The Seven Geases

The Book of Hyperborea #9

by Clark Ashton Smith

Completed October 1933. First published in Weird Tales, October 1934.

Genres: Fantasy, Horror, Short Stories, Fiction, Cthulhu Mythos, Weird Fiction, Humor

Unknown Binding

First published February 21, 2014

About the author

Clark Ashton Smith was a poet, sculptor, painter and author of fantasy, horror and science fiction short stories. It is for these stories, and his literary friendship with H. P. Lovecraft from 1922 until Lovecraft's death in 1937, that he is mainly remembered today. With Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard, also a friend and correspondent, Smith remains one of the most famous contributors to the pulp magazine Weird Tales.

His writings are posted at his official website.

Reviews

[Tihana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Man, I love C. A. Smith. I thought this was hilarious.
You gotta be one hell of an unlucky guy for even the most sleazy of monsters to refuse to eat you or have anything to do with you. Our main character gets to experience lots of such rejections. And then the whole 'getting regurgitated by a dinosaur' thing. Yikes! Not that he didn't deserve it, he was an asshole, but still. You kinda feel bad for the guy at the end. Kinda, but not really.

[Bella Pickup · Rating 5 out of 5]

Talking tsathoggua sign me up

[Timothy Morrison]

Cthulhu dinosaurs demand human sacrifice

[Benjamin Uke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Classic fantasy published in the mid 1930s, the author was famous during the pulp era. He's not as popularized as lovecraft or Robert E Howard. In a sense of irony He's just as good a writer as Lovecraft (making unique horror) and Howard (sword and sorcery) perhaps better.

The reason he's not as well known is his stories don't follow simple formulas, plus his idiosyncratic use of language makes his stories more difficult to warm up to.

Smith specialized in world-building, investing stories and worlds with different concepts and cultures not normally seen in fantasy. A Gaesh, from the title, is from irish folkore: a magical impulse or compulsion put on someone.

Starting in the ancient hyperborean supercontinent at the beginning of time, a hunter is tracking ancient underground ape-men, he disturbs a wizard who, annoyed, puts a gaesh on him to go fistfight monsters and sacrifice himself to an elder god under a volcano (as one does). Not wanting him around (He'd just eaten a fresh sacrifice don'cha'know) he puts another gaesh on him to meet another elder god should he feel snackish... Comedy ensues.
The story follows him as he keeps being compelled by various gaeshes ping-ponging adventure-style around the different groups living in the hollow places at the center of the earth.

Fun fact: without spoiling the ending, this is one of the stories that inspired Dungeons and Dragons.

[NanoCyborg · Rating 3 out of 5]

Amazing start to world-building for
CAS's Hyperborea, but I felt the main character very one-dimensional until he became none-dimensional, and the ending ironic and even fitting but a bit lacking.

[Nick LeBlanc · Rating 4 out of 5]

Classic weird horror, sounds like a pretty bad guy to be rejected by monsters and evil ancient gods galore.

[Jack Barber · Rating 5 out of 5]

A strange tale of Hyperborea, in the land of Barbarians and savage beasts.
A noble sets out with his hunting party and is promptly separated from them, resulting in a weird adventure largely against his will influenced upon him by beings beyond human comprehension.

The twist ending is gut wrenching, as well as leaving us wanting more..

[Per · Rating 3 out of 5]

https://archive.org/details/WeirdTale...
http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/...

[Nolan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Now there's an eerie read. Super evocative, at times truly unnerving. Ralibar Vooz will be a great future TTRPG character/NPC.

[Viktoria · Rating 3 out of 5]

Actually kind of a funny story structure

[Juho Pohjalainen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Takes a fair while to really pick up, but once it does, it does. Three and a half.

[AJay · Rating 2 out of 5]

In a nutshell:
+ Fun, creative and imaginative.
+ Lots of weirdness.
- Waaay too whimsical and over-the-top for my taste.
- Feels almost like a parody of the genre.
- Once again, not a fan of the pacing.

In detail:
One of the most celebrated stories by CAS. Once again, just doesn't fit my particular tastes. We have a dude that is cursed and forced to carry the wills of different entities and beings, one after another. The result of such a conundrum is quite an entertaining journey filled with fantastical creatures and landscapes, but inevitably falls into a style that calls back to old children's tales intended to teach morals.

There's so much going on in this tale that you can't help but be somewhat overwhealmed by the contrast between the incredibly fantastic realms and creatures in each segment, and how fast we go from one scene into the other. It, paradoxically, turns monotonous real fast, which does no good to the rythm of the story.

I'm also conflicted with the fact that this story falls into the Cthulhu Mythos. Sure, there's no canon, but it's kinda jarring to see such a silly, tongue-in-cheek tale that shares elements with Lovecraft's severely depressing and bleak world. Tsathoggua is just a lazy furball in this tale, much like me, whereas in Lovecraft's stories he's foulness incarnate.

I will say, though... some interesting theory fodder. What if Atlach-Nacha's webs are actually the fibers that compose the space-time continuum of reality itself? Each web contains a different plane of existence, and being interconected, would create ways to travel from one dimension to another. Maybe this is how the protagonist got to the Archetypes cognitive realm. Hell... maybe what's known as a "dimensional shambler" in Horror in the Museum is actually one of Abhoth's aberrations that slowly limped itself through the webs, and ended up as a rogue dimensional traveller. Does this mean that the scary shadows the protagonist sees shuffling around the webs... are actually the Hounds of Tindalos? since these are hidden away from space-time and are known to hunt dimensional travellers... Ok, I'll stop. I'm sorry.

Veredict: 2.5 stars (shown as 2 in Goodreads). Mixed feelings, but generally, it was alright.

[ᴅᴀʟᴜ · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.4 ☆

This has no right to be this funny, there's a giant talking frog and everything