Please open https://hotaudiobook.com ONLY on your standard browser Safari, Chrome, Microsoft or Firefox to download full audiobooks of your choice for free.

Title: The Double Shadow

Author: Clark Ashton Smith

Narrator: Steve Cooper

Format: Unabridged

Length: 3 hrs and 31 mins

Language: English

Release date: 11-23-10

Publisher: Audio Realms, Inc.

Ratings: 3.5 of 5 out of 10 votes

Genres: Fiction, Horror

Publisher's Summary:

A collection of six stories ranging from contemporary horror to weird alternate-world fantasy, this book is a fascinating introduction and showcase to Smith's decadently jeweled prose. Smith was one of the "big three" classic authors from the legendary pulp magazine Weird Tales (the others being H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard).

Included in this collection are "The Voyage of King Euvoran", "The Maze of the Enchanter", "The Double Shadow", "A Night in MalnTant", "The Devotee of Evil", and "The Willow Landscape".

Members Reviews:

Decadent Delight

Fans of high fantasy in the style of Lord Dunsany get a treat in Clark Ashton Smith's The Double Shadow. One of the "big three" writers of pulp fantasy in the 1920's, along with H. P. Lovecraft and Robert Howard, Ashton Smith wrote numerous well-crafted, stylish, and decadent short stories in several series. The six stories in The Double Shadow are independent of these series, but just as stylish as any of the stories in them were.

"The Voyage of King Euvoran," an ironic tale of a king's quest for a missing crown, should please any fan of the Arabian Nights. "The Maze of the Enchanter" is a brooding tale of transfiguration that must have inspired some of the early tales of Jack Vance's Dying Earth. "A Nightfall in Malneant" is a tale of a spiritual journey through despair worthy of Poe himself. "The Devotee of Evil" follows a quest for the source of evil to its ultimate wellsprings of madness. "The Willow Landscape," on the other hand, is a delicately written Chinese fairy tale showing the breadth of Ashton Smith's skill as a writer. The title story, "The Double Shadow," is a masterpiece of dark fantasy, tracing in delicate, poetic, yet malific tones the course of a conjuring of the unknown.

In his work Ashton Smith plumbs all of the dark emotions of a decaying world. Perhaps nowhere else will a devoted reader of fantasy find such variety and value in so small a space as in the collection of six stories published by Wildside Press.

Lyrical, magical, brooding, horrific

I've known about Smith for years from reading Lovecraft, Leiber, Howard, etc, but this was my first experience. You can easily see his kinship with those other geniuses of the weird tale, but his style is his own, from whimsical to dreadful (in a good way :). Highly recommended as an entertaining intro to his work.

Spooky gothic tales

Halloween is right around the corner, so I thought I'd get in the mood by reading a collection of spooky stories by Clark Ashton Smith, a writer and poet who's known for his contributions to the pulp magazine Weird Tales. Smith was a friend of H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard and an influence on many of the later pulp writers.

The Double Shadow collects six of Clark Ashton Smith's excellent short stories. You can read each of these at The Eldritch Dark, a website devoted to the writings of Clark Ashton Smith. They have posted the text of most of his stories online either because the story is in the public domain, or with permission from Smith's estate. I don't like to read stories from my computer screen, so I recommend the audio version I listened to by AudioRealms, which was beautifully narrated by Steve Cooper.