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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Get This! Read This! Brag About It!,
This review is from: Zothique (Mass Market Paperback)
It's a crying shame that this volume is so unknown and so difficult to find. If you enjoy fantasy, especially dark fantasy, you should read this.
Zothique is the last known continent of a dying planet, presumably an Earth so distant that all record of our existence has been long lost, and under conditions so changed that gods haunt cities, necromancers rob the dead of their rest, and bizarre plagues fall from the stars. Zothique is a place where bad things happen. This collection of short stories explores the continent, and a few outlying islands, through the eyes of a simple shepherd boy, a newlywed groom, necromancers caught between cannibals and demons, and a king who's lost his hat, among myriad others. In all cases, they exist in a world where a simple misstep and bring down demonic retribution, and nobody really knows the rules, not that they'd help. The volume begins with a single-page verse followed by sixteen short stories. It's worth noting that I rarely enjoy short stories, and I truly enjoyed this book. And lastly, Zothique is a place where bad things happen, and while true love, genuine faith, and a sincere effort to help the innocent may go unrewarded, it just might also go unpunished, and in Zothique, that's often the best one can really hope for. (I only paid $20 for my copy. Hunt for something less than $105, 'cos that's just ridiculous.)
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Gorgeous, horrific, decadent, unforgettable,
This review is from: Zothique (Mass Market Paperback)
I can only echo the previous reviewers in praising this grotesquely beautiful & compellingly dark volume from the legendary Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series. All of Clark Ashton Smith's work is memorable for its prose, so rich as to be overripe & tending towards sticky, glistening decay; but in these stories of a far fature Earth, rotting on the last withered vine of Time before the Sun goes out forever, he surpassed himself.
If there's one word that's intoned throughout these pages, ringing as ponderously as a funeral bell, it's "Doom!" Fallen, deformed gods & demons lurk & brood everywhere; the dead are met as often as the living; and the living are frequently more hideous than the dead. It's a world of ceaseless nightmare, filled with shadows but ruthlessly illuminated by its dying Sun, which leaches the life & hope out of everything. It's also strangely erotic, in a corrupt & callous fashion -- but there's little tenderness or innocence to be found! All the passion remaining in this world is decidedly twisted. Fortunately Smith's entire body of work has been reprinted in hardcover recently. But if you can unearth a copy of this paperback, get it & hold onto it. Both the cover art & the enthusiastic introduction by series editor Lin Carter make it worth owning -- most definitely recommended!
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Among the finest of the genre,
By
This review is from: Zothique (Mass Market Paperback)
Dark, horrific, funny, bleak, richly jeweled and ragged in a rotting shroud.
Prayers would be out of place under Clark Ashton Smith's sinister, dying red sun, but let us cast some spell that may lead to a new edition.
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