Pickman’s Press, $4.99, ISBN 978-0998938950
Horror, 2019 (Reissue)

Clark Ashton Smith is one of the great triumvirates of early weird fiction, standing alongside his equally eccentric pen pals, HP Lovecraft and Robert E Howard. If HP Lovecraft’s brand of horror was existential dread and Robert E Howard’s was muscle-bound violence, then Mr Smith’s was a fever-dream cocktail of medieval weirdness, excessive adjectives, and at least one beautiful yet diabolical seductress per story.

His influence can be found everywhere from tabletop RPGs to the most unhinged corners of the horror genre. Nowhere is Smith’s flair for the bizarre more evident than in his Averoigne stories, which take medieval France and crank up the corruption, magic, and general misfortune to the point where even Dracula would probably say, “This place has too many supernatural problems.”

And now we have The Averoigne Archives, a collection of all these tales in one place, complete with an exquisitely drawn map, proving once and for all that Averoigne is a real-ish place where people absolutely should not live, travel, or even think about visiting.

Let’s take a look at what lurks in the forests and crumbling castles of this cursed region:

Mother of Toads
A young man learns the hard way why you should never accept drinks from swamp witches. Predictably, things go terribly wrong when he tries to ghost his new amphibian overlord. Some readers may be horrified; others may be asking, “Okay, but how monstrous is she, exactly?”

The Maker of Gargoyles
A stonemason carves two terrifying gargoyles for a church, accidentally imbuing them with his own personal baggage—one with his seething rage and the other with his less-than-holy lust for the local tavern wench. Naturally, the gargoyles spring to life and begin acting out their creator’s worst impulses in an orgy of destruction. The poor guy realizes too late that he’s essentially built a pair of medieval Twitter accounts—monsters that exist solely to spew venom and thirst.

The Holiness of Azédarac
A young monk, charged with exposing a corrupt, devil-worshipping bishop, gets sidetracked by a beautiful woman and promptly forgets all about his mission. One might say this is Smith’s take on romance, but it’s really just a cautionary tale about why sending an easily distracted monk to take down a seasoned practitioner of dark magic was never going to end well. The bishop probably laughed himself into the abyss watching this unfold.

A Night in Malnéant
A gloomy, poetic man wanders into a ghost town where he discovers that the woman he definitely didn’t mean to drive to suicide is being honored in a creepy posthumous parade. He immediately feels guilty, but one can’t help wondering: must we always mourn women who make catastrophically bad romantic choices? It’s like a medieval PSA for emotionally unavailable men.

The Colossus of Ylourgne
A bitter dwarf, because of course it’s a bitter dwarf, assembles a “charnel colossus” (a giant golem made of corpses) to go all Attack on Titan on his enemies. His former student, being the designated hero of the story, must stop him. This concept is metal as hell, but Mr Smith, being Mr Smith, takes his time getting to the action. The pacing is slower than an actual zombie apocalypse. Still, it’s the granddaddy of all corpse golem horror stories, so respect must be paid.

The Enchantress of Sylaire
Another innocent lad, another seductive supernatural woman. But this time, no trickery is required—our hero willingly throws himself into her clutches. No roofies, no magic spells, just good old-fashioned simping. This one’s forgettable, though, as it mostly reads like a medieval Jackie Collins novel, except the Hollywood wives are witches and demons.

The Beast of Averoigne
A red comet streaks across the sky, and wouldn’t you know it, a horrific beast starts terrorizing the land. This place is basically the medieval version of Tokyo, attracting nightmarish horrors on the regular. The story is part monster-hunt, part whodunnit, but given how sketchy one particular character is, the mystery doesn’t last long. Still, good monster fun.

The Mandrakes
A sorcerer kills his wife in self-defense (she did try to murder him first), buries her, and then—against all good sense—starts messing around with creepy human-shaped mandrake roots growing from her grave. Predictably, disaster ensues. The moral of the story? If weird stuff starts sprouting from the remains of your murdery ex, don’t mess with it! Some people beg to be horror protagonists.

A Rendezvous in Averoigne
A troubadour and his beloved wander into a vampire’s lair, proving that chivalric romance is no match for bloodthirsty immortals. Given Averoigne’s track record, one wonders why anyone in this place ever goes outside at night. For once, though, the protagonist isn’t a total moron and manages to escape with his love intact. It’s fine, but ultimately, Mr Smith’s best stories require at least a little death and despair.

The Disinterment of Venus
A monastery of monks digs up a statue of Venus, and suddenly they’re all feeling very, very sinful. The demonic influence spreads, causing mass discomfort. Clark Ashton Smith really loves writing about horny priests, doesn’t he? This one kicks off with the line “Three monks were spading lustily in the garden,” which, while disappointingly literal, still makes for an unforgettable mental image.

The Satyr
A noblewoman gets bored, so she sneaks off to meet her poet lover, only to wander into an enchanted grove where a satyr awaits. At this point, one wonders: “Do these people learn nothing?” If you live in Averoigne, maybe don’t stroll into the wilderness assuming everything will be fine. Spoiler: it never is.

The End of the Story
Yet another young man seduced and destroyed by a beautiful, otherworldly woman. What is in the water here that makes the men so profoundly easy to bamboozle by anything with curves and a hypnotic voice?

Finally, the collection closes with Averoigne, a poem that, appropriately enough, extols the seductive, dangerous feminine forces that repeatedly ensnare hapless men in this region. Truly, Mr Smith had one primary fear in life: hot women.

To conclude, not every story here is a banger, and the author does tend to take his sweet time getting to the action. Still, The Averoigne Archives is a fascinating glimpse into the weird, decadent horror of one of the genre’s greatest stylists. Just be prepared for a lot of florid descriptions, an overwhelming number of supernatural honeypots, and a medieval province that desperately needs a plague-level reset button.