7 April, 2002: Dark Castle, White Horse
Tanith Lee's Dark Castle, White Horse collects two short novels, Prince on a White Horse and The Castle of Dark. I own it primarily for the first; Prince on a White Horse is a terrifically funny book about a nameless prince, his shapeshifting talking horse, the Enchantress in Red, the Dragon of Brass, and a walk through a lunatic parody of bad fantasy novels. It's a book designed to be read aloud. I spent a few evenings reading it to V., and it was great fun. The backup feature, The Castle of the Dark, is more what I think of when I think of Lee: gothic, gloomy fairytale-influenced fantasy, with prose hovering between "rich" and "purple". It's lightened somewhat by a nicely written female protagonist/mystery object, raised in isolation in the titular castle and brought forth (with an ancient curse) to the world by the male protagonist, a wandering minstrel. Well enough done, but nothing special if weird, shadowy maidens raised under moonlight in forbidden towers doesn't float your boat. Prince on a White Horse sure is a hoot, though.