Book Review: Vivia by Tanith Lee
Nov. 7th, 2025 02:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
juushikaTitle: Vivia
Author: Tanith Lee
Published: Warner, 1997 (1995)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 400
Total Page Count: 549,655
Text Number: 2047
Read Because:chthonic_cassandra's Tanith Lee project, borrowed from Open Library
Review: When her city is taken by plague, the daughter of the warlord escapes to the caverns below where her subterranean worship rouses a creature who makes her a vampire. This is a rambling, developing narrative, cinematic in a way more art house than action flick: specific and precise tableaux, character-focused, with a relentless but sparsely indulgent gothic atmosphere. The depictions of sexual violence are confrontational, ubiquitous, and profoundly nuanced. This is almost one for the "more interesting than successful" pile, but when the narrative spills forward, the determined allegiance to Vivia's characterization grounds it.
Author: Tanith Lee
Published: Warner, 1997 (1995)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 400
Total Page Count: 549,655
Text Number: 2047
Read Because:
chthonic_cassandra's Tanith Lee project, borrowed from Open LibraryReview: When her city is taken by plague, the daughter of the warlord escapes to the caverns below where her subterranean worship rouses a creature who makes her a vampire. This is a rambling, developing narrative, cinematic in a way more art house than action flick: specific and precise tableaux, character-focused, with a relentless but sparsely indulgent gothic atmosphere. The depictions of sexual violence are confrontational, ubiquitous, and profoundly nuanced. This is almost one for the "more interesting than successful" pile, but when the narrative spills forward, the determined allegiance to Vivia's characterization grounds it.
