|
|
Post by andydecker on Jan 3, 2012 10:48:58 GMT
The year is 1926 and unsavory things are going on in Arkham.
The is young student Amanda Sharpe which has nightmares about a monstrous sunken city, while her roommate Rita Young stumbles about the gnawed corpse of a young girl. The police is sweeping this under the rug like the other 5 corpses in the last half year; this is Arkham where nobody likes to hang the dirty laundry on a line.
There is Professor Oliver Grayson at the MU, whose three years long study of a polynasian tribe is killing his reputation as the tribe vanished without a trace, while his mentor is sitting in Arkham Asylumn because he has become a arsonist.
And there is boozle-smuggler Finn who has a murderous encounter with weird monsters in the woods, while in New York rich industrialist, murderer and cultist Charles Warren is building a deep-sea vessel.
Quite a few chapters in and the writer is still building his tale.
There is a lot going on in this first novel of just another Lovecraft role-playing game called Fantasy Flight Games (?), the first in a trilogy. Mostly I stay clear nowadays of such novels because they often feel so empty, but this is written by Graham McNeill, one of the Warhammer writers, whose current output is astonishing. I read a couple of them and liked them - he is not as over the top as C.L.Werner which I really like, as I translated some his books, still he is quite good at what he does - so I thought to give it a try. As it wasn´t that important to me I bought the Kindle edition. (So no cover scan for this.)
You have to give it to McNeill that he really tries to combine both the epoch and all things Lovecraft. So you get Speakeasys and "modern" woman and infos about corrupt President Harding and the Prohibition, while Professor Armitage is the keeper of the famous library and the (silly) monsters from The Whisperer in Darkness (I think) are at it again.
Untill now it is suspenseful and an easy slick read, I guess I will finish it, but for all the many details and the many characters it doesn´t feel like a real horror novel. Don´t get me wrong, it is not badly written and I have read so many Lovecraft pastiches which were truly dire crap compared to this, still at the end it is a just another comfy novelisation.
To be continued ...
|
|
|
|
Post by Aaron M on Jan 14, 2012 15:19:54 GMT
I've been thinking of picking this one up too but, as you stated, most of the current crop of Mythos writers more than miss the mark and things seem to end up more in the "fantasy" realm (or at least more in tone with what the Cthulhu games seem to be) than anything Lovecraft or his circle wrote.
Still the idea of a trilogy based around some of these concepts is interesting - might give it a shot regardless.
You find the flying crustaceans of "Whisperer" silly? I always quite liked the Mi-Go. Do they play a large part in the story?
- Aaron
|
|
|
|
Post by andydecker on Jan 15, 2012 17:14:37 GMT
You find the flying crustaceans of "Whisperer" silly? I always quite liked the Mi-Go. Do they play a large part in the story? - Aaron I had to put it aside, but it seems as if they are just one of many parts of Lovecraft Lore here. I have a problem with Whisperer. Half of it is so well written and creepy, the other half is pure idiocy. From the heroes who are too naive to live to scenes I just can´t take serious. You have this farmer living alone in the woods shooting it out with the mi-go who just kill his dogs, then driving into town to buy new ones, writing loong letters to his pal, then driving back to another evening of shooting it out with the monsters from outer space. And writing another loong letter about it. Instead of doing something sensible about it. One of the cases where my suspense of disbelief just don´t work  |
|
|
|
Post by cauldronbrewer on Jan 15, 2012 19:10:12 GMT
I have a problem with Whisperer. Half of it is so well written and creepy, the other half is pure idiocy. From the heroes who are too naive to live to scenes I just can´t take serious. You have this farmer living alone in the woods shooting it out with the mi-go who just kill his dogs, then driving into town to buy new ones, writing loong letters to his pal, then driving back to another evening of shooting it out with the monsters from outer space. And writing another loong letter about it. Instead of doing something sensible about it. One of the cases where my suspense of disbelief just don´t work Though he was an admirer of HPL, Fritz Leiber said essentially the same thing in an essay, "'The Whisperer' Re-examined" (which can be found in DAW's The Book of Fritz Leiber). He also points out that there's no logical reason for the Mi-Go (who, after all, can travel through outer space and do other nifty things) to play cat and mouse with the farmer. |
|
|
|
Post by Jojo Lapin X on Jan 15, 2012 19:35:32 GMT
He also points out that there's no logical reason for the Mi-Go (who, after all, can travel through outer space and do other nifty things) to play cat and mouse with the farmer. A-ha! But why should we expect beings from beyond space and time to behave according to our own paltry logic, I ask you! |
|
|
|
Post by cauldronbrewer on Jan 15, 2012 20:05:44 GMT
He also points out that there's no logical reason for the Mi-Go (who, after all, can travel through outer space and do other nifty things) to play cat and mouse with the farmer. A-ha! But why should we expect beings from beyond space and time to behave according to our own paltry logic, I ask you!  Perhaps, then, the answer lies in Leiber's "To Arkham and the Stars" (also in The Book of Fritz Leiber), where Professor Wilmarth tells the narrator, "The Plutonians are not such utterly evil beings when one really gets to know them. Though they will always inspire my extremest awe!" |
|
