The Averoigne stories of Clark Ashton Smith are among the most vivid and breathtaking in all of fantasy literature. Clark Ashton Smith’s imagination is complemented by the artwork of David Ho, who has created 12 double-page, full color artworks, one for each story, plus an assortment of small devices.

This edition features an oversize format, over 11 inches tall, with four color printing throughout on Italian paper. It includes printed endsheets, a ribbon marker, a signature page, and cloth binding in Italian Cialux cloth, wrapped in a dustjacket.

Above everything else, Averoigne is beautiful and magical. Clark Ashton Smith was a poet of vast talent and his powers seem particularly evident when he sets them to evoking this strange, medieval land and its wonders. All of his stories resonate and haunt—you are far from finished with them when you’ve read them and put them down—but the spells woven by these tales seem to have a particular persistence.

All the legends make it quite clear that anyone rash enough to visit a real fairyland will never quite manage to leave it again entirely, and, in that fairy sense, Averoigne is real. Once you’ve read this book you’ll find you’ve been authentically enchanted by a master sorcerer and for the rest of your life you must expect to be periodically wafted willy-nilly far away from ordinary things. One moment you’ll be on a crowded bus, and the next you’ll be wandering down a flowery pathway by the River Isoile; another time when you’ve almost gotten yourself to sleep in some lonely hotel room, you’ll suddenly be lost amid tall, grey trees perilously close to the tomb of Malinbois; and staring fixedly into space with your mind on nothing in particular, will almost certainly cause you to revisit that interesting Inn near Sylaire.