RogerBW's Blog

2014 Lovecraftian horror novella. In 1920s London, ex-boxer Harry Stubbs is working for a firm of lawyers that's looking for valuable assets to pay off some of Shackleton's creditors. But what did he really find on those polar expeditions?

This is period yog-sothothery done right. There's lots of historical detail about Shackleton's life and family; there's a slow build-up from slight weirdness, through mundane menace, to cosmic horror; the resolution matches my own feelings regarding major Lovecraftian beings, that they regard humans as at most a minor pest, most of the time not even worth thinking about.

The main problem is the choppiness of the pacing; the novella is broken into multiple short chapters, and each incident is over so quickly that it hardly has time to generate much in the way of thrill or menace.

Harry manages to be interesting in spite of being essentially a physical character; he's a tactician of boxing and applies those lessons elsewhere too. The ending is perhaps a bit of a let-down, but it's hard to end these things effectively other than with the death or madness of the protagonist and I give Hambling credit for a good try.

In short, highly recommended to any fan of Lovecraftiana and even some people who think they aren't. This cuts to the core of what Lovecraft was getting at, without the excessively purple prose and casual racism.

Followed by Broken Meats.