Opening Passage: Zothique is a collection of (mostly) short stories. The first short story is "The Empire of the Necromancers":
The legend of Mmatmuor and Sodosma shall arise only in the latter cycles of the Earth, when the glad legends of the prime have been forgotten. Before the time of its telling, many eopochs shall have passed away, and the seas shall have fallen in their beds, and new continents shall have come to birth. Perhaps, in that day, it will serve to beguile for a little the black weariness of a dying race, grown hopeless of all but oblivion. I tell the tale as men shall tell it in Zothique, the last continent, beneath a dim sun and sad heavens where the stars come out in terrible brightness before eventide. (p. 19)
Summary: Zothique is the last inhabited continent of the Earth. Civilizations have risen, civilizations have fallen, and the traces of them have vanished in sea and cataclysm. Continents have risen, continents have collapsed beneath the sea, and continents have risen again, and this, the last one that humanity, in any sense of humanity, will ever know, is all that is left. Scientific knowledge and machinery have vanished, and humanity is again returned to savage kingdoms built out from force, worshipping gods and devils with barbaric rites, of whom the darkest and most terrible is Thasaidon, ruler of the seven hells. Empires rise by sorcery and necromancy, for devil-taught arts to rule the dead are the last, most terrible arts.
The stories and poems in the collection are quite diverse, although they all concern some form of inevitability and inescapability. Despite the dark background, or perhaps because of it, the stories are not relentlessly dark, in part because much of the darkness defeats itself. All these dark things will also pass, and they show it in their own self-destruction. The necromancers Mmatmuor and Sodosma in "The Empire of the Necromancers" build a powerful kingdom of undead by their necromantic arts, and are ultimately destroyed by them. The would-be tomb-desecrators in "The Weaver in the Vault" find darker things than they intend. "The Witchcraft of Ulua" shows the victory of ascetic restraint over lascivious demonry. In "The Charnel God", asorceror tries to steal from the dark death-god Mondiggian, who punishes him, but Mondiggian is fair to those who do not cross his claim to the dead. The mighty sorceror Namirrha takes his vengeance on King Zotulla in "The Dark Eidolon", but oversteps himself and finds that there are powers relative to whom he is as nothing. The list could be continued. Even in a world ruled by devils and abominations, evil is the beginning of its own inescapable devastation. That does not make it less evil, or less abominable; but the last delusion is thinking that one's evil can give one an escape from the inevitable. This is, of course, what necromancy is: the attempt to deny what in the end admits no denial.
The stories are quite different. I very much liked "The Witchcraft of Ulua", in which Sabmon the anchorite, learned in the dark arts, protects his great-nephew Amalzain from the temptations of Miraab, "a city of strange sins and strange witcheries and sorceries" (p. 148). In Miraab he catches the eye of the dissolute sorceress, Princess Ulua, who wants him as a lover. When he refuses, she attempts to take vengeance, haunting him with dark and troubled visions, which would make him mad; but he returns to Sabmon in time to save his mind and witness Miraab reap the harvest of its sins.
The story that I perhaps liked best was "The Black Abbot of Puthuum". Zobal the archer and Cushara the pike-bearer are friends who are assigned by their king, Hoaraph, the mission of finding a legendary maiden of great beauty, whom Hoaraph wants for his harem. They find her; her name is Rubalsa, and of course they fall in love immediately. As they are returning a strange darkness overtakes them, they meet a man who calls himself Ujuk, the abbot of Puthuum, who offers his hospitality. Zobal and Cushara are skeptical, but they follow him to a great monastery, where they are offered a feast. They refrain from all food and drink, and rather than sleep, they stay vigilant in the night. They are separated in the night when Zobal goes to get their own food, and Zobal is led down a dark stairway by a voice until he comes to the monastic catacombs, and finds that the voice comes from a half-decayed corpse. This is Uldor, the true abbot of the monastery of Puthuum and once a great magic-worker; Ujuk is the spawn of Uldor and a succubus, the result of a momentary lapse and giving-in to temptation. Ujuk put Uldor in the catacombs to be always dying, never dead, an agony of repentance for a thousand years. From Uldor Zobal learns the way to save themselves from being prey to Ujuk.
The combination of the fantastical and Smith's lush, poetic style often gives the stories something of a fairy-tale quality, which becomes particularly intense when the stories are at their most honest about darkness being its own punishment. As with the old fairyland, Zothique is a strange and uncertain place, alien in its demands, perilous on every side. But, last of all lands, it is a realm of endings, for there is one inescapable: that all things on Earth will pass away.
Favorite Passage: From "The Voyage of King Euvoran":
Thereat the ruler of the birds, as if amazed and more indignant than before, made question of Euvoran and interrogated him sharply concerning the gazolba. And, learning that this bird had been slain by sailors and afterward stuffed, and that the whole purpose of Euvoran in his voyage was to catch and kill it a second time and re-stuff it if necessary, the ruler cried out in a great and wrathful voice:
"This helpeth not thy case, but showeth thee guilty of a twofold crime and a triple infamy: for thou has owned a most abominable thing, and one that subverteth nature. In this my tower, as is right and proper, I keep the bodies of men that my taxidermists have stuffed for me, but truly, it is not allowable or sufferable that man should thus to birds. So, for the sake of justice and retribution, I shall presently commit thee to the care of my taxidermists. Indeed, methinks that a stuffed king (since even the vermin have kings) will serve to enhance my collection." (pp. 287-288)
Recommendation: Recommended; as a collection, it's uneven, but at its best it is very good.
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Clark Ashton Smith, Zothique: The Final Cycle, Hippocampus Press (New York: 2022).