Tanith Lee (1947-2015) acclaimed Fantasy & Horror writer known for her poetic weirdness and mature content (i.e. sexual situations). The Blood of Roses Volume 1: Mechail, Anillia sequence follows suit; originally available only in the UK, a more-global audience can now access her take on a milieu featuring the conflict between a Christian religion and naturalistic pagans. The Back Cover Blurb below from Immanion Press summarizes the contents and the re-publishing of the single book into two volumes (each ~300pages with sub-books focused on key characters; Volume 1 Contents: “Mechail” and “Anilla”; Volume 2 Contents, “Jun”, “Eujasia”, “Mechailus”).

Read this is as part of a Goodreads Sword & Sorcery Group Read [The Blood of Roses is not classic S&S, but Lee has written in that genre and this is focused on a dark fantasy environment that is tangential; it falls into the “dark epic fantasy” category instead]. The key thing to note for candidate readers is that Lee adores presenting mysterious worlds, blurring the lines between myth, reality, and dreams. So, reading becomes more like deciphering a puzzle, and reading less easy.

Here, she does the following:
• Presents a fantasy world in which magic truly exists
• Presents many mysteries (i.e., riddles) that are unexplainable to the characters...such that even their understanding of their world is insufficient, so the reader’s will be too
• Changes perspectives at chapter & scene breaks
• Changes time too between chapter & scene breaks (going forward or backward days or decades between chapters)
• Use pronouns at the beginning of scenes, avoiding explicitly identifying who “She” or “He” are for several paragraphs.
• No map is provided; reading each chapter reveals the land more, so it is like a fog-of-war approach in video games; its all a mystery until you unveil it
• The conflict is complex: it is not simple “single protagonist vs single enemy”, nor is it the more intangible "protagonist vs world-nature." Here are many characters here and each struggles against a variety of forces
• Writes at a high Reading Level using an intellectual vocabulary and archaic & dreamy descriptions (metaphor similes). She literally mixes dreams in with "reality."

Anyway, The Blood of Roses Volume 1: Mechail, Anillia is expertly written and enjoyable. If you are looking for digestible, guilty-pleasure reading, this won’t be for you. Lee demands her reader to be immersed and attentive. Like Celtic fantasy, but want something more deep? Then you will adore this.

Back Cover Blurb

In a rich, complex epic set in a grim fantasy world, Tanith Lee explores in her distinctive style the excesses of religion as well as the dark pagan roots of earlier times. There are disturbing similarities between the rites of apparently conflicting beliefs – the blood and body of Christ and the divine blood of the World Tree.

While the Christerium might believe it wields the greater power and keeps the people under control through brutality and oppression, the older cunning ways lie hidden in every forest glade and in the hearts of those who worship the Great Tree, nourished by the blood of willing sacrifice. But then the Tree is destroyed, in the midst of a sacred rite, unleashing a potent and vengeful magic.
From the ruin of this atrocity, the enigmatic dark priest Anjelen arises. He deftly works his way into the heart of the Christerium, bewitching its most powerful administrators. He is like an angel, beautiful and charismatic – yet to be feared. People are drawn to follow him into any darkness he claims to be the Light of God. The rites he introduces to the inner cabal of the Christerium change all who take part in them, not least invoking a thirst for blood.

Characters with mysterious origins, damaged in body and mind, assemble to enact a world-changing drama. Anillia wakes within an old abbey, knowing she is 15 years old, but with no idea who she is or how she got there. She feels safe with the ageing nuns until sons of a local forest clan arrive at her sanctuary, claiming she is their sister, lost long ago in the woods. She is married off to a local clan leader, thereby becoming part of Anjelen’s plan. Mechail, the crippled son of a powerful forest lord is murdered yet rises from death to follow an unknown destiny. It seems he was never quite human to begin with. Jasha, a wild woods girl, more animal than human is drawn into
Anjelen’s entourage, witness to strange and terrifying events, knowing she too has a part to play in the savage rites of blind belief and raw desire.

This vivid, macabre epic was only ever published in the UK in a hardback edition – to most readers it will be a completely new title, which Immanion Press is proud to present in two paperback volumes, with illustrations by Danielle Lainton and cover art by John Kaiine.

Excerpts: Anthropomorphized Nature, Similes, &Metaphors Abound

[1] "Warm, deceiving and sad, the light of Autumn lit the courtyard and chapel building. But the berries were thick as red drops of blood all over the bushes at the door. It would be a wicked winter. The forest, standing behind and about like an army of bears, its darkness still green, would change rapidly to a place of snows. Marika feared the winter. Her uncomfortable joints turned painful…"p185

[2] "She led him to the hearth and sat down there on the slave’s stool. He looked up, at her eyes, and away again. Time was like the snow. It had no enduring substance and might thaw to mud in one spring day." p246

[3] "...she offered her whispering cry to the soldier, the captain of her husband’s garrison, twenty-nine years of age, Carg Vrost, strayed broken-handed and partly mad, from terrifying night to chaos night…He looked young, the captain, and old. Agony – the broken hand – had pulled his face against its bones." p253

[4] "That evening, sunset was not red but angrily overcast, with leaden clouds that promised boiling summer rain. Veins beat in the grey forehead of the sky." p292 ( )