Cover art for "Night's Master," Book one in the Tales from the Flat Earth series. It depicts a fae-like being surrounded by blue and white flowers in the foreground with an eagle looming above.
Title: Night's Master (Tales from the Flat Earth, Book 1)
Author: Tanith Lee
Cover designer: Bastien Lecouffe Deharme
Publisher: DAW Books
ISBN13: 9780698404434
Recommended audience: People in search of fantasy stories with "told over a campfire by a mysterious figure who emerged from the night" vibes, in the vein of 1001 Arabian Nights.
Link to publisher book page: https://astrapublishinghouse.com/product/nights-master-9780756421090/
About Peter
Public-turned-digital librarian, now working in open education. Once and future YouTuber/purveyor of library propaganda. US Navy vet, dual 🍁/🦅 citizen living near Vancouver, BC. find me on bsky at or get the professional scoop of who I am on my site!
What I liked about the book:
When you start reading this book, you get the impression that you're reading a bunch of fairy tales passed down over generations that are seemingly unrelated aside from that they all take place in the same world, and that world is familiar in both its settings and the casual brutality that deific beings typically have a reputation for in the name of a good moral. And honestly, that's not for everyone. I've never really enjoyed short story anthologies out of a stronger preference for, "tell me one big story and get me emotionally invested so that I feel like I have something to come back to tomorrow night!"
And yet.
Somehow, maybe because of the consistency of the world that these seemingly unrelated stories took place in from one to the other, I read one chapter. And then I read another. And then several more. And then, ohhhhhhh, I get it now. And then I was hooked, and now I'm onto book 3.
If you liked the show "Tales from the Loop" but wished it was a book and fantasy instead of a show and sci-fi, this one's for you. Just hang in there.
How I discovered this book:
Do you ever think to yourself, you know, self, I could really go for acquiring an unreasonable amount of e-books for an unreasonable price but I don't want to commit piracy to make it happen; in fact, if some of that money I do spend could support charity that'd be just ducky! ? If yes, great news: @humblebundle.com may be better known for their charity-funding game package deals, but they also partner with publishers to raise money for charities! In this case, a portion of the purchase price went to the Book Industry Charitable Foundation.
Generally the e-book bundles available from aka Humble Bundle have something in common. That could be a subject (knitting and needlework), a shared identity (sci-fi & fantasy by Black authors), or it could be the works of specific authors (often but not always authors who have passed away). The bundle this book came in was the latter, which is bittersweet because I've discovered I rather enjoy Lee's work and writing style, or at least the few of her books I've made it through so far (the bundle included 26 of them).
Admittedly I have been known to get humble bundles that are more aspirational than practical: will I ever read all 37 titles from the "Erotica for Women" bundle by Cleis Press I got earlier this year, or the 17 titles in the "Joy of Coding" bundle from No Starch Press in 2016? It's ... unlikely. One of the tricky things about the bundles is sometimes they contain works that just don't land, or maybe you're getting the bundle for one or two specific titles and the rest will sit in your Calibre library, unread, until who knows when.
In other cases, I'll get very excited about the whole package but then when I open one of them up it turns out it looks like a draft that was created by running OCR1 on either a printed or handwritten copy of a work (as with one of the titles in the Timothy Zahn bundle I got last month).
To be honest though, I don't care. It's thanks to Humble Bundle that I discovered Hugh Howie, Tanith Lee, and Joseph Fink's novels that take place in the Night Vale podcast universe. Humble Bundle also lets me feel good about acquiring digital copies of aka Martha Wells' Murderbot Diaries which I'd previously borrowed from my local library, while also turning me onto her other works (a few of which were firsts in series that are still ongoing, incentivizing me to buy the sequels at normal price).
Plus, it's easy to justify some digital hording when it goes to a good cause. And it's a lot easier to move 400 e-books than their physical counterparts. So -- go wild! Bundles are usually only available for a few weeks at a time, and new ones are always popping up (as Instagram and Facebook ads are thrilled to let me know)(🙃)2.
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