The Citadel of Fear Dodo Press Francis Stevens 9781409978923 Books
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Gertrude Barrows Bennett (1883-1948) was the first major female writer of fantasy and science fiction in the United States, publishing her stories under the pseudonym Francis Stevens. She completed school through the eighth grade then attended night school in hopes of becoming an illustrator, a goal she never achieved. She began working as a stenographer, a job she held on and off for the rest of her life. She began to write a number of short stories and novels, only stopping when her mother died in 1920. Bennett wrote a number of highly acclaimed fantasies between 1917 and 1923. Her first published story, the novella Nightmare!, appeared in All-Story Weekly in 1917. Among her most famous books are Claimed! (1920) and the lost world novel The Citadel of Fear (1918). Bennett also wrote an early dystopian novel, The Heads of Cerberus (1919). She has been recognized in recent years as a pioneering female fantasy author. Amongst her other works are Unseen - Unfeared (1919), Serapion (1920) and Elf Trap.
The Citadel of Fear Dodo Press Francis Stevens 9781409978923 Books
Francis Stevens (Gertrude Barrows Bennett) was a grand writer, but I personally think that she could have really used a good editor, and I think The Citadel of Fear really shows this need.Starting out as a lost world story I really wanted to found out more about this world and its people, and yet just as things really start to become their most fascinating things are abruptly ended and its 15 year later, we and one of the main protagonists are back in America, and the story has shifted to being a Gothic Mystery / Monster story.
At first I was a bit put off by this and thought that there had been a mistake and chapters from the wrong book had been mixed, but then we find that yes this is one of the heroes from the earlier part of the story.
However, while not as well written as the first part, I was soon just as interested in the murky goings-on's involving mysterious monsters in the night, and what seems to be a perhaps mad scientist.
Unfortunately it seems that at some point Ms. Bennett grew tired of the tale and left more than half a dozen mysteries unresolved, before ending it with an abruptness that left me going WHAT! That's it?
And yet it is still an entertaining read, I'm just betting that like me you will wish there had been someone who had said "Gertrude, we need a good deal more here."
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The Citadel of Fear Dodo Press Francis Stevens 9781409978923 Books Reviews
This is a wonderful book. It's fast paced and suspenseful, I had trouble putting it down. Unfortunately, this version contains only the first 20 of 31 chapters and leaves the hero with the following paragraph "Mental torment gave way to acute physical pain and that again to the merciful blankness of negation." Very frustrating. I was able to find the end on a free internet site. I wouldn't recommend this particular version.
The name of Francis Stevens may be little known today, but from 1916-1920, she was very well known to the readers of such magazines as "The Argosy" and "All-Story Weekly," and had fans that included H.P. Lovecraft and A. Merritt. In the introduction to the 1970 Paperback Library edition, Sam Moscowitz refers to her as "the most gifted woman writer of science fiction and science-fantasy between Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and C.L. Moore." Pretty high praise indeed, but having read what is considered to be Stevens' masterpiece, "The Citadel of Fear," one will be tempted to agree with this assessment. This novel originally appeared in "The Argosy" between September and October of 1918, and is as exciting and fascinating a read as any modern-day reader could hope for.
It tells the tale of an Irishman and an American who come upon the lost Aztec city of Tlapallan, in the wilds of Mexico. After witnessing many fantastic sights there, the Irishman is kicked out for inadvertently stirring up a civil war, and the American is held prisoner. Flash forward 15 years. At the home of the Irishman's sister, a rampaging monster trashes the house one night, and that is only the beginning of one incredibly wild ride. I don't want to give too much away here, and spoil the book's many breathtaking surprises, but let me just say that by the novel's incredibly hallucinatory conclusion, we have been treated to a whole slew of nightmare creatures, battling Aztec gods, indoor swamps and on and on. Ms. Stevens sure did have one active imagination, AND the technical prowess to make her wildest plot devices come alive and seem plausible. The book is beautifully written, despite an occasional dangling modifier here and there, and there is no way that any reader will be able to guess what lies next in this amazing tale. What a shame that this package of wonders has been out of print for the last 30 years or so, in addition to all of Ms. Stevens' other work. Having read "Citadel," I would love to read some of Francis Stevens' other tales. So will you.
Citadel of Fear is a novel from the World War I era, which may have been good for the time that it was written, but doesn’t particularly hold up today. It fails in more area than it succeeds. The novel starts off with an Irishman in America finding a lost Aztec city. There are shady goings on involving Aztec gods and an escape from the place where he is being held in captivity. The novel then has a jarring and abrupt shift into the future and eventually ties back into the lost city from the beginning of the novel.
Despite the title, there is nothing especially horrific happening in this story. I found the horror elements to be rather ho-hum, and the characterization to be fairly weak. The shift from past to present was so abrupt that it almost seemed as if I were reading an entirely different story. The climax of the novel is told in summary form rather than shown to the reader and it really falls flat. It’s often difficult to judge stories written in a different era. What may have worked then may no longer work today. I don’t know if this would have been scary or captivating to a reader from nearly a century ago, but it doesn’t stand the test of time.
Carl Alves – author of Battle of the Soul
I expected better from this classic horror story. Weak plotting, weak characters and an ending that really lets the reader down all add yp to a disappointing read. A real waste of my time.
Despite the claim to be "unexpurgated", this copy is missing the last third of the novel and has pretty clearly been copied off some gutenburg knockoff site. Don't waste your money.
Francis Stevens (Gertrude Barrows Bennett) was a grand writer, but I personally think that she could have really used a good editor, and I think The Citadel of Fear really shows this need.
Starting out as a lost world story I really wanted to found out more about this world and its people, and yet just as things really start to become their most fascinating things are abruptly ended and its 15 year later, we and one of the main protagonists are back in America, and the story has shifted to being a Gothic Mystery / Monster story.
At first I was a bit put off by this and thought that there had been a mistake and chapters from the wrong book had been mixed, but then we find that yes this is one of the heroes from the earlier part of the story.
However, while not as well written as the first part, I was soon just as interested in the murky goings-on's involving mysterious monsters in the night, and what seems to be a perhaps mad scientist.
Unfortunately it seems that at some point Ms. Bennett grew tired of the tale and left more than half a dozen mysteries unresolved, before ending it with an abruptness that left me going WHAT! That's it?
And yet it is still an entertaining read, I'm just betting that like me you will wish there had been someone who had said "Gertrude, we need a good deal more here."
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