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reading report: lovecraft edition
Jul. 19th, 2011 02:22 pmfor some reason i've decided to start doing some short review-blurbs on things i read here. lately this has mostly been really old things which i can get for free as ebooks. :P
The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath by H. P. Lovecraft
I LOVE THIS STORY. this is my new favourite lovecraft story, edging out The Whisperer in Darkness and i REALLY liked Whisperer. I'm sorry, Mi-Go, you guys are cool and I'd still be happy to visit Yuggoth in one of your brain-jar-robots, but you just can't compete with moon-cats AND night gaunts.
Gushing aside, Dream-Quest is set in lovecraft's Dreamworld setting rather than the more well known Call of Cthulhu/Shadow over Innsmouth version of earth. Nyarla and the Other Gods (that should be a band name) still have their sinister hands in things, but our protagonist Randoph Carter is an 'old dreamer' and has built up a stunning resistance to going mad from the revelation. The story reads like an epic tour of Lovecraft's vast and expansive dreamworld. To get a sense of this, try digging up the story and reading the first few pages. There are name-drops everywhere and Carter will visit all of those places in the course of the epic quest for Kadath.
The feel of the story is appropriately dreamlike, particularly in the way Carter keeps to his quest, which is for a vaguely remembered dream-city, in spite of enormous danger and little hope of success (and despite the fantastical setting, Carter has no more special powers than the average lovecraft protagonist except perhaps a knack for languages). The dangers are frightening but never quite mortal and something always comes to the rescue at the last second. Strangely though, this actually seems to make things more interesting; you keep reading to see how Carter gets out of impossible situations where in other lovecraft stories you would just shrug and assume that he'll go mad and/or die.
The story is light on character development and heavy on colourful places and strange beings. Lovecraft demonstrates for us, as usual, the correct way to do an author insert: the insert character should be primarily an observer of the events around him. The usual lovecraftian edge of xenophobia is present (lovecraft seems to divide the world into two categories, things that are horrible shambling monstrosities and things that are cats) but offset because ultimately Carter's greatest allies prove to be some of the more frightening and unsavoury of the creatures he meet.
The ending has a particularly nice twist, which is built up to but caught me completely by surprise and gives the story a vastly more positive spin than any other lovecraft story I've read. This is a story about the infinite horror of realizing your insignificance in the vastness of reality, but it also offers a way to overcome that horror. Five stars out of five, read this if you like adventures in complex and colourful fantasy worlds full of strange and terrifying creatures. Avoid if you can't deal with dense prose and hate kittens.
Herbert West: Reanimator by H.P. Lovecraft
The grisly tale of Herbert West, a scientist on the Frankenstienian tradition obsessed with (as the title suggests) reanimating the dead. The story is told from the perspective of West's sole trusted assistant, the only witness to the horrors. West is a mad scientist in the literary rather than cinematic tradition; not old and wild-haired and laughing but young with cool blue eyes and a soft voice and an incredible, dangerous obsession with discovery.
The story is obviously serialised, divided into six chapters each beginning with a brief recap of the story thus far. The mad scientist who raises the dead is an old story, but one that cuts right to the heart of horror by invoking one of our most primal fears. The speaker's tone is rational and detached with just the tiniest edge of human superstition and does very well at making the outlandish horrors feel real. Lovecraft's signature grisly descriptions fit in perfectly with the nasty subject matter and there's very little of his usual dense and confusing prose (i believe he even managed to avoid using the word "cyclopean.")
The characters are fine for what the story is. West grows gradually more paranoid and more obsessed with his mad craft, and his assistant grows more and more terrified of West as the mad physician slides rapidly down the steep moral incline. There's a bit of quite noticeable racism in one of the chapters, which is unfortunate but has little bearing on the story itself.
Sadly it does suffer from one of the usual downfalls of the serial: it drags a bit. The first two chapters introduce the premise and set the tone, and the third and fourth continue on that theme, but then the fifth chapter ups the ante dramatically, turning an entertaining but predictable story into a truly effective piece of horror where you don't want to guess what West is going to attempt next, and the sixth brings it all to a terrifying if a bit outlandish conclusion. The story is certainly fine as it is, but would be better if the three chapters between the first and fifth were condensed into perhaps only one or two. Four out of five, read if you like gripping, grisly horror, avoid if you're at all squeamish about dead things. :P
The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath by H. P. Lovecraft
I LOVE THIS STORY. this is my new favourite lovecraft story, edging out The Whisperer in Darkness and i REALLY liked Whisperer. I'm sorry, Mi-Go, you guys are cool and I'd still be happy to visit Yuggoth in one of your brain-jar-robots, but you just can't compete with moon-cats AND night gaunts.
