The Tree of Heaven

Rating:
Summary: A group of love stories dealing with the fantastic
Review:

I just finished reading the 1907 first edition of this book. There are some very good ideas here and the prose to back them up but the sugery romance themes that dominated Chambers' later career are starting to show a little too much here for my taste.

The Carpet of Belshazzar, the piece that binds together all of the other stories, is dark and brilliant.

The Golden Pool is great and touching, a good piece of prose.

The Tree of Dreams and The Swastika are light and funny, if anything dealing with a swastika can be said to be funny after 1938. Try to remember that this was written in 1907.

The Sign of Venus is just plane fun

Most of the rest are okay to better than okay.

Larry Loc
For more info on Chambers see www.ioc.net/~larryloc/yking001.html