[1] The book collects one poem and all sixteen tales of the author's Zothique cycle, set on the Earth's last continent in a far distant future, with an introduction, map, and epilogue by Carter.

[2] All were first published in the magazine Weird Tales with the exception of "The Voyage of King Euvoran" which first appeared in the 1933 book The Double Shadow and Other Fantasies and later republished under the title "The Quest of Gazolba" in the September 1947 issue.

Zothique, as I conceive it, comprises Asia Minor, Arabia, Persia, India, parts of northern and eastern Africa, and much of the Indonesian archipelago.

The chief language spoken (of which I have provided examples in an unpublished drama) is based on Indo-European roots and is highly inflected, like Sanskrit, Greek and Latin.

"[2] Amra's L. Sprague de Camp favoured the collection with "all sixteen Zothique stories, plus a poem, by the master of the macabre in jewel-bedizened proze, about sorcerous doings on the earth's last continent.

"[8] Bizarre Fantasy Tales's Robert A. W. Lowndes opined "The best introduction to Clark Ashton Smith presently available is the Ballantine, softcover edition of the Zothique series.