Reviews of “The Empire of the Necromancers” (1932) and related work
- Spin-off: “The Witchcraft of Ulua” (1934)
- Prequel: “Xeethra” (1934)
- Spin-off: “The Master of the Crabs” (1948)
- Spin-off: “Zothique” (1951)
“The Empire of the Necromancers” (1932
)
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: “Xeethra” (1934), 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 than in any of his Hyperborea stories.
“Xeethra” (1934)
Clark Ashton Smith (writer).
Read in 2026.
“Play on!” he cried to the black piper. “Name your own guerdon—and play.”
Because this story is set in the country of Cincor before its doom, Lin Carter read it as taking place first in the internal chronology of Smith’s Zothique cycle. Curiously, it treats plague as one of the threats against the country that preceded Cincor on its southeastern soil, and we know from “The Empire of the Necromancers” (1932) that plague destroyed the later Cincor. Worldbuilding aside, there is an enchanting fatalism about the complicated life of the main character: Smith sets its up as a series of folktale-like transgressions and deals with the devil (Thassaidon), but Xeethra–Amero ultimately takes it in stride compared to the burden of power in a dying land.
“The Master of the Crabs” (1948)
Clark Ashton Smith (writer).
Read in 2026.
The description of the journey is very nice. The plot not so much. There is a racist perspective here, similar to Lovecraft’s. That makes even less sense in a far-future Dying Earth story where human skin colours familiar to the author would no longer be relevant.
“Zothique” (1951)
Clark Ashton Smith (writer).
Read in 2026.