ELAK of Atlantis by Henry Kuttner Book Review

Elak of atlantis

Dark tavern, cantilever construction in old town Atlantis. We sit with our spring wine and books in the corner. You’re thumbing through an old script from the beginning of the last epoch. I’m staring at a treasure map.

A man across the way is watching us. His mottled gray skin and greasy brown robe covers a fat body. His piggish face and portly eyes look like pin pricks on a yellow rag.

“Do you have a problem, sir?” I ask with my palm resting on the hilt of my sword.

The fat man waddles over to us.

“The wizard of Pikiht has put a bounty on your heads. I am here to claim your liberty and see you in chains.” The fat man wheezes and chortles like a pig in a pen.

I draw my sword. With one quick precision swipe his throat is slit, blood streams from his corpulent fat neck.

We gather our belongings and walk out under the cool white stars. Our castle awaits on the high plains of Never Never Land.

ELAK of Atlantis by Henry Kuttner Book Review

Elak of atlantis

My highlights and annotations:

Elak of Atlantis by Kuttner, Henry

Book last read: 2025-10-09 20:39:21
Percentage read: 100%

Chapter 3: Kuttner Sharpens His Literary Sword
Annotation
Chapter progress: 3.45%
Highlight: they were both extraordinarily talented writers who found one another and together fell into a wonderful creative groove.
Notes: Love story.

Chapter 4: Thunder in the Dawn
Annotation
Chapter progress: 8.05%
Highlight: in taverns and by campfires men met and boasted and sharpened their blades.

Notes: Join me beside the campfire.

Chapter 4: Thunder in the Dawn
Annotation
Chapter progress: 8.62%
Highlight: Misbegotten spawn of a worm!
Notes: Insult saved.

Chapter 4: Thunder in the Dawn
Annotation
Chapter progress: 11.49%
Highlight: Her transparent robe concealed little; she seemed like an amber statue draped in gauze. Bronze hair fell disheveled about an oval, elfin face; amber eyes were upturned questioningly
Notes: Hello. My love.

Chapter 4: Thunder in the Dawn
Annotation
Chapter progress: 12.64%
Highlight: If necessary, our magic can send the trees marching against those who follow.
Notes: Good magic.

Chapter 4: Thunder in the Dawn
Annotation
Chapter progress: 12.64%
Highlight: They set out through the moonlit forest.…

Notes: Good rejoiner.

Chapter 4: Thunder in the Dawn
Annotation
Chapter progress: 13.22%
Highlight: She kicked off the sandals, slipped out of her garment, and ran into the lake, laughing with pleasure as the cool water caressed her aching muscles.

Notes: Good idea.

Chapter 4: Thunder in the Dawn
Annotation
Chapter progress: 14.94%
Highlight: monolithic eidolons
Notes: Good desciptor.

Chapter 4: Thunder in the Dawn
Annotation
Chapter progress: 18.39%
Highlight: He stood alone in a fantastic weave of somber shadows.
Notes: Yes.

Chapter 4: Thunder in the Dawn
Annotation
Chapter progress: 20.11%
Highlight: A satyr-girl! A faun-maiden, slender and white and virginal as cool marble, round-breasted, with red-golden hair that hung in velvet coils about the smooth shoulders. To her waist she was human. Below that all semblance of humanity ended, and sheer fantasy began.

Notes: Satyr-girl!

Chapter 4: Thunder in the Dawn
Annotation
Chapter progress: 20.11%
Highlight: samite
Notes: Rich silk fabric used for dress making and decoration.

Chapter 4: Thunder in the Dawn
Annotation
Chapter progress: 21.26%
Highlight: He felt the fortress of his soul, his mind, crumbling under the assault of the Shadow.

Notes: Yes.

Chapter 4: Thunder in the Dawn
Annotation
Chapter progress: 29.31%
Highlight: rugose
Notes: Wrinkled, corrugated.

Chapter 4: Thunder in the Dawn
Annotation
Chapter progress: 31.61%
Highlight: leonine
Notes: Resembling a lion.

Chapter 4: Thunder in the Dawn
Annotation
Chapter progress: 34.48%
Highlight: All around Elak was the death cry of a ruined universe, and it swelled and rose to a dreadful crescendo of terror.

Notes: Collapse.

Chapter 4: Thunder in the Dawn
Annotation
Chapter progress: 35.06%
Highlight: May his soul be tortured through eternity in the Nine Hells!
Notes: Anthony Fauci

Chapter 5: The Spawn of Dagon
Annotation
Chapter progress: 36.78%
Highlight: And through the darkness vague whisperings came to him.

Notes: I can hear your voice.

Chapter 5: The Spawn of Dagon
Annotation
Chapter progress: 36.78%
Highlight: The nitrous walls gleamed dankly in the glow of an oil lamp, and a little stream ran across the rock floor of the cave and lost itself, amid chuckles of goblin laughter, in a small hole at the base of the wall.
Notes: Goblin laughter.

Chapter 5: The Spawn of Dagon
Annotation
Chapter progress: 37.36%
Highlight: sibilant
Notes: Hissing sound.

Chapter 5: The Spawn of Dagon
Annotation
Chapter progress: 39.66%
Highlight: No doubt the girl would be grateful.
Notes: Grateful girl. No doubt.

