Eva Fairdeath

This is an interesting book of transition as Tanith Lee explains in the introduction. She was writing the epic fantasies in the 70s but with Eva Fairdeath she was branching out into some of the more psychological horror tomes that would characterize her 90s work. Eva Fairdeath is another cypher in the Tanith Lee pantheon. Even though you are with her the entire time you still don't know what's motivating her beyond a need to get away from her world. You learn a little more about the two men that she ends up with but most of it arrives in hints and innuendo. The overall effect is vaguely unsatisfying but it's still an interesting book. And I'm one of those fanboys that contends that even at her most mediocre, Tanith is still better than 90% of the writers on the planet.

Eva Fairdeath is an amazing science fiction story set in a future that is so dismal, it seems like the past. People have lost all use of technology and hygiene, and live like cave-men with a middle-class mentality. Eva, the beautiful albino heroine, is an outcast in her settlement. She then meets another pale skinned man named Steel, and a third named Sail. Together the three of them explore a wildly unsettling future, and test the moral boundaries of their own world, as well as those of the seventies when this book was written.