What Moves the Dead, by T. Kingfisher – This is an adaptation and expansion of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher,” which I read in preparation for this. It contains other references as well, with the country of Ruravia being named after Ruritania from The Prisoner of Zenda (something I tried to read but never finished), and Beatrix Potter’s fictional aunt appearing as a character. The author notes how interested Poe was in descriptions of fungus, so she combines this with the existing themes of the original story, making the fungus responsible for the deterioration of the house and its inhabitants, as well as the reanimation of Madeline.
Rhialto the Marvellous, by Jack Vance – The last of the Dying Earth books centers around the ruling council of magicians, a group of rich, powerful, and vain men who seem to spend a lot of their time squabbling over procedure. There are three separate stories about these characters. One has a witch turning magicians into women, which is unacceptable to the rather sexist leaders. In another, the magicians find out that the blue stone containing their charter is a fake, and Rhialto has to travel back in time to find the real one. And finally, the whole group travels to the end of space in a flying palace to find an old colleague who had been searching for some powerful magical stones. It’s nice to see that Vance is continuing with the trend of making the plots of these stories way over-the-top, but with characters who aren’t looking too far beyond their own personal interests. There really isn’t anything here about what’s often called the Vancian magic system, where magicians automatically forget spells after casting them, but it does feature a lot of evocative spell names.
At the Earth’s Core, by Edgar Rice Burroughs – The author of the Tarzan and Barsoom books also did a series about a world inside a hollow Earth, which I believe Tarzan eventually visited. Called Pellucidar, it’s a land with a sun that is always straight overhead, and hence no sense of time passing the way it does on the surface. It also continues the idea of the subterranean world being home to otherwise extinct beings. Burroughs introduces several different cultures and animals throughout the book. There’s also a colonialist attitude, with the white heroes deciding they could conquer all of Pellucidar (although they’re only considering it as the story ends) and constantly commenting on how primitive the native people are. And the protagonist learns the language of the natives very quickly, which is unrealistic but probably necessary to keep the plot going. For the most part, I enjoyed it.
Bloody Rose, by Nicholas Eames – The sequel to Kings of the Wyld features a band called Fable, led by the daughter of Golden Gabe from the first book. The viewpoint character, however, is Tam Hashford, who joins Fable as a bard. This single perspective gives it a different tone than its predecessor. The other members are a satyr, a shaman who can turn into a bear, an Inkwitch who can bring her tattoos to life, and Rose’s rabbit-eared Druin lover. The group goes on a quest to kill the Simurg, a gigantic monster that eats dragons; but it turns out that this was a way for a cruel necromancer to control the creature. Once again, there are a lot of references to fantasy and music.
VoVatia 
I started At the Earth’s Core a couple years ago, but never finished it for some reason. This isn’t why I didn’t continue it, but I really didn’t buy Burroughs’ idea that living in a land of perpetual day could cause one to lose track of time so badly that a decade could be confused with a year. That actually felt more far-fetched to me than a world in the center of the Earth inhabited by dinosaurs.
I did think of that as well. It didn’t ruin the story for me, but you’d think people would still have internal clocks and be able to count how many times they sleep, if nothing else.