2015 Lovecraftian horror. Dan Carter was a cop in New York, until his
partner shot himself while they were arresting a child kidnapper. Now
he's working as a private investigator, but it suddenly turns out that
a complete stranger has left him a bookshop in his will…
The bookshop is in Providence, and it's operated by Emily
Lovecraft, last known descendant of Howard. But it turns out that
Howard was not just a writer…
Well, yes, one can go along with this up to a point, though knowing
something of Lovecraft as a person makes this all seem much less
plausible. On the other hand, there's a magician to fight. And that
magician, William Colt, is surprisingly well-painted: he's suddenly
been handed tremendous power but he's still basically a small person
with small dreams.
What works less well is the repeated emphasis that all this has been
set up: both Carter's inheritance and Colt's power have been bestowed
on them by the same entity, for reasons not made particularly clear,
and while they think they're doing sensible things it's all going as
that other entity has planned. That removes agency from the
protagonists and tension from the narrative.
On the other hand there are some remarkably good people here, not
always highly detailed but complex and interesting. And the stakes get
raised to a level that most authors would back away from.
Not by any means perfect; there are various infelicities of style, and
sometimes it feels as though Lovecraftian references are being jammed
in a bit too gratuitously. But like Red Equinox this book takes
Yog-Sothothery as a starting point to build its own mythology rather
than trying to make everything consistent with Lovecraft's writings
(which, since they aren't themselves consistent with each other, is a
foolish errand at best).
Recommended by vatine.
Comments on this post are now closed. If you have particular grounds for adding a late comment, comment on a more recent post quoting the URL of this one.