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The Last Hieroglyph  By  cover art

The Last Hieroglyph

By: Clark Ashton Smith
Narrated by: Chris Kayser, Gregory St. John, William Neenan, Daniel May, Bernard Clark, Fleet Cooper
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Editorial reviews

The fifth and final volume of definitive versions of Clark Ashton Smith’s dark fantasy and horror stories anthologizes the 29 published prior to his death, including "The Death of Malygirs", "The Tomb-Spawn", "The Last Hieroglyph", "The Threader of the Dust", and "The Black Abbott of Pthuum". The extensive notes, scholarship, and, of course, Smith’s writing itself are performed by different actors, whose individual contributions combine to create layers of appreciation for this master of speculative fiction, the third member of the Weird Tales unholy horror trinity - the other two being H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard.

Publisher's summary

The Last Hieroglyph is the fifth of the five-volume Collected Fantasies series. Editors Scott Connors and Ron Hilger have compared original manuscripts, various typescripts, published editions, and Smith's notes and letters, in order to prepare a definitive set of texts.

The Last Hieroglyph includes, in chronological order, all of Clark Ashton Smith's stories from "The Dark Age" to "The Dart of Rasasfa".

©2010 The Estate of Clark Ashton Smith (P)2013 Audible, Inc.

What listeners say about The Last Hieroglyph

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  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars

Useless TOC as usual

,Audible morons fail to list stories. Are all involved so stupid? This happens with MOST Audible story collections.

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8 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Final volume of the collected works of a master!

The final volume of the collected fantasies of Clark Ashton Smith did not disappoint, with more of the amazing weird fiction from that master of the genre. Once again, worth noting that while CAS did not appear on the "Appendix N" list of Gary Gygax, he probably deserved to do so - his work clearly influential to early D&D and RPGs, and was a major inspiration for the "Castle Amber" module that kicked off the Known World (later "Mystara") setting for D&D. I listened to this on Audible audiobook, and it was great - recently acquired the complete series in paperback and looking forward to re-"reading" them all!

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3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Quality

This collection of short stories was quite good. I listened to the four proceeding volumes before this one, and enjoyed them, too. There is a different feel to a lot of these stories, though. The author seems more cynical, perhaps, and there aren’t as many happy endings. Some of the earlier happy endings felt forced, or deus ex machina, and these new darker endings flow more naturally. The narrators are the same as in the previous collections, and they are superb. I highly recommend this collection.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

Masterfully done

Incredible stories, well read by careful narrators. very atmospheric, does justice to Smith"s poetry.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Several great Zothique stories here

A very good collection. The Zothique and Hyperborea stories are some of my favorite Smith tales.

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

No appendix of stories

Why is there no appendix of stories? That oversight alone automatically knocks 2 stars off of my review. A third star is taken off for the incredibly annoying whisper by one of the otherwise flawless narrators (he does such a good job until he starts using that darned annoying whisper voice).

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Great Book!

If you ever read H.P. Lovecraft - you will enjoy this read. Clark writes well, but a little different from how HPL writes. Very few of Clarks stories succeed in creating the atmosphere of horror which made HPL so famous but I would still highly recommend Clarks writings as the next best thing to HPL.

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

good, but the best

some of the stories were quite good. a few were not as great most of his other works. definitely worth a listen. especially if you have listened to the previous 4 anthologies.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

great classic weird fiction! !

this is a great example of clark ashton smith's work. the only reason It is not 5 stars is that it can be a little uneven, which is typical of such collections. well worth the time.

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