At the Mountains of Madness and Other Novels of Terror (Omnibus 1)
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I was a big fan of Lovecraft's when I was younger, but never really got around to reading his longer works, collected in this volume. Especially I regret not having read the title story of this volume, which I gather is a source of numerous facts on the Cthulhu mythos. So now I'm pledging to get around to reading this book soon.
Lovecraft can be really exhausting to read, and he'd probably have trouble getting published today. I was reading Edgar Allan Poe concurrently with this one and noticed the clear similarity in styles: it seems to me that the mark of a Writer was the ability to use the language in artful ways, not just tell stories. Lovecraft also has his trademark overuse of weird adjectives (the most famous undoubtedly being “eldritch” and “cyclopean”) and the repetitiveness of description, like Nyarlathotep is always “crawling chaos Nyarlathotep”
The three main works in this collection are Lovecraft's only novels, or perhaps novellas, and they vary quite a lot in quality. At the Mountains of Madness I've seen praised, especially for its mounting horror, but to me it felt like slogging through the Antarctic wastes. There are a few places where Lovecraft gets into his groove and the tale is gripping, but overall the story is much too long.
The best story in this collection is The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. Structurally it feels like a proper story and most of the time there is something to keep the horrors in mind. From very early it's pretty obvious what's going on (though I got sidetracked a bit by not having read all of it carefully enough), but it doesn't really let the reader off the hook because the descriptions work very well, giving a mounting feeling of horror.
The third long story, The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath is again weaker by being too long and meandering. The dream world here is interesting and the protagonist Randolph Carter's quest is pretty focused in the beginning but it starts to lose it as the tale continues. Still, it held my interest better than At the Mountains of Madness.
In addition to the three long stories, the collection also has the other three Randolph Carter stories and “The Dreams in the Witch-House”. The other Carter stories are nothing special, but “The Dreams in the Witch-House” was somewhat gripping, especially since I read it very close to Walpurgis Night.
Oh, and it turned out that the title story is more of a deconstruction of the Mythos than a compendium of knowledge. I really shouldn't have expected any actual information from a Lovecraft story: his works are always about the unknown, the incomprehensible, and explaining things would take away much of the effect.
The three main works in this collection are Lovecraft's only novels, or perhaps novellas, and they vary quite a lot in quality. At the Mountains of Madness I've seen praised, especially for its mounting horror, but to me it felt like slogging through the Antarctic wastes. There are a few places where Lovecraft gets into his groove and the tale is gripping, but overall the story is much too long.
The best story in this collection is The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. Structurally it feels like a proper story and most of the time there is something to keep the horrors in mind. From very early it's pretty obvious what's going on (though I got sidetracked a bit by not having read all of it carefully enough), but it doesn't really let the reader off the hook because the descriptions work very well, giving a mounting feeling of horror.
The third long story, The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath is again weaker by being too long and meandering. The dream world here is interesting and the protagonist Randolph Carter's quest is pretty focused in the beginning but it starts to lose it as the tale continues. Still, it held my interest better than At the Mountains of Madness.
In addition to the three long stories, the collection also has the other three Randolph Carter stories and “The Dreams in the Witch-House”. The other Carter stories are nothing special, but “The Dreams in the Witch-House” was somewhat gripping, especially since I read it very close to Walpurgis Night.
Oh, and it turned out that the title story is more of a deconstruction of the Mythos than a compendium of knowledge. I really shouldn't have expected any actual information from a Lovecraft story: his works are always about the unknown, the incomprehensible, and explaining things would take away much of the effect.
