Day by Night

This the 19th novel/collection I've read from Tanith Lee. After reading The Lords of Darkness trilogy, I decided I had to collect and read everything she wrote. Unfortunately, out of that 19 I've got 4 1-star and 4 2-star books (vs only 3 5-star and 4 4-star). This one barely made it to 3-stars. It got better in the last 3rd, but was kind of a slog for the first two thirds.

The idea was definitely original, she paints a stark dystopian landscape, and the final "reveal" wasn't what I thought it would be, but it still often felt dated and not very exciting.

My experience with Tanith Lee’s novels is rather hit and miss, and I’m afraid this one falls into the latter category. Only my love of some of her other works kept me reading until the end - to be ultimately disappointed.

This is actually two stories; in one the vapid Vitra is a Fabulast who lives on the dark side of the planet, and she is writing a story about the spoiled Vel Thaidis who lives on the light side of the planet. Or is it a story? After a crime is committed in each world, the stories strangely take on a life of their own – which is explained in the last chapter.

Definitely not Lee’s best work, but you can see shadows of concepts explored more fully in other books, like the spoiled teens from Don’t Bite The Sun show more and the evil (almost incestuous) twins of The Silver Metal Lover. She hints at the eroticism that is an integral part of her other works, but never delivers. show less

This novel consists of a number of story threads, layered, and with characters who have counterparts in other threads. Initially, the sunward side of a planet which has a fixed rotation in relation to its sun is shown, from the viewpoint of decadent aristocrats who depend upon an underclass that lives in a decayed area called the Slumopolis. Then the focus switches in the second part of the first chapter to another set of decadent aristocrats, living on the dark side which is cold but has a higher technology, who have apparently created the first habitation as the setting of a fantasy which is used to lull the underclass, who labour and live in poverty and squalor to support the upper classes.

Each chapter then has the same structure, show more showing first the sunward side and then the darkside, with the parallel stories of characters in each who frame a fellow aristocrat for murder, out of spite and envy, resulting in that person - in the sunward side, a woman, in the darkside, a man who has used his command of technology to actually help the underclass out of guilt at their plight - being banished to the respective enclave of the underclass where they are expected, one way or another, to have a short life expectancy.

It isn't as straightforward as that, however, but I won't give more away. However, the format of having characters who supposedly were not real, though I did start to wonder given the viewpoint used, did mean I had less engagement with them. There are quite a few twists towards the end, and a big one at the very end, but I wasn't keen on that one in particular, and overall didn't really enjoy the book, hence an OK 2 star rating. show less