[The Averoigne Chronicles 03] • A Rendezvous in Averoigne

In 1927, H.P. Lovecraft wrote about Clark Ashton Smith: "In sheer daemonic strangeness and fertility of conception, Mr. Smith is perhaps unexcelled by any other writer dead or living. Who else has seen such gorgeous, luxuriant, and feverishly distorted visions of infinite spheres and multiple dimensions and lived to tell the tale?" If you relish horror or dark fantasy, and you have yet to discover Klarkash-Ton, you have a real treat in store. This beautifully produced Arkham House collection is a bejeweled corridor into the dark worlds of vampire-cursed Averoigne, Zothique of the dying sun, primordial Hyperborea (which, with its black, amorphous god Tsathoggua, is close in spirit to Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos ), and others. Smith is a consummate stylist whose evocations of lush exoticism and languid evil led critic Brian Stableford to call him "the poet of American Decadence," and yet his tales are also humorous—in a wry, macabre way. A Rendezvous in Averoigne collects 30 tales, with illustrations by J.K. Potter and an introduction by Ray Bradbury.

Contents:

Introduction (A Rendezvous in Averoigne) • essay by Ray Bradbury

A Rendezvous in Averoigne • interior artwork by J.K. Potter

The Holiness of Azédarac • (1933)

The Colossus of Ylourgne • (1934)

The End of the Story • (1930)

A Rendezvous in Averoigne • (1931)

The Last Incantation • (1930)

The Death of Malygris • (1934)

A Voyage to Sfanomoë • (1931)

The Weird of Avoosl Wuthoqquan • (1932)

The Seven Geases • (1934)

The Tale of Satampra Zeiros • (1931)

The Coming of the White Worm • (1941)

The City of the Singing Flame • [Singing Flame] • (1931)

The Dweller in the Gulf • (1960)

The Chain of Aforgomon • (1935)

Genius Loci • (1933)

The Maze of Maal Dweb • (1938)

The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis • (1932)

The Uncharted Isle • (1930)

The Planet of the Dead • (1932)

Master of the Asteroid • (1932)

The Empire of the Necromancers • (1932)

The Charnel God • (1934)

Xeethra • (1934)

The Dark Eidolon • (1935)

The Death of Ilalotha • (1937)

The Last Hieroglyph • (1935)

Necromancy in Naat • (1936)

The Garden of Adompha • [Zothique] • (1938)

The Isle of the Torturers • (1933)

Morthylla • (1953)