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The Last Continent: New Tales of Zothique
1999 1st Ed. Shadow Lands Press Signed by all Authors #167
440 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1999
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
February 15, 2010
My favorites, in alphabetical order, were by:
*Dan Clore
*Charlee Jacob - a very pleasant surprise and the closest to Smith's own Zothique stories in terms of mood and plot, without resorting to pastiche or borrowed characters.
*Brian Stableford
*Lucy Taylor
*Gene Wolfe
Not that those were the only effective stories in the book, those were simply the ones that succeeded in entertaining me while being read and lingering in my memory afterwards.
The editor's story is also very imaginative, and fits the milieu quite well, but is a bit nastier than these others. I think I would have liked it better if he had written it alone. There is a gloating quality to his collaborator's writing that has never appealed to me - his characters seem to be either monsters or objectified victims, and that taint at times affects this story as well, dragging it a few notches below what the better writing in the story suggests it could have achieved.
For me, some good stories did not fit the milieu as well as I would have liked. Just because Smith's stories has more than its share of dour fates and doomed romances does not mean that anything sharing these traits belongs in Zothique.
A few of the other stories fell into the all too common trap of substituting logorrhea for Smith's ornate yet precise word-painting and a smart-ass attitude for dramatic irony. A writer can almost get away with this in Hyperborea, otherwise it calls attention to itself in a way that reminded me of all those writers who thought they were capturing Lovecraft's style by inserting such key words as "squamous", "eldritch", "ichor", and the "Necronomicon".
Overall, I would give the book just short of 4 stars. A few of the stories are first rate, most of them are enjoyable, and even those that do not work for me offered interesting twists or novel imagery.
*Dan Clore
*Charlee Jacob - a very pleasant surprise and the closest to Smith's own Zothique stories in terms of mood and plot, without resorting to pastiche or borrowed characters.
*Brian Stableford
*Lucy Taylor
*Gene Wolfe
Not that those were the only effective stories in the book, those were simply the ones that succeeded in entertaining me while being read and lingering in my memory afterwards.
The editor's story is also very imaginative, and fits the milieu quite well, but is a bit nastier than these others. I think I would have liked it better if he had written it alone. There is a gloating quality to his collaborator's writing that has never appealed to me - his characters seem to be either monsters or objectified victims, and that taint at times affects this story as well, dragging it a few notches below what the better writing in the story suggests it could have achieved.
For me, some good stories did not fit the milieu as well as I would have liked. Just because Smith's stories has more than its share of dour fates and doomed romances does not mean that anything sharing these traits belongs in Zothique.
A few of the other stories fell into the all too common trap of substituting logorrhea for Smith's ornate yet precise word-painting and a smart-ass attitude for dramatic irony. A writer can almost get away with this in Hyperborea, otherwise it calls attention to itself in a way that reminded me of all those writers who thought they were capturing Lovecraft's style by inserting such key words as "squamous", "eldritch", "ichor", and the "Necronomicon".
Overall, I would give the book just short of 4 stars. A few of the stories are first rate, most of them are enjoyable, and even those that do not work for me offered interesting twists or novel imagery.
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April 2, 2025Uh. *Very* much 'let's imitate CAS's style and have a lark (and revel in olde worlde gender while we're at it)'.
The great exception was Jessica Amanda Salmonson's haunting 'Hode of the High Place'.
The great exception was Jessica Amanda Salmonson's haunting 'Hode of the High Place'.
February 10, 2019
I was pleasantly surprised by this tribute collection. Clark Ashton Smith (CAS) and his contemporaries H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard have been subjected to any number of imitations and pastiches, most of them execrable. And given that the fantastic setting of Zothique was one of CAS' crowning achievements in fiction, it would be natural to assume that the contents of this collection would be disappointing.
But happily, that's not the case. While there are a handful of terrible stories, and at least a couple with no apparent connection to the Zothique milieu, there are also some gems in these pages. The contributions from Gerard Houarner, Dan Clore, Mark McLaughlin, Don Webb, and Mark Chadbourn are all well worth reading, and Gene Wolfe and Henrik Johnsson steal the show with very strong entries. Johnsson's "The Triumph of the Worm" is fittingly the last piece in the book, and almost manages to usurp CAS himself with its bold vision of the end of the last continent.
But happily, that's not the case. While there are a handful of terrible stories, and at least a couple with no apparent connection to the Zothique milieu, there are also some gems in these pages. The contributions from Gerard Houarner, Dan Clore, Mark McLaughlin, Don Webb, and Mark Chadbourn are all well worth reading, and Gene Wolfe and Henrik Johnsson steal the show with very strong entries. Johnsson's "The Triumph of the Worm" is fittingly the last piece in the book, and almost manages to usurp CAS himself with its bold vision of the end of the last continent.
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May 5, 2021Picked up this book specifically to read Gene Wolfe's short story homage to Clark Ashton Smith.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews