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3.95 AVERAGE
3.95 AVERAGE
One of the best tales by Lovecraft and a classic of horror and fantasy.
dark
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
mysterious
slow-paced
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
challenging
dark
mysterious
slow-paced
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
This volume contains "At the Mountains of Madness" and three other stories; I've reviewed them below separately.
At the Mountains of Madness:
I had really looked forward to reading this, since I've been curious about the Cthulu mythos for a long time now, and wanted to see Lovecraft's work directly.
What an amazing disappointment.
This story was all about our protagonist telling us he was scared. What was he scared *of*??? Stuff that he's too distraught to talk about. Stuff that, if known, would shatter the sanity of all humanity. But this kind of description doesn't make *me* scared... It makes me *curious*. And that curiosity is never answered by the story, in any way at all. Very disappointing. 2 stars.
The Shunned House:
This was an exercise in mood setting, I suppose. This story is about a man learning about something horrible, and which seems more and more horrible as he learns more. But what he learns more about are the effects of this horror, rather than the horror itself. And even in the conclusion, the horror itself is hardly described at all; rather the effects of that thing are what Lovecraft makes clear. As a whole, the story was moderately enjoyable, but I'm getting tired of "some things man shouldn't learn". 3 stars.
The Dreams in the Witch-House:
This was a story of a man studying "too hard" and breaching into the evil spaces beyond our own. I liked this story a lot better than the others, because the antagonist is made much more clear and concrete, while still maintaining that sense of dread. 4 stars.
The Statement of Randolph Carter:
This is a really short, seven-page story. And it is in a similar style of not presenting the evil, but presenting the reaction to that evil. And when kept to seven pages, it works. I guess I just can't handle that descriptive mode when the tale goes on for hundreds of pages... 3 stars.
At the Mountains of Madness:
I had really looked forward to reading this, since I've been curious about the Cthulu mythos for a long time now, and wanted to see Lovecraft's work directly.
What an amazing disappointment.
This story was all about our protagonist telling us he was scared. What was he scared *of*??? Stuff that he's too distraught to talk about. Stuff that, if known, would shatter the sanity of all humanity. But this kind of description doesn't make *me* scared... It makes me *curious*. And that curiosity is never answered by the story, in any way at all. Very disappointing. 2 stars.
The Shunned House:
This was an exercise in mood setting, I suppose. This story is about a man learning about something horrible, and which seems more and more horrible as he learns more. But what he learns more about are the effects of this horror, rather than the horror itself. And even in the conclusion, the horror itself is hardly described at all; rather the effects of that thing are what Lovecraft makes clear. As a whole, the story was moderately enjoyable, but I'm getting tired of "some things man shouldn't learn". 3 stars.
The Dreams in the Witch-House:
This was a story of a man studying "too hard" and breaching into the evil spaces beyond our own. I liked this story a lot better than the others, because the antagonist is made much more clear and concrete, while still maintaining that sense of dread. 4 stars.
The Statement of Randolph Carter:
This is a really short, seven-page story. And it is in a similar style of not presenting the evil, but presenting the reaction to that evil. And when kept to seven pages, it works. I guess I just can't handle that descriptive mode when the tale goes on for hundreds of pages... 3 stars.
Ohhhhhhh THIS is why everyone loves H.P. Lovecraft!
Jeez why didn't anyone tell me?
Let's talk about horror. I don't mean Stephen King horror where no matter how many alien clowns or rabid dogs there are the worst monster will always be man's cruelty. And I don't mean zombie plague horror. Or even Dick Cheney, Bohemian Grove, we all know there's a shadow government running everything oh jesus I need to build a bomb shelter real world horror.
I'm talking about primordial, instinctive, part of your blood and bones horror.
Because that's the kind of horror H.P. Lovecraft was interested in.
Before I began reading his work my impression of Lovecraft was limited entirely to large monsters with octopus faces. And to be fair there are an abnormally high number of those in many of his stories. Creatures like that do figure somewhat in [b:At the Mountains of Madness and Other Tales of Terror|32769|At the Mountains of Madness and Other Tales of Terror|H.P. Lovecraft|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1226634493s/32769.jpg|33559] but they're part of much grander, bleaker story that totally delighted me and gave me the best kind of shivery tinglies.
The story is told from the perspective of geologist William Dyer. In the early 1930's Dyer was part of a much publicized expedition to Antarctica that ended under a shroud of mysterious tragedy. The details of what actually transpired were never made public. Now, some years later, on the eve of another expedition Dyer is telling his story to the world in the hopes of averting an even greater disaster.
Right out of the gate the stakes are enormously high. There's a sense of urgency to everything Dyer shares with us. Even as he chronicles the more mundane details of organizing the trip and the initial days of discovery there's a roiling tension underneath that only grows as the expedition moves further into heretofore unexplored territory. Lovecraft just totally nails the balance between the desolation of this part of the world and the intense, untouched beauty of it. I wanted to see this place with my own eyes, he totally made me understand why these men wanted to go there.
This place is epic in every way. I could feel the endless expanse of it, the fucking agelessness of the place. I wanted to know what it looked like thousands of years ago, what amazing mysteries might be hiding under the ice that could change the entire history of civilization just as much as Dyer did.
Inevitably things start to go very wrong. Dyer and his fellow scientists discover some fossils that simply do not make any sense and the geological formations they can begin to make out in the distance look distinctly unnatural. Then tragedy strikes when a group breaks off from the original party to scout ahead and their camp is attacked. Dyer and the survivors are left to learn what became of the scouts and what or who is responsible. But even when they find the answers it seems there is something else out there in the blinding, white, and ageless mountains that is more terrible than anything they could have imagined.
