Publisher's Synopsis
"Wonderful and tragic allegory ... amazing and thrilling scenes ... masterful ... huge mystery, gigantic tragedy, and original and extraordinary situations..." so raved H. P. Lovecraft when The Citadel of Fear first appeared. Here is one of the greatest of all classics of dark fantasy, a gorgeously written and imaginatively conceived masterpiece by the mysterious woman author who wrote as Francis Stevens. Talapallan, lost city of the ancient Aztecs, still survives in, hidden safely in an eerie underground world. And among its many temples is the black fetid shrine where the dark god Nacoc-Yaotl is worshiped, the Citadel of Fear. When two men from the modern world stumble into Talapallan, the evil in one allows Nacoc-Yaotl to escape when they return to civilization. Soon two of Steven's trademark strong women and three very different but likable men find themselves pitted against a dark god of immense powers. Before the conflict is over, North American will be the scene of an epic battle against the mightiest gods of the Aztec pantheon. Romance, magic, meaning, adventure, and scrumptious writing are all here in this long unavailable fantasy masterwork."In a career that spanned a mere three years, Gertrude Barrows Bennett (writing as Francis Stevens) published half a dozen books that came to define the genres that followed on. she is most popularly known as the woman who invented dark fantasy, but on the way she also invented a new, creepier kind of dystopian Sci Fi.Book versions illustrated with images by Virgil Finlay, from the original editions of Stevens' work.
