Death's Master
core novel 1979 Tales from the Flat Earth
Record
| First published | 1979 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | novel |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 4.22 (1,598 ratings, collected 2026-08-26) |
| Page count | 348 |
| First-edition ISBN | 9780879974411 |
| Internal chronology | 2 |
Synopsis
Death's Master is the second novel in Tanith Lee's Tales from the Flat Earth series, continuing the mythic, interlinked storytelling established in Night's Master. It centers this time on Uhlume, Lord Death, drawn into the affairs of mortals through a woman who bargains with him to escape her fate, setting in motion a chain of consequences that ripple across generations. As in the first book, the demon lord Azhrarn continues to intervene in human lives from his subterranean realm, and the narrative moves through a sequence of linked, legend-like episodes rather than a single continuous plot. The book was awarded the British Fantasy Award for Best Novel the year after its publication, reflecting its place as a central volume in the series' larger mythology of gods, demons and doomed mortals.
Where it sits
- Universe: Tales from the Flat Earth
- Series: Tales from the Flat Earth core; position 2 of 5 in the series' recorded order
- Author: Tanith Lee
Awards (verified)
- British Fantasy Award (Best Novel), 1980: won
Notes
- From the series record (Tales from the Flat Earth): A cycle of interlinked, Arabian Nights-inspired dark mythic fantasies about the Lords of Darkness who rule a legendary flat world before the age of humanity as it is now known. The author died in 2015; treated as complete at the five novels published as the main sequence.
Neighbouring works
Publication order and internal chronology are tracked as two separate orderings, but they resolve to the exact same sequence for this book, so one combined line is shown instead of two identical ones.
- Reading order, within the series Tales from the Flat Earth: position 2 of 5: previous Night's Master (1978) · next Delusion's Master (1981)
Sources
← Tales from the Flat Earth dossier · All universes
Part of the Library. Fields without an identified source are omitted, never guessed.