Zothique, by Clark Ashton Smith ***1/8

This is a very good collection, with a lot of great writing. [Note: I read the Ballantine edition of the early 70s, collected by Lin Carter.] Smith is both a great literary stylist and a creator of fascinating concepts, though not a not necessarily a rich creator of characters or plots. That said, his world drips a fascinating black goo that's tough to shake off. I have vivid pictures of most of his stories, including some wonderfully decadent images. The concept of Zothique is that it's a dying continent, with spreading diseases, bizarre and vengeful gods, and lots and lots of necromancers and sorcerers doing strange things. With each successive story, another area of the continent becomes uninhabitable or destroyed, lending the collection more significance. In this way the book is greater than the sum of its parts, which are already pretty good by themselves. It would be nice if more collections functioned in this manner. My complaint - I wish most of these stories were a bit longer, because the longest ones almost invariably included 1-2 plot turns or developments that greatly improved the overall quality of each story. In his shortest stories, he barely has time to set the atmosphere and the main concept before the story has resolved. But in the best stories in the collection - "The Black Abbot of Puthuum", "The Dark Eidolon", "The Charnel God", "The Voyage of King Eurovan", and "The Isle of the Torturers" - there is opportunity for more development. When a sense of journey is added to Smith's amazing landscapes, he creates a truly fantastic experience, but this doesn't happen as often as I would like it to. Nonetheless, even when he just puts forward a simple concept and setting, Smith is doing well here, because the atmospheres are so palpable in their sadness and ornate decay.
(Winter 2006)

Close this window