Page:Weird Tales volume 28 number 03.djvu/113

Rh novel, The Hour of the Dragon.—

Corwin Stickney, Jr., of Belleville, New Jersey, writes: "The July issue is excellent. I rank it second only to the April issue when rating the seven published so far this year. Lost Paradise and Necromancy in Naat are in a virtual tie for this month's honors. Moore is practically unbeatable, while Clark Ashton Smith's work is always of the finest quality. Since each of these two stories is so different from the other, both in theme and in the style in which it was written, I do not undertake to evaluate one above the other. Let it suffice to say that I enjoyed both hugely, and would appreciate nothing more than a story by each of them in each issue. Ronal Kayser constructed a vivid, stirring story in The Unborn. Seldom have I read one more fascinating. Edmond Hamilton disappointed me with When the World Slept. It was entirely too obvious; I hadn't read two pages before I had guessed the story's outcome. I cannot at all understand how this yarn can possibly be called weird. It might pass—on a dark night—as science-fiction. But weird fiction—never! The other tales are good, especially Loot of the Vampire and The Return of Sarah Purcell. I haven't yet read the new serial or the reprint Peculiar thing: three of the victims in this month's stories—in The Return of Sarah Purcell, The Unborn, and Kharu Knows All, to be exact—'got theirs' by way of the falling method—either by jumping out a window or by falling down a flight of stairs, as in the case of Emma in The Return of Sarah Purcell. I wonder how many discerning readers will notice that Tim Cirewe (in Kharu Knows All) chose Kharu as his new name because it and his real name, Carewe, are phonetically alike."

Gertrude Hemken, of Chicago, contributes the following comments: "Now I'm gonna unload something from my mind that's been rankling me for yars 'n' yars. So often in stories one runs across French phrases, and it is taken for granted the reader knows what they mean, so no explanation is offered. All well and good. However, when one uses a sprinkling of other foreign phrases, unless the author offers translations immediately