Forrest’s Reviews > The King in the Golden Mask > Status Update

What a way to end the collection! "Bargette" is all about the loss of innocence, the squelching of fantasy and dreams. A fitting end to this most excellent book! Four stars, as there could have been something more done - I can't even articulate it, but there's something, just a little something missing from this story. Alas.

There is no honor among thieves when a girl named "Cruchette" is involved. Four stars to this very short, but effective tale.

"The Return to the Fold" is about exactly that: the abandonment of the allures of the city for the simple life of the rural. This story felt a little too "sudden" for me, even. Three stars.

[note: quote first para in full]. An uncharacteristically hopeful(?) ending (at least for all those who aren't the narrator) punctuates this sluggishly-whimsical story. I absolutely loved "The Blue Country" and even have a soundtrack recommendation to go with your grey, drizzly-day reading of this fine, dark tale. Five gloomy stars!

If I used the phrase "Shades of Carcosa," I could not use a more appropriate phrase, full of multi-layered meaning, to describe the story "The Sleeping City". Part Robert E. Howard, part Clark Ashton Smith, part Robert W. Chambers - a beautifully-wrought weird tale that could be a sequel to the other seafaring tales. Five stars.

I was completely baffled by "The Cart" until the last 1/3rd of the story. Beautiful descriptions of the landscape made for an atmospheric, if confusing tale. Three bloodied stars awaiting execution.

A group of blood-sated pirates picks up an old man on the open sea, the man who carries "The Flute". Music evokes, silence prevails -and punishes! Finally, a pirate tale that is not hackneyed! Four stars.

"The Grand Briere" seems to start as a pastoral set-piece, but ends up being a short, sharp piece of gothic fiction that makes one want to know and understand the stories behind the story here. Four stars.

"Bloody Blanche" didn't hit all the right cylinders for me. Still, this story of usurping a throne from the kind of man who deserved everything he got was entertaining and, at times the prose was beautiful. Three stars.

The contrast between the innocence of the title "The Talking Machine" and the actual story - filled with horrific implications and a surreal monstrosity of a machine(?) - is stark, even a bit jarring. I voice five stars for this unnerving tale, which is more "modern" in its . . . voice . . . yes, "voice" is the word I will un-ironically use, more modern than one would expect from a tale of its provenience.