Chapter 5: The Spawn of Dagon
Annotation
Chapter progress: 40.8%
Highlight: if the gods are capricious, the goddesses are certainly even more so.

Notes: hello goddesses.

Chapter 5: The Spawn of Dagon
Annotation
Chapter progress: 41.95%
Highlight: Their greatest hope is to sink the continents again, so that the seas will roll over all the earth, and not a human being will survive.
Notes: Climate change.

Chapter 5: The Spawn of Dagon
Annotation
Chapter progress: 41.95%
Highlight: Now he knew why Gesti’s face had seemed so immobile. It was a mask.
Notes: Injectable face mask freaks everywhere.

Chapter 5: The Spawn of Dagon
Annotation
Chapter progress: 43.68%
Highlight: Elak realized that he was cursing softly, and abruptly changed it to a prayer.
Notes: yes. Often i find myself doing this.

Chapter 6: Beyond the Phoenix
Annotation
Chapter progress: 45.4%
Highlight: tenebrous
Notes: Dark shadowy or obscure.

Chapter 6: Beyond the Phoenix
Annotation
Chapter progress: 47.7%
Highlight: He eyed her curiously as her profile was from time to time outlined against the torchlight. A beauty, he thought. The regal cast of her face was softened by its warm humanity, and brown curls clung damply to her pale forehead. The slender, delicate curves of her body were scarcely hidden by the silken night-dress, ripped in more than one place so that ivory flesh shone through.
Notes: How can i be of service?

Chapter 6: Beyond the Phoenix
Annotation
Chapter progress: 51.15%
Highlight: Where’s the princess?
Notes: How should i know?

Chapter 6: Beyond the Phoenix
Annotation
Chapter progress: 53.45%
Highlight: saraband,
Notes: Slow, stately Spanish walz.

Chapter 7: Dragon Moon
Annotation
Chapter progress: 56.32%
Highlight: limning
Notes: Highlight something w bright color or light.

Chapter 7: Dragon Moon
Annotation
Chapter progress: 58.05%
Highlight: inchoate
Notes: Rudimentary. Not fully formed.

Chapter 7: Dragon Moon
Annotation
Chapter progress: 58.05%
Highlight: How can a man battle dreams?”
Notes: Good question.

Chapter 7: Dragon Moon
Annotation
Chapter progress: 62.07%
Highlight: You must go to her on her isle.
Notes: Affirmative.

Chapter 7: Dragon Moon
Annotation
Chapter progress: 63.22%
Highlight: peristyles
Notes: Row of collums round a garden.

Chapter 7: Dragon Moon
Annotation
Chapter progress: 65.52%
Highlight: I have dwelt for a time on earth, and I would dwell there again, in green fields with the bright cornflowers and daisies gay amid the grass—with the fresh winds of earth caressing me. The hearth-fires, the sound of human voices, and a man’s love—my Father Poseidon knows how I long for
Notes: She loves me.

Chapter 7: Dragon Moon
Annotation
Chapter progress: 66.67%
Highlight: Yet within himself he sensed a secret well of power that
Notes: Thank you. My island goddess.

Chapter 7: Dragon Moon
Annotation
Chapter progress: 66.67%
Highlight: He rested and slept, and the enchanted strength of the sea-woman poured into the citadel of his
Notes: Sea woman.

Chapter 7: Dragon Moon
Annotation
Chapter progress: 68.97%
Highlight: curvetted.
Notes: Series of jumps on hind legs… Horse.

Chapter 7: Dragon Moon
Annotation
Chapter progress: 72.99%
Highlight: He was remembering a low, rippling voice that spoke with longing of the fields and hearth-fires of earth, a slim, inhuman hand that had reached through a curtain—a sea-witch who had died to save a world to which she had never belonged.

Notes: She wanted to be human.

Chapter 8: Cursed be the City
Annotation
Chapter progress: 73.56%
Highlight: His sunken eyes, beneath their snowy penthouse brows, dwelt on the far distance, where a forest swept up into the mountain slopes and faded
Notes: Snowy penthouse brows.

Chapter 8: Cursed be the City
Annotation
Chapter progress: 81.03%
Highlight: Soundlessly they went through the soundless forest.
Notes: Excellent work.

Chapter 8: Cursed be the City
Annotation
Chapter progress: 82.18%
Highlight: paean
Notes: Song of praise or triumph.

Chapter 9: The Citadel of Darkness
Annotation
Chapter progress: 90.8%
Highlight: Ever and anon a soft wind whispered past, and waves rippled across the jet sea.
Notes: Ever and anon.

Chapter 9: The Citadel of Darkness
Annotation
Chapter progress: 91.38%
Highlight: soporific
Notes: Tending to induce drowsiness.

Chapter 9: The Citadel of Darkness
Annotation
Chapter progress: 91.38%
Highlight: Lethean
Notes: Causing oblivion or forgetfulness.

Chapter 9: The Citadel of Darkness
Annotation
Chapter progress: 92.53%
Highlight: scintillant
Notes: Emit flashes of light, sparkle.

Chapter 9: The Citadel of Darkness
Annotation
Chapter progress: 94.25%
Highlight: The warlock has need of a maiden once in a decade. Thus he renews his youth.
Notes: Renewal.

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