Dark Dance

Tanith Lee

Well you take a large and multi-roomed house. totally isolated from neighbors and villages, build it on the sea, fill it with people who are, with the exception of one, very old, very silent, very eccentric, and most of all, just spooky. Put a young woman, who's never known her father, was raised by a mother who seemed to resent her presence for every day she lived, and who drummed into her the cautionary words that she was to always "stay away from those people", and you have Tanith Lee doing the "Dark Dance". Or .. VC Andrews with brains... Lee spins a good psychological horror novel through these pages, her props are well done and her actors and actresses move on and off the pages in fascinating and disturbing ways. Your main character is removed from a solitary and introverted life into the arms of "The House" and its inhabitants. She resists their attempts at first to be drawn into their lives, but odd things begin to befall her, and she at some point see's them as a way out of a life that's tumbling down around her. So begins this sordid little tale of vampires, incest, murder, and insanity. Tanith Lee is good at building a world which keeps you guessing and characters which you never truly know how to feel about. Are they good, are they bad, are they innocent, are they evil? There are mysteries within mysteries in this one. And certainly the last page leaves you with one of the biggest mysteries, which means you must go out and get the next one. Thanks to ian for bringing this one to my attention. Martin left a very hard act to follow, but Lee pulled me out of the doldrums.