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The Face in the Abyss by Abraham Merritt
Lost cities, forbidden idols, and a perilous expedition into a realm where myth still breathes—this is pulp adventure at its most intoxicating. As explorers push past the edge of the map, they awaken forces that blur the line between treasure and doom. The Face in the Abyss beckons with golden-age wonder and eerie, subterranean allure.
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In The Face in the Abyss, did you enjoy ...
... opulent, incantatory prose that renders a hidden realm as a living enchantment?
The King Of Elfland's Daughter by Lord Dunsany
If what swept you away in The Face in the Abyss was the lush, spell-like language that turned Yu-Atlanchi and Suarra’s rites into pure enchantment, The King of Elfland’s Daughter will feel like a kindred dream. Dunsany’s sentences shimmer as Alveric crosses into Elfland to wed Lirazel, and the very air seems to thrum with the same otherworldly awe that surrounded Graydon before the Face and the coils of the Snake-Mother. It’s prose you don’t just read—you breathe.
... a dreamlike, reality-bending descent into strange lands where each encounter remakes the world?
A Voyage To Arcturus by David Lindsay
When Graydon followed Suarra into caverns and gardens where Nimir’s shadow bent reality, the journey felt like a fever-dream of transformations. A Voyage to Arcturus takes that sensation and goes all in: Maskull travels across the world of Tormance, gaining new senses and meeting beings who overturn every certainty, the way Nimir’s masks and living idols warped what was possible beneath the Abyss. It’s the same vertigo of revelation, turned cosmic.
... ancient rites, immortal rulers, and lost civilizations ensnaring a mortal wanderer?
She by H. Rider Haggard
If Suarra’s guidance, the forbidden rituals, and the dread of Nimir’s age-old power hooked you, She offers that same allure of antiquity and peril. Leo Vincey and Holly push into the ruins of Kôr to face Ayesha, an immortal queen whose beauty and doom echo the seductive dangers Graydon meets beneath the Abyss. The pull of destiny, the shiver of taboo ceremony—it’s all here, steeped in legend.
... a richly imagined subterranean civilization with its own peoples, monsters, and power struggles?
At the Earth's Core by Edgar Rice Burroughs
The way Merritt mapped Yu-Atlanchi—its serpent-folk, its factions, its living idols—made the underground feel vast and real. In At the Earth’s Core, David Innes and Abner Perry pierce into Pellucidar, wrestling with Mahars and Sagoths and navigating tribal politics that mirror Graydon’s perilous alliances beneath the Face in the Abyss. If you loved losing yourself in a complete hidden world, this delivers that immersive thrill.
... cosmic vistas and occult dread blooming from a single place of power?
The House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson
Standing before the carved visage and feeling Nimir’s ancient malice, Graydon glimpses a cosmos wider and stranger than he expected. The House on the Borderland channels that same shock of the infinite as a recluse’s home becomes a fulcrum for swine-things, astral voyages, and a vision of the universe’s far future—otherworldly beats that rhyme with Suarra’s ceremonies and the Abyss’s terrible revelations. It’s that spine-tingling sense of the vast unknown, distilled.
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