, one side of his face is profoundly young-beautiful and the other decrepit-hideous. He games with dice with no markings on them and speaks through the jawbone of an ass. He cares for those who are lost in his realm and to a certain degree frequently protects them. He is capable of love as are all of the Lords of Darkness revealed so far. And while he is the prince of madness, his actions never appear to be all that random. Chuz is likely aware that “insanity” is a legal definition and not a diagnosis. 

Speaking of unpleasant legalities, let’s take a quick and frankly resented look at Delirium of the Endless.  

The Endless are as usual much more simplistic in every way available to them. Delirium is frankly misnamed, she isn’t so much madness as she is random chaos. She is the baby sister of the family, and she started as Delight but then deteriorated. The various aspects assigned to her feel random, which would be acceptable for an anthropomorphic personification of madness and I can’t help but get the feeling that darts were randomly thrown at a brainstorming board and wherever they landed that aspect was assigned to Delirium.  Since Delirium is a female, she is naturally portrayed as a vulnerable victim because the vast majority of Gaiman’s female characters are that way.  For whatever reason.

As always, Gaiman’s Dollar Store, Shanghai knock-off version of a Tanith Lee’s creation can’t hold a candle to the original.

Delusion’s Master is a fascinating excursion through the realm of the Prince Madness.  Tanith once again proved herself to be a grand master of English language and showed her skill as an intricate weaver of real world myth and her own domain of fantasy.  The work encompasses a theme of divine conflict at first a false tale of one but in ends with a war being declared by Prince of Demons on Prince Madness   And strangely enough at the end of the story Azrarhn was starting to fill the role of something a Djinn was never meant to be, a heroic protagonist.  

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