novels

H.P. Lovecraft is a writer I've been curious about for a long time. I finally bought "At the Mountains of Madness" after reading several customer reviews that pointed me towards this book as a good place to start if selecting a first Lovecraft novel.

"At The Mountains of Madness" is the tale of a research group heading for the Antarctica on an expedition to collect geological samples. The men split off into two teams, and one group is led by a biologist named Lake, while the narrator remains at base camp and receives reports of the findings. Lake and his men find some odd specimens of other life forms, and these specimens are dragged off to Lake's camp. Lovecraft's story is suspenseful, and builds with this tremendous sense of dread and impending doom. The story is crafted and paced very cleverly. The narrator is the recipient of news of the findings--just as we are. He feels this uneasy dread--just as we do, but he is powerless to stop it. The placement of the narrator as a bystander with no initial visual involvement--just reports of Lake's expedition, places the reader right next to the narrator. As events unfold, the suspense is almost unbearable. The descriptions of the terrain are stupendous, and Lovecraft's portrayal of the idea of specimen collection is at once acceptable, and mind-boggling.

The book also contains three short stories "The Shunned House", "The Dreams in the Witch House" and "The Statement of Randolph Carter." The first story is really demonic in nature, and I really enjoyed it. The other two stories did not grab me in the same way--hence the 4 star rating.

Horror is not my favoured sort of book, but after reading this Lovecraft novel, I am going to revise my opinion about the genre. I have to be honest and say here that I haven't glanced at a horror novel in several decades, and I was most pleasantly surprised by this book. This is a blend of the supernatural and science fiction, and not at all what I expected--displacedhuman.

Lovecraft's "At The Mountains Of Madness" is by far one of the, if not the, best Horror novel written in the Twentieth Century. The story is captivating, the character are engrossing, and the horror is first rate. This novel is the one thing Lovecraft fans should read, after "The Call Of Cthulhu". The novel tells the tale of the Miskatonic University expedition to Antarctica, led by the famous Dr. Pabodie. Seemingly innocuous at first, the story quickly takes a turn to the dark side that happens so very often in Lovecraft's work. The novel explains a few of the Cthulhu Mythos mysteries, such as the history of the Old Ones, and the genesis of the abhorred Shoggoths, and brings up many more questions about the mad universe that Lovecraft created so well. If you like this novel, read "The Whisperer in the Dark", which tells more about of the Old Ones' plans, and "The Call of Cthulhu", just because it is the backbone of the entire Lovecraftian Pantheon.

Lovecraft's stylistic eccentricities detract significantly from the effect of this novel. Read a botanical description of a plant part in Gray's Manual of Botany...."Ciliiate, hursute to somewhat scabrous acuminate appendages appressed to squamous bracts..." (Egad!!! Let me out of here....!) compares well with the " squamous, octopoid monstrosities" with which H.P. populates many of his visions....Taking a child's distortions of reality based on what psychologist might call "deficiency needs" (Colin Wilson in the intro to "The Crawling Chaos") Lovecraft adorns his preoccupations with fancy words.....strange locals....and people on the verge of losing track of local reality...and creates what the unimaginative would call a "really good horror story". The situation resulting is quite humorous when one considers the legions of fans who are captivated by the technique. Compare the methods and subject matter of Lovecraft with that of Lehninger in his discussion of thermodynamics in his BIOCHEMISTRY volume. Both authors investigate strange beasties "octpoid, tentacular monstrosities" or "enthapy, free energy, entropy, work, equilibrium constants, etc." , but in the first case we only learn of Lovecraft's psychologic preoccupations, whereas in the second we learn of the hidden existants of the Universe with which we can all achieve a much greater understanding of Reality. The present writer has compared the thrill derived from reading these authors....Lovecraft only increases my appreciation of Lehninger...and causes me to ask. "Why does the human brain find the complex nonsense (advanced by H.P., etc) so attractive? The reason is probably hidden somewhere deep in the DNA responsible for our limbic system.