‘The Mark of the Beast’ – Rudyard Kipling
While there seems to be no such thing as a bad Clark Ashton Smith story, I’ve got a feeling that too many more of these (on the blog) will get a little boring. I thought I’d mix things up a little then with a short story from a writer that I never thought I’d see on a genre blog, let alone this one… As a boy, I was encouraged to read Rudyard Kipling, something that I fought against (a lot) because, well… He wasn’t a fantasy writer, was he? Well, apart from all the talking animals I guess but even so… I just wasn’t that interested and there were loads of other books that I actually wanted to read so I went off and read them instead. Until, a little while ago. The last time I collected the Fantasy Masterworks series, I was very surprised to come across a collection of Rudyard Kipling tales. Not surprised enough to actually read it and certainly not surprised enough to keep hold of the book when I was culling my collection ahead of a move. This blog though, is a little different to pa...