Echoes of the Goddess: Tales of Terror and Wonder from the End of Time / Darrell Schweitzer. Borgo Press / Wildside Press, 2013 (trade paperback 978-1-4794-0023-2 / ebook 978-1-4344-4707-4). 272 pages.

The far-future “Dying Earth” in which mankind has abandoned science for magic in the waning ages of his planet, has become its own subgenre of fantasy literature. Pioneered some eighty-odd years ago by Clark Ashton Smith and later epitomized by Jack Vance, from whose work it took its name, the concept has continued to be explored and developed by authors as diverse as M. John Harrison and Gene Wolfe, and even Lin Carter.

Darrell Schweitzer brings it his customary Lovecraftian/Dunsanian gloss, and it absolutely clicks. He envisions the far future as the fragile, soul-wearied culmination of a history so vast and layered that more of its past is forgotten than could ever be remembered. The most recent eras have been presided over by a succession of deities who rise, reign and eventually perish, leaving Earth in chaos until the rise of the next. This set of linked stories is set during the last such interregnum; the Goddess has been dead for centuries, her immense bones zealously safeguarded by priests of the holy city of Ai Hanlo (“High and Low,” perhaps?), and her magic sundered into various semi-sentient “bright” and “dark” powers, which affect events in strange and unpredictable ways.

Schweitzer dealt with the despairing end of this age and the advent of the next, largely non-human era, in his novel The Shattered Goddess; here he treats us to tales from the interregum itself, the last period in which mankind remains dominant and (somewhat) vigorous. The main sequence deals with a war of two brother magicians, the artificial beings they create and send against each other, and the lives they ruin in the process. One hapless pawn in their struggle is even a possible candidate to become the next god. Multiple private tragedies, leavened by rare moments of peace and serenity snatched from the maelstrom of fate, play out over the course of these interwoven tales.

Strong stuff, but utterly magical!

Five out of five stars.

—Brian.