The place: the heart of a rumbling volcano.
The person: a woman awakening from a deathlike sleep.
The time: unknown, far from today.
The problem: her identity. Who is she? What are her powers? Where is her lover and who or what is he? What is to be her relation to the world in which she finds herself... slave girl, goddess, nomad, or warrior?
The author: a science fiction talent to be compared only with those of C.L. Moore, Leigh Brackett, or Andre Norton.

Marion Zimmer Bradley, who wrote a special introduction, says, "It's filled with adventure and beauty, rich alien names, half-sketched barbarian societies, ruined cities, decadence and wonder...  As I read this I thought most often of "The Dying Earth" stories by Jack Vance.  THE BIRTHGRAVE has something of the same color and wonder...  You can get involved, learn to know people, get fully submerged in the colorful anf fascinating world Tanith Lee presents.  And I predict that when you, satisfied but regretful, turn over the last page, you too will wish there were more."

- A DAW BOOK ORIGINAL -

TANITH
LEE

I saw her, hanging in the sky like a flake of the moon.  A woman, her face masked by a black shireen, her body by a black shift, but her white arms spread, and her white, white, bone-white hair blowing all around her like a flame composed of smoke.  Recognition was immediate.  It was my mother.

I shouted at her: "Your son, Ettook's warrior!  Do you like what you have made of me?  I might have been a prince in Eshkorek Arnor, or is Ezlann.  I might have been a king with a great army at my back, beautiful women to please me, and Power to make all men do as I wished.  Do you like what you have made?"

It was crystal clear to me, what he had meant for me, my father, Vazkor, what she had robbed me of.  And I drew from by belt my hunting knife and threw it at her heart.

"Tanith Lee is, in my opinion, fast becoming the best woman sf writer around... she is already one of the best fantasy writers....  Tanith Lee writes one helluva book and I can't wait to see more."
- Baryon

A DAW BOOKS ORIGINAL
NEVER
BEFORE IN PAPERBACK

TANITH
LEE

He called himself by the name of the father he had never known.  Vazkor, king of a forgotten land. In his veins were mingled the blood of that regal warrior and that of his witch mother, the silver-masked, snowy-haired survivor of the hated Old Race.  He had sworn that she would die at his hands in the name of his father and all that his world had become.

Across the barbaric and age-haunted planet his quest went relentlessly on.  As he searched, so grew his own powers, his fearful heritage.  Across wide seas, in conquered cities, and among haunted mountains, the hunt took him.  And as he drew closer to his objective, the clearer became the way she must be slain, the more certain his ability to sunder her witchcraft and ancient science to rid the world once and for all of his creator - the white witch from the volcano.

Here is high fantasy on a par with the best - the windup of Tanith Lee's BIRTHGRAVE, the shattering conclusion of a panoramic vision of a faraway world.

A DAW BOOKS ORIGINAL
NEVER
BEFORE IN PAPERBACK