Laith
I quite enjoyed Sabella, even if I haven’t read enough in the genres it plays with to truly appreciate it. Fully titled Sabella, or The Blood Stone, this is a mashup of SF horror, interplanetary romance, and a little southern gothic added for flavour. Despite being lost on me, by all accounts the genre commentary is masterfully done. I still found this to be Tanith Lee at her best: direct, illustrative, dark, and intense.
The titular Sabella is a woman living alone on the prairies of Nova Mars with only wolves for company. She’s pale, allergic to sunlight, irresistible to men, and possessed by an insatiable lust for blood. She’s a vampire — and not just any vampire, a space vampire (woooo). Lured off-planet by the promise of an inheritance, Sabella is drawn into a plot that seeks to expose her and lead her to her doom.
This is a short read, and yet there’s so much to love. Tanith Lee has been a consistent favourite of mine when it comes to world building, and I adore the universe of Sabella — it’s a fresh take on Barsoom and the world of Edgar Rice Burroughs, wearing its influences on its sleeve while still being wholly original.
I’ll admit that, like many other readers, the ending is where this lost me. Vampires have never tickled my palate, and even space vampires aren’t enough of a twist to separate me from my prejudice. There’s clearly something being said here about sexuality — Sabella’s vampirism arrives with puberty, her feeding is rendered as inseparable from sex itself, and the dominant-submissive shape the ending romance takes feels like the logical endpoint of that thread rather than a swerve into kink for its own sake. I can’t fully untangle what Lee is arguing about desire and power through that lens, and I don’t think the book hands you a tidy answer either, but the throughline from “vampire” to “adolescent sexual awakening” to “submission” is too consistent to be incidental. I just won’t pretend to have cracked it.
Tanith Lee keeps it interesting despite my aversion to the subject, and honestly, with the exception of Blindsight, I can’t think of a vampire book I’ve enjoyed more than this. For fans of planetary romance novels, this is sure to grab you to the very end.
P.S. As mentioned above, there’s some required reading to truly unlock this book. The Northwest Smith series was highlighted in the recommendation I was given as a distinct influence this novel seems to be in conversation with.
I quite enjoyed Sabella, even if I haven’t read enough in the genres it plays with to truly appreciate it. Fully titled Sabella, or The Blood Stone, this is a mashup of SF horror, interplanetary romance, and a little southern gothic added for flavour. Despite being lost on me, by all accounts the genre commentary is masterfully done. I still found this to be Tanith Lee at her best: direct, illustrative, dark, and intense.
The titular Sabella is a woman living alone on the prairies of Nova Mars with only wolves for company. She’s pale, allergic to sunlight, irresistible to men, and possessed by an insatiable lust for blood. She’s a vampire — and not just any vampire, a space vampire (woooo). Lured off-planet by the promise of an inheritance, Sabella is drawn into a plot that seeks to expose her and lead her to her doom.
This is a short read, and yet there’s so much to love. Tanith Lee has been a consistent favourite of mine when it comes to world building, and I adore the universe of Sabella — it’s a fresh take on Barsoom and the world of Edgar Rice Burroughs, wearing its influences on its sleeve while still being wholly original.
I’ll admit that, like many other readers, the ending is where this lost me. Vampires have never tickled my palate, and even space vampires aren’t enough of a twist to separate me from my prejudice. There’s clearly something being said here about sexuality — Sabella’s vampirism arrives with puberty, her feeding is rendered as inseparable from sex itself, and the dominant-submissive shape the ending romance takes feels like the logical endpoint of that thread rather than a swerve into kink for its own sake. I can’t fully untangle what Lee is arguing about desire and power through that lens, and I don’t think the book hands you a tidy answer either, but the throughline from “vampire” to “adolescent sexual awakening” to “submission” is too consistent to be incidental. I just won’t pretend to have cracked it.
Tanith Lee keeps it interesting despite my aversion to the subject, and honestly, with the exception of Blindsight, I can’t think of a vampire book I’ve enjoyed more than this. For fans of planetary romance novels, this is sure to grab you to the very end.
P.S. As mentioned above, there’s some required reading to truly unlock this book. The Northwest Smith series was highlighted in the recommendation I was given as a distinct influence this novel seems to be in conversation with.
