Book 48 - "The Emperor of Dreams" by Clark Ashton Smith
Sunday, May 21st, 2006 09:30![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kittiwake'Truly yours is a melancholy case.' There was concern in Famurza's voice. 'I have been reading some of your late verses. You write only of tombs and yew-trees, of maggots and phantoms and disembodied loves. Such stuff gives me the colic. I need at least a half-gallon of honest vine-juice after each poem.'
Clark Ashton Smith was a short story writer, poet and illustrator. A friend of H.P. Lovecraft, some of his stories belong to the Cthulu Mythos.
Although the quotation above is from one of his stories, it could well apply to Smith himself. His stories contain necromancers, demons, otherworldly gods, liches, ghouls, tombs and doom . . . lots and lots of doom (mostly of the eldritch kind). I read over half of the stories in this book a few months ago, and then stopped because all that doom was getting a bit much. I read the rest a story at a time, and have just finished. They are good stories but 550 pages all at once is too much, and spreading them out was a great improvement. I couldn't believe it when I was almost at the end and came upon a couple of humorous stories!
Clark Ashton Smith was a short story writer, poet and illustrator. A friend of H.P. Lovecraft, some of his stories belong to the Cthulu Mythos.
Although the quotation above is from one of his stories, it could well apply to Smith himself. His stories contain necromancers, demons, otherworldly gods, liches, ghouls, tombs and doom . . . lots and lots of doom (mostly of the eldritch kind). I read over half of the stories in this book a few months ago, and then stopped because all that doom was getting a bit much. I read the rest a story at a time, and have just finished. They are good stories but 550 pages all at once is too much, and spreading them out was a great improvement. I couldn't believe it when I was almost at the end and came upon a couple of humorous stories!
