The City of a Thousand Gods

Just finished reading The City of a Thousand Gods (Sam's Dot), Marge Simon & Malcolm Deeley's novel-in-vignettes, over the weekend.   Featuring thirty illustrations by Simon -- in color! --  this elegant and intriguing fantasy demonstrates what the small press does best.   Combining dreamlike prose narratives, poetic interludes, and jewel-like bits of art at the beginning of each new chapter, it offers a reading experience which suggests as much as it tells plainly. 

Chronicling the lifespan of a fantastic metropolis in little over one hundred pages sounds unlikely, but The City of a Thousand Gods manages this easily.  Simon and Deeley's individual vignettes -- many amounting to prose poems -- and characters interweave as the timeline progresses, which left me with the feeling of having read (or imagined) a far more comprehensive tale.  
  
 Fans of Clark Ashton Smith,  Dunsany, or well-illustrated fantasy in general should check this one out.