The evaluation is frankly an ignorant guess. Blackwood has a great reputation as one of the early pioneers of fantasy/horror fiction, but I have read very little of his work --it tends to be too grim for my taste I see from the bookplate that I bought this book for my father (who already owned some earlier Blackwood) for Father's Day., 1974. I expect he read it, but I don't think I did. I see that the opening of the first story ("Chinese Magic") about a an English mental specialist who meets a mysterious beautiful lady at a fashionable party actually includes the line "their eyes met across the crowded room" --I had not realized it went back far. ( )

This is a collection made by the editors from the mass of Blackwood's works that had not been served up in this order before. In keeping with the very mechanical nature of the birth of this anthology, I can't remember single story... ( )

I wasn't as impressed with this collection as I have been with some other Blackwood stories. There just weren't any stories here that particularly held my attention or were all that memorable, I'm sorry to say. ( )

One must slow one's pace down some, but there are gems in these there hills. If you are looking for horror or black fantasy tales along the lines of lovecraft, koontz, or king, this may not be your bag, because if i would put a word on the tone of these stories, i would call them compassionate. Take "The Other Wing" for instance. It's narrator is a five year old boy (maybe six or seven), who's visited by a gentle giant of a woman who represents night dreams, and she lives in the other wing, which is closed to him. Of course he investigates that wing to find his grandfather and there is a shadow of evil-black-darkness in the "Nightmare Alley, but that is the only darkness in the story. I came away from this book more ensounced in delight and warmth about other spiritual levels than i was goin gin. That alone, is valuable. ( )