The Secret Books Of Paradys (2007) - Plot & Excerpts
I picked this up on a whim at the library the other day. I've only ever read The Black Unicorn by Tanith Lee before, so I really wasn't sure what to expect other than lushly drawn worlds and unusual characters. On both those points I was definitely not disappointed in the slightest! What did surprise me, however, was just how dark and gothic the Paradys books really were. I was pleased with the two(?) happy endings of the tales in her stories; the rest really were tragic, in almost the classic sense of the word. Of the four books, I liked The Book of the Beast and The Book of the Mad best, although that in retrospect isn't a surprise. If you are, like me, a fan of stories that seem disconnected at first, but in the end intertwine, those two Books fill that predilection nicely. The one complaint I have is that I really didn't see much of the City being three cities (as the back blurb suggested) except in the last Book, where it...well, it wasn't exactly that either. This really is not much of a complaint, though. All in all (and in ALL, this is a long tome!) this was a pleasurably unsettling read.
So I had heard of this book awhile ago and it seemed interesting. Well the local library finally got a copy in so i checked it out. Needless to say I made it through the first two stories in The Book of the Damned in two weeks. Unheard of for me since I could normally finish a book like that in two weeks. It put me to sleep everytime I started to read it. So unless you are having problems figuring out if you are a boy or a girl (the first two stories both characters were girls trying to be boys) don't bother.
What do You think about The Secret Books Of Paradys (2007)?
I’m a bit surprised I’d never heard of these before picking up Book of the Damned at the library by chance. They are a haze of gothic insanity, the sort of things that might hav been written while drinking absinthe if the drink really had the hallucinatory qualities ascribed to it by urban legend. The fictional French city of Paradys is host to a bizarre rogues’ gallery of vampires, fiends, Satanists, ghosts and vengeful mortals, all decadent, depraved and oddly philosophical. The series isn’t for everyone (there is frequent graphic depiction of rape and mutilation, and I’m still not entirely certain what happened to the unfortunate Andre St. Jean,) but it’s well worth a look for fans of beautiful corruption.I’m also very happy to have found a book where (SPOILERS!) after being saved by a Wise Jewish Sage and his Beautiful Daughter, the hero actually- gasp!- converts to Judaism. I don’t know why I have’t seen that before.
—Mira
