If the baroque sentences and jeweled diction that saturate tales like “The Isle of the Torturers” and “The Dark Eidolon” swept you away, you’ll adore the lush cadences of The King of Elfland’s Daughter. Dunsany’s rolling, incantatory paragraphs evoke the same opulent mood Smith conjures in Zothique and Averoigne, turning every hill and hall into myth. Like Smith’s sorcerers and princes, Alveric and Lirazel move through scenes that feel carved from amber—language you can luxuriate in.

Loved the vertiginous, dreamlike menace of “The City of the Singing Flame” or the feverish doom in “The Beast of Averoigne”? Chambers’ linked stories about the forbidden play and the realm of Carcosa distill that same surreal seep of reality into nightmare. As Smith’s portals and geases twist fate, so do the yellow sign and Cassilda’s song unspool sanity—otherworldly terror that arrives like a half-remembered dream.

If Zothique’s crumbling empires in “The Empire of the Necromancers” and the sorcerous pageantry of “The Dark Eidolon” enthralled you, The Dying Earth offers a similarly decadent tapestry. Vance’s wizards (Mazirian, Turjan) bargain and scheme amid faded marvels, arcane tomes, and amoral enchantments—worldbuilding as vivid and strange as Smith’s, where every spell feels like the last light of a dying sun.

If the sinister necromancies in “The Empire of the Necromancers,” the baleful rites of “The Isle of the Torturers,” or the doom-laden pacts of “The Seven Geases” gripped you, Miéville’s New Crobuzon will scratch that itch. Isaac’s dabbling in crisis energy and the horrific rise of the slake-moths echo Smith’s fascination with knowledge that stains the soul—grand, grotesque thaumaturgy with terrible costs.

If stepping through impossible thresholds—like the portal in “The City of the Singing Flame” or the alien catacombs of “The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis”—left you breathless, Lindsay’s metaphysical odyssey will do the same. Maskull’s journey across Tormance unfolds a procession of uncanny landscapes and revelations, delivering that same jolt of cosmic wonder Smith conjures at the edge of the unknown.