Reviews of “The Empire of the Necromancers” (1932) and related work
- Spin-off: “The Witchcraft of Ulua” (1934)
- Spin-off: “Zothique” (1951)
“The Empire of the Necromancers” (1932
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Clark Ashton Smith (writer).
Read in 2026.
Thus did the outcast necromancers find for themselves an empire and a subject people in the desolate, barren land where the men of Tinarath had driven them forth to perish.
A lot of Smith’s Hyperborean stories, starting with “The Tale of Satampra Zeiros” (1931), are about the adventures of evil men. That’s true here as well, in the first of Smith’s stories about Zothique, at the other end of an imagined human history. The narrator says so, calling the necromancers “malign”, “baleful”, etc. Here, Smith is not satisfied with living vicariously through evil men, so halfway through, he picks a new perspective on events. The raised dead of the country of Cincor, embodying “the people” in their struggle to “win back to oblivious death”, do take revenge, but then they destroy themselves completely instead of allowing evil to continue.
References here: The Plague of the Zombies (1966).
“The Witchcraft of Ulua” (1934)
Clark Ashton Smith (writer).
Read in 2026.
Amalzain visits his great-uncle Sabmon before and after his worrying experiences at the royal court.
Smith was literally a poet. With less plot, he does better here in any of his Hyperborea stories.
“Zothique” (1951)
Clark Ashton Smith (writer).
Read in 2026.