Pam Baddeley
This collection of short stories seems to have been a reprint of the first collection of Smith's work, published by Arkham House in 1941. In this first volume, his first ever published story, 'The End of the Story' appears and a couple of other stories set in Averoigne, his imaginary province of France which I've encountered in collections read previously. In that first story a scholarly young man at the end of the 18th century has left behind an account which explains his disappeance after he was lost in the woods travelling to his father's house and was put up by a hospitable monastery. Unfortunately, the very select library, shown to him by the abbot, included a manuscript which the abbot warned him not to read because it was accursed and this acted on the young man's curiousity until the inevitable happened.......
In 'The City of the Singing Flame' Smith's imagination is given full rein, in an account of a man who inherits a manuscript left behind by his friend who has vanished, and who follows him through a gateway to another dimension. Strange wonders and creatures abound in this tale, but unlike some similar stories by Smith, this one has more of a proper plot and is less of a travelogue/description of odd lifeforms.
On the whole I liked the stories in the first part of the book better. One in the second half, 'The Dark Eidolon', was reminiscent of some of the very over the top tales of evil sorcerors which I have previously encountered in this writer's work. The last story, however, told by the apprentice of a wizard, has a creepier effect. Altogether, given the mix of effective and not so effective tales I rate this as a mid-range 3 star read.
