Le Cronache di Paradys raccontano di un mondo lontano e stregato in cui la magia decideva la sorte degli uomini, e creature diaboliche si riversavano dall'abisso sulle contrade della terra. Un mondo crepuscolare, fatato, fatto di sensualità e terrore, di avventure epiche e terribili apparizioni, ma soprattutto di uomini e donne decisi a scoprire il mistero che si nasconde dietro ognuno di questi portenti. Le Cronache di Paradys sono una specie di Libro dei dannati in cui la volontà di pochi coraggiosi si misura contro le più sinistre manifestazioni dei Male, per tentare di ristabilire un equilibrio che una volta esisteva su tutta la terra e che è stato definitivamente lacerato in questo volume Tanith Lee Ci guida nei labirinti dei suo regno dell'incantesimo mostrandoci le sue leggende sacrileghe e i suoi riti misericordiosi, in una mirabile fusione di fantasy e orrore ma soprattutto di sensualità e avventura Copertina: Tim Hildebrandt

Traces, through diverse, horrifying encounters through the centuries, the trail of It, the beast created on the Fifth Day, which preys on the unwitting

The ambience of fin de siecle France imbues these eight gothic tales in the third volume in Lee's Secret Books of Paradys tetralogy, tracing the tortured lives once led by those buried in the crypts and cemeteries of the mythical (or forgotten) city of Paradys. "The Weasel Bride" twists a folktale about a man who marries an enchanted weasel and dies of her bite into an account of a young husband who kills his beloved bride on their wedding night and takes her dreadful secret to the gallows. The artist in "The Glass Dagger," who normally saves her emotion for her art, is consumed by jealous rage and turns to supernatural revenge when a jaded aristocrat tries an old stratagem to win her love. In "The Moon Is a Mask" a drudge who creates a world of beauty in her garret room steals to buy a mask that turns her into a vampire owl. The miasma of corruption and death, combined with vivid and at times elegiac writing will engross readers who fancy this dark shade of fantasy writing.

In this concluding volume, a seductive nightmare unfolds in three parallel versions of the city that are connected by a labyrinth of ice whose dangers are amplified by the will and emotion of its lunatic travelers

Paradys―the city―was a place of decadence and decay, of luxury and lasciviousness, and, after the revolution, a graveyard peopled by the insane and the dead…and by those who preyed on both. The strange and the tormented dwell in Paradys―prowling its dark streets and twisted alleyways, passing the endless hours in the city's elegant mansions and smoke-tarnished inns, wandering in moldering graveyards and the stark surrounding countryside. For the land here is bound by a timeless, soul-chilling magic, and that power has cast its spell over all who have ever lived in this foreboding and dangerous place. All who came to Paradys were forever touched by its dread magic. The City was not one place but three, bound together by a labyrinth of ice yet separated, perhaps by time, perhaps by some long-forgotten enchantment, into Paradise, Paradis and Paradys―each cursed in an entirely different way... Witness the city of Paradys’ life and history through the eyes of its provocative and perverse citizens―a darkly fascinating odyssey as only World Fantasy Award winner Tanith Lee could imagine it.