Gushing aside, Dream-Quest is set in lovecraft's Dreamworld setting rather than the more well known Call of Cthulhu/Shadow over Innsmouth version of earth. Nyarla and the Other Gods (that should be a band name) still have their sinister hands in things, but our protagonist Randoph Carter is an 'old dreamer' and has built up a stunning resistance to going mad from the revelation. The story reads like an epic tour of Lovecraft's vast and expansive dreamworld. To get a sense of this, try digging up the story and reading the first few pages. There are name-drops everywhere and Carter will visit all of those places in the course of the epic quest for Kadath.
The feel of the story is appropriately dreamlike, particularly in the way Carter keeps to his quest, which is for a vaguely remembered dream-city, in spite of enormous danger and little hope of success (and despite the fantastical setting, Carter has no more special powers than the average lovecraft protagonist except perhaps a knack for languages). The dangers are frightening but never quite mortal and something always comes to the rescue at the last second. Strangely though, this actually seems to make things more interesting; you keep reading to see how Carter gets out of impossible situations where in other lovecraft stories you would just shrug and assume that he'll go mad and/or die.
The story is light on character development and heavy on colourful places and strange beings. Lovecraft demonstrates for us, as usual, the correct way to do an author insert: the insert character should be primarily an observer of the events around him. The usual lovecraftian edge of xenophobia is present (lovecraft seems to divide the world into two categories, things that are horrible shambling monstrosities and things that are cats) but offset because ultimately Carter's greatest allies prove to be some of the more frightening and unsavoury of the creatures he meet.
The ending has a particularly nice twist, which is built up to but caught me completely by surprise and gives the story a vastly more positive spin than any other lovecraft story I've read. This is a story about the infinite horror of realizing your insignificance in the vastness of reality, but it also offers a way to overcome that horror. Five stars out of five, read this if you like adventures in complex and colourful fantasy worlds full of strange and terrifying creatures. Avoid if you can't deal with dense prose and hate kittens.
Herbert West: Reanimator by H.P. Lovecraft
The grisly tale of Herbert West, a scientist on the Frankenstienian tradition obsessed with (as the title suggests) reanimating the dead. The story is told from the perspective of West's sole trusted assistant, the only witness to the horrors. West is a mad scientist in the literary rather than cinematic tradition; not old and wild-haired and laughing but young with cool blue eyes and a soft voice and an incredible, dangerous obsession with discovery.
The story is obviously serialised, divided into six chapters each beginning with a brief recap of the story thus far. The mad scientist who raises the dead is an old story, but one that cuts right to the heart of horror by invoking one of our most primal fears. The speaker's tone is rational and detached with just the tiniest edge of human superstition and does very well at making the outlandish horrors feel real. Lovecraft's signature grisly descriptions fit in perfectly with the nasty subject matter and there's very little of his usual dense and confusing prose (i believe he even managed to avoid using the word "cyclopean.")
The characters are fine for what the story is. West grows gradually more paranoid and more obsessed with his mad craft, and his assistant grows more and more terrified of West as the mad physician slides rapidly down the steep moral incline. There's a bit of quite noticeable racism in one of the chapters, which is unfortunate but has little bearing on the story itself.
Sadly it does suffer from one of the usual downfalls of the serial: it drags a bit. The first two chapters introduce the premise and set the tone, and the third and fourth continue on that theme, but then the fifth chapter ups the ante dramatically, turning an entertaining but predictable story into a truly effective piece of horror where you don't want to guess what West is going to attempt next, and the sixth brings it all to a terrifying if a bit outlandish conclusion. The story is certainly fine as it is, but would be better if the three chapters between the first and fifth were condensed into perhaps only one or two. Four out of five, read if you like gripping, grisly horror, avoid if you're at all squeamish about dead things. :P
