I’m having lots of fun reading Echoes of the Goddess, Tales of Terror and Wonder from the End of Time, a great collection of stories by Darrell Schweitzer, set in the same universe of the author’s popular and highly respected 1982 novel, The Shattered Goddess.

The eleven stories in the volume – which is available as an inexpensive ebook through Amazon – are set in a distant, decadent future, after a catastrophe of theological proportions (narrated in the novel mentioned above).
The setting and the mood recall Clark Ashton Smith’s Zothique and Jack Vance’s Dying Earth – the so called dying earth/end of times subgenre.

Now I am particularly interested in this subgenre, and I’m highly impressed by Schweitzer’s prose – the quality of the storytelling is such, that even a deceivingly light plot becomes multi-layered and highly satisfactory.
There is style and substance.
This is fantasy fiction, but a style of fantasy fiction and swords & sorcery that goes back to the roots of the genre, back to the pages of Weird Tales.
And yet, it is not just a nostalgia trip or a form of narrative archaeology.

The book was released by Wildside Press in february 2013, and is highly recommended.