Tanith Lee's impact on modern fantasy cannot be overstated. Even if most readers see her as a cult writer at best, Tanith Lee is the fantasy writer that other fantasy writer's emulate. With dreamlike prose and wicked plots, Lee creates worlds full of lurking evil, bizarre customs and manipulative gods. She's the kind of writer who gives us a Snow White tale where the poor queen fails to save the world from her evil pale stepdaughter. It's difficult to emulate Lee, but that doesn't stop writers from trying.
While there is a very recognizable Tanith Lee style, every so often she set aside her amoral characters, sudden reversals, gothic overtones and sensual hysteria for books outside her comfort zone. She wrote historical fiction, Turing Test romances, werewolf love stories and YA unicorn books.
In the Tanith Lee bibliography nothing was quite as atypical as The Dragon Hoard. Written when she was 21 and just breaking into the market, this book will surprise any Tanith Lee fan as it's not creepy or weird. There are no dark undertones or horror scenes. The Dragon Hoard feels like an early Terry Pratchett book rather than anything with Tanith Lee's name on the cover.
Tanith Lee was just starting to experiment with strange plots and extreme characters, only this book trades operatic tension for laughs. There's an evil witch, named Maligna, with bats in her hair. When the characters discover the titular hoard, the dragon lets them have it. He doesn't care. Curses are funny plot devices, such as the character whose curse makes her give everything away or the prince turning into a raven at inconvenient moments. Even the nasty wolves are comical.
Young Tanith Lee has no problem naming her characters Gooodness and Fearless.
If you want to recommend Tanith Lee's twisted psychological world to a new reader, this is not the book. It's too light to represent Lee. It's a fun book that breezes along without much consternation. Had it not been Tanith Lee's first published book, one could simply recommend it as an amusing trifle and leave it at that.
However, it is Tanith Lee's first published book and that alone needs comment. Reading The Dragon Hoard makes one imagine what would have happened had she kept writing these books. Would her career have fizzled out after the 1970s? Would Piers Anthony have cited her as an influence? Would we be in a world where fans constantly compare her to Terry Pratchett and vice versa? One can read this book and imagine the alternate career paths for Lee Yet, Lee fans know what happened next. The Birthgrave made Lee into a major force in 1970s fantasy, almost singlehandedly supporting Daw Books. Lee abandoned the humor in favor of dark fantasy and Gothic science fiction. She'd write hundreds of short stories and dozens of novels, none that could be called whimsical.
Ultimately, The Dragon Hoard is an outlier in Tanith Lee's career, but it's definitely a fascinating one.
It’s out of print, but you can find copies online including on Amazon
There’s a Tanith Lee Tribute anthology coming out this year. Sorry I posted this after the Kickstarter ended.