Customer Reviews

The Double Shadow

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The first edition of this book - a drab, stapled booklet issued at the author's expense in 1933 - was an attempt by the poet and prose fantasist Clark Ashton Smith to save a few of his favorite tales from oblivion after submission of these tales had resulted in either rejection or requests for alterations the author was not willing (at that time) to make. "The Maze of the Enchanter" and "The Voyage of King Euvoran" are both vastly superior to the disembowelled versions published years later as "The Maze of Maal Dweb" and "The Quest of the Gazolba". Three of my favorite tales by Smith appear in this book - "The Maze of the Enchanter", "A Night in Malneant", and "The Double Shadow". Of these, only one, the heavily-edited "The Maze of Maal Dweb" - still impressive in plot, if less precise in action and almost devoid of atmosphere- appears in Arkham House's fine retrospective collection of Smith's work, A RENDEZVOUS IN AVEROIGNE. "The Devotee of Evil", an exercise in contemporary horror not dissimilar to such minor, early Lovecraft efforts as "From Beyond", disappoints, otherwise the contents are chilling, evocative, mournful, and sardonic by turns, with Smith's muse shaping the prose so cunningly that word, image, action, atmosphere, and speech all work toward the same otherworldly end.

Wildside Press has not produced the most elegant edition of the book one could imagine. The binding is not sewn, the paper is thin, and half the title - the words "AND OTHER FANTASIES" - appears only inside the book, a detail which may cause some confusion among those not already familiar with Smith's work. Nonetheless, the book appears reasonably durable, the cover art is attractive, the text is laid out stylishly, and random checks for accuracy suggest this is more carefully proofread than are some of this publisher's earlier books. "The Maze of the Enchanter" in all its unexpurgated glory is alone worth the price of this book.

A delight to read, especially knowing that Smith wrote this in the late 1920's. Smith is very contemporary in his vision. In fact, "The Willow Landscape" must have influenced Rod Serling and his famous Twilight Zone series. My only complaint is that the book's title made no reference to the fact that it contains six stories, not just "The Double Shadow." The book contains "The Voyage of King Euvoran," "The Maze of the Enchanter," "The Double Shadow," "A Night in Malneant," "The Devotee of Evil," and "The Willow Landscape." Additionally, DiSilvio's cover art is as fantastical as Smith's prose, and sets the scene for "The Voyage of King Euvoran" even more mysteriously than the tale itself. A great artistic keepsake!

Fans of high fantasy in the style of Lord Dunsany get a treat in Clark Ashton Smith's The Double Shadow. One of the "big three" writers of pulp fantasy in the 1920's, along with H. P. Lovecraft and Robert Howard, Ashton Smith wrote numerous well-crafted, stylish, and decadent short stories in several series. The six stories in The Double Shadow are independent of these series, but just as stylish as any of the stories in them were.

"The Voyage of King Euvoran," an ironic tale of a king's quest for a missing crown, should please any fan of the Arabian Nights. "The Maze of the Enchanter" is a brooding tale of transfiguration that must have inspired some of the early tales of Jack Vance's Dying Earth. "A Nightfall in Malneant" is a tale of a spiritual journey through despair worthy of Poe himself. "The Devotee of Evil" follows a quest for the source of evil to its ultimate wellsprings of madness. "The Willow Landscape," on the other hand, is a delicately written Chinese fairy tale showing the breadth of Ashton Smith's skill as a writer. The title story, "The Double Shadow," is a masterpiece of dark fantasy, tracing in delicate, poetic, yet malific tones the course of a conjuring of the unknown.

In his work Ashton Smith plumbs all of the dark emotions of a decaying world. Perhaps nowhere else will a devoted reader of fantasy find such variety and value in so small a space as in the collection of six stories published by Wildside Press.

Halloween is right around the corner, so I thought I'd get in the mood by reading a collection of spooky stories by Clark Ashton Smith, a writer and poet who's known for his contributions to the pulp magazine Weird Tales. Smith was a friend of H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard and an influence on many of the later pulp writers.

The Double Shadow collects six of Clark Ashton Smith's excellent short stories. You can read each of these at The Eldritch Dark, a website devoted to the writings of Clark Ashton Smith. They have posted the text of most of his stories online either because the story is in the public domain, or with permission from Smith's estate. I don't like to read stories from my computer screen, so I recommend the audio version I listened to by AudioRealms, which was beautifully narrated by Steve Cooper. But you can use the links below to at least read enough to determine whether you like Smith's style:

* "The Double Shadow" -- A necromancer is being followed by a sinister shadow.
* "The Devotee of Evil" -- An eccentric rich man moves into a haunted house because he wants to study the physics of evil.
* "A Night in Malnéant" -- Feeling guilty about his girlfriend's suicide, a man can't find the peace he seeks when he visits a city preparing for a funeral.
* "The Willow Landscape" -- For financial reasons, a man is forced to sell his favorite possession - a painting of a willow landscape. Before the buyer takes it away, the man requests to spend one more evening with his beloved treasure. I knew where this was going from the beginning, but I loved it anyway.
* "The Maze of the Enchanter" -- A man goes to a sorcerer's house to retrieve the woman he loves.
* "The Voyage of King Euvoran" -- King Euvoran's famous crown has been carried off by a large exotic bird. To maintain his authority (and to cover his bald spot) the King needs to get it back. This story was quite humorous.

Writing about Clark Ashton Smith, L. Sprague de Camp said, "Nobody since Poe has so loved a well-rotted corpse," but there's more to Smith's stories than evil, death, and rotting corpses. There's so much beauty here, too. There are exotic landscapes, strange people and animals, chilling and ironic plot twists. The prose is rich, deep, and ornate:

With no other light than that of the four diminutive moons of Xiccarph, each in a different phase but all decrescent, Tiglari had crossed the bottomless swamp of Soorm, wherein no reptile dwelt and no dragon descended -- but where the pitch-black ooze was alive with continual heavings and writhings.

If you're in the mood for some spooky gothic tales, Clark Ashton Smith's The Double Shadow may be just the right thing. The Double Shadow was my first exposure to Smith's stories, but I have now made it a personal goal to read all of them.

I've known about Smith for years from reading Lovecraft, Leiber, Howard, etc, but this was my first experience. You can easily see his kinship with those other geniuses of the weird tale, but his style is his own, from whimsical to dreadful (in a good way :). Highly recommended as an entertaining intro to his work.