Clark Ashton Smith was a colleague of H.P. Lovecraft and Robert Howard, and his small but rich bibliography reads like a mix between the two: Swashbuckling dventures in nightmarish fantasy realms filled with ancient evils and dead gods. I'll be real, I've barely cracked into this. I've read, at best, a tenth of this compilation's stories, and poetry. But the dense, luscious prose conjures such jaw-dropping imagery that I already know it will be a favorite read of the year.

Clark Ashton Smith never had a formal education. He learned to write by reading and memorizing the dictionary from cover-to-cover. As such, Smith will confidently use some truly bonkers turns of phrase to craft his dreamscapes. But despite their unfamiliarity, I don't find them disorienting. They make sense in context, and help inundate the reader in Smith's arcane worlds. (Any Book of the New Sun fans would love this, and I am among them.) I find myself cackling from delight every time I read another one of Smith's archaisms. So this will be the meat of my review: These are all of the words I learned so far from reading a mere 30 pages of The Dark Eidolon and Other Fantasies. Enjoy.

• Pecuniary

• Chary

• Cressets

• Purpureal

• Leathern

• Cupolas

• Coeval

• Quinquangular

• Liquescent

• Ebullition

• Celerity

• Exerable

• Porphyritic

• Insuperable

• Sonorous

• Meseemeth

• Adumbrations

• Diddering

• Puncheons

• Oftensith

• Tunfuls

• Corporosity

• Optimate

• Discommodation

• Fain

• Mysteriarch

• Ophidian

• Venefic