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Incanus

Auror
Personally, I vastly prefer both Dunsany and Lovecraft to CAS. CAS has some really great concepts and atmospheres but tends to not explore them as satisfactorily (to me) as Dunsany or Lovecraft. Also, it seems strange to say this, but I honestly think these Zothique stories were more depressing than most of Lovecraft. So my preference for this type of fiction would be Dunsany > Lovecraft > Howard > CAS.

It should probably come as no surprise that I think CAS explores his ideas quite satisfactorily, with some exceptions. I don't find any of this stuff the least bit depressing. That could be because I'm something of an outsider, socially speaking (I choose to not participate in American society much, preferring to observe it from afar). The CAS stuff in particular seems almost deliberately designed to appeal to misfits, cynics, and oddballs such as myself. I admit to having a slight (but healthy) misanthropic streak in my makeup.
 

Mythopoet

Auror
It should probably come as no surprise that I think CAS explores his ideas quite satisfactorily, with some exceptions. I don't find any of this stuff the least bit depressing. That could be because I'm something of an outsider, socially speaking (I choose to not participate in American society much, preferring to observe it from afar). The CAS stuff in particular seems almost deliberately designed to appeal to misfits, cynics, and oddballs such as myself. I admit to having a slight (but healthy) misanthropic streak in my makeup.

I was speaking specifically about the Zothique stories. (I wouldn't call The City of Singing Fire depressing, for instance.) And I didn't mean depressing in the sense of "makes me depressed to read" but just that they pretty much all have very negative endings for the characters. Almost no one survives. (I think the guy and his wife survived in The Charnel God? But that's the only one I can think of.) There's nothing wrong with that. It's clearly exactly what he was going for. But it's certainly not my favorite thing.

Side note: I said to my husband (who is currently reading through all of Lovecraft) the other day that if one could say that Robert E. Howard's favorite word is "thews" and Lovecraft's favorite word is "non-Euclidean" then Clark Ashton Smith's favorite word is probably "cerements". ;)
 

Mytherea

Minstrel
Just finished Bujold's Sharing Knife series. I enjoyed it. Perhaps not as much as Chalion, but I enjoyed it. It was different. It was sweet. People on Goodreads, however, seem less than thrilled, particularly with the romantic elements so up-front. I was just pleased everyone lived and got happy ends. The last few books I read prior to these were pretty darn grim, with endings that were either ambiguous, sad, or slaughter-fests with every other character getting whacked before the final page. These came as a much-needed break from the darker side of fantasy.

Now I'm trying to decide between finishing a reread of Elrod's "Keeper of the King" or possibly starting Sanderson's "Elantris."
 

Incanus

Auror
I was speaking specifically about the Zothique stories. (I wouldn't call The City of Singing Fire depressing, for instance.) And I didn't mean depressing in the sense of "makes me depressed to read" but just that they pretty much all have very negative endings for the characters. Almost no one survives. (I think the guy and his wife survived in The Charnel God? But that's the only one I can think of.) There's nothing wrong with that. It's clearly exactly what he was going for. But it's certainly not my favorite thing.

Side note: I said to my husband (who is currently reading through all of Lovecraft) the other day that if one could say that Robert E. Howard's favorite word is "thews" and Lovecraft's favorite word is "non-Euclidean" then Clark Ashton Smith's favorite word is probably "cerements". ;)

Ha! That's hilarious. "Thews" is REH all the way. I think Steerpike may be right about HPL - "Cyclopean" sure seems to pop up a lot. I'm not sure there's a single word CAS uses with that type of regularity, but "cerements" will do. Or maybe - "Funereal."

I understand what you mean about depressing now--thanks for clarifying. I've now read every existing short story available by CAS, and I'd say his protags don't end up faring well in a good three-quarters of them or so--it's not just Zothique. It's pretty common with HPL as well, I'd say. Probably one of the main reasons neither of them came up with a serial character like Conan--they always need fresh victims to send out to their nefarious deities and necromancers and other entities. With HPL in particular, it's the 'bad-guys' (for lack of a better term) who keep showing up in multiple stories. Fun stuff!
 

fiera43

Scribe
Just got one of Laurel K. Hamilton's books from both the Anita Blake series and her Fairy princess' series and 2 books by Niel Gaiman.
 
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