Honestly I don't want to go into too much more detail than that because even if you think you know how the story plays out, even if you've read monster's from beyond the dawn of time tales a hundred times, you haven't read nothin' till you've tried this one on.
There's something so seductive about the way Lovecraft blends mounting terror and the sort of preternatural beauty of his setting. Even while you're dreading the inevitable confrontation with some kind of epic evil you want the men to keep going so you can see more of this world. Its like he breaks his characters (and the reader) down to these very basic, primitive forms. These explorers don't have a choice but to keep moving forward even while logically they know what they're risking. The war between primitive instincts and modern knowledge is just totally gripping.
Yes, Lovecraft's language gets a little overwrought sometimes. If he can't figure out how to describe something he literally writes things like "I don't know how to describe this but trust me it was so scary!" I've read short stories of his that are utterly absurd in that regard. But, [b:At the Mountains of Madness|32767|At the Mountains of Madness|H.P. Lovecraft|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1388341769s/32767.jpg|17342821] is one for the ages. I finally understand why he's regarded as the father of modern horror. I am desperate to see Guillermo Del Toro make his into a movie.
This isn't just a scary monster story, its a fascinating parable about the damage hubris can do, where it can lead. The search for knowledge is a noble one but its also fraught with dangers that we can't even conceive of. Not all the answers to our questions will be the ones we want. Not all the things under the ice were meant to be found. We have to decide which terror we can stand. The terror of not knowing or the terror of knowing too much.
Jeez why didn't anyone tell me?
Let's talk about horror. I don't mean Stephen King horror where no matter how many alien clowns or rabid dogs there are the worst monster will always be man's cruelty. And I don't mean zombie plague horror. Or even Dick Cheney, Bohemian Grove, we all know there's a shadow government running everything oh jesus I need to build a bomb shelter real world horror.
I'm talking about primordial, instinctive, part of your blood and bones horror.
Because that's the kind of horror H.P. Lovecraft was interested in.
Before I began reading his work my impression of Lovecraft was limited entirely to large monsters with octopus faces. And to be fair there are an abnormally high number of those in many of his stories. Creatures like that do figure somewhat in [b:At the Mountains of Madness and Other Tales of Terror|32769|At the Mountains of Madness and Other Tales of Terror|H.P. Lovecraft|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1226634493s/32769.jpg|33559] but they're part of much grander, bleaker story that totally delighted me and gave me the best kind of shivery tinglies.
The story is told from the perspective of geologist William Dyer. In the early 1930's Dyer was part of a much publicized expedition to Antarctica that ended under a shroud of mysterious tragedy. The details of what actually transpired were never made public. Now, some years later, on the eve of another expedition Dyer is telling his story to the world in the hopes of averting an even greater disaster.
Right out of the gate the stakes are enormously high. There's a sense of urgency to everything Dyer shares with us. Even as he chronicles the more mundane details of organizing the trip and the initial days of discovery there's a roiling tension underneath that only grows as the expedition moves further into heretofore unexplored territory. Lovecraft just totally nails the balance between the desolation of this part of the world and the intense, untouched beauty of it. I wanted to see this place with my own eyes, he totally made me understand why these men wanted to go there.
This place is epic in every way. I could feel the endless expanse of it, the fucking agelessness of the place. I wanted to know what it looked like thousands of years ago, what amazing mysteries might be hiding under the ice that could change the entire history of civilization just as much as Dyer did.
Inevitably things start to go very wrong. Dyer and his fellow scientists discover some fossils that simply do not make any sense and the geological formations they can begin to make out in the distance look distinctly unnatural. Then tragedy strikes when a group breaks off from the original party to scout ahead and their camp is attacked. Dyer and the survivors are left to learn what became of the scouts and what or who is responsible. But even when they find the answers it seems there is something else out there in the blinding, white, and ageless mountains that is more terrible than anything they could have imagined.
Honestly I don't want to go into too much more detail than that because even if you think you know how the story plays out, even if you've read monster's from beyond the dawn of time tales a hundred times, you haven't read nothin' till you've tried this one on.
There's something so seductive about the way Lovecraft blends mounting terror and the sort of preternatural beauty of his setting. Even while you're dreading the inevitable confrontation with some kind of epic evil you want the men to keep going so you can see more of this world. Its like he breaks his characters (and the reader) down to these very basic, primitive forms. These explorers don't have a choice but to keep moving forward even while logically they know what they're risking. The war between primitive instincts and modern knowledge is just totally gripping.
Yes, Lovecraft's language gets a little overwrought sometimes. If he can't figure out how to describe something he literally writes things like "I don't know how to describe this but trust me it was so scary!" I've read short stories of his that are utterly absurd in that regard. But, [b:At the Mountains of Madness|32767|At the Mountains of Madness|H.P. Lovecraft|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1388341769s/32767.jpg|17342821] is one for the ages. I finally understand why he's regarded as the father of modern horror. I am desperate to see Guillermo Del Toro make his into a movie.
This isn't just a scary monster story, its a fascinating parable about the damage hubris can do, where it can lead. The search for knowledge is a noble one but its also fraught with dangers that we can't even conceive of. Not all the answers to our questions will be the ones we want. Not all the things under the ice were meant to be found. We have to decide which terror we can stand. The terror of not knowing or the terror of knowing too much.
I love the idea of finding something ancient and terrifying just over the last mountain. Four stars because heavy racist overtones, but at this point, if you're reading Lovecraft, you kind of know what's coming.
I started off really enjoying the descriptions but as the book progressed, the descriptions started to weigh me down. I started to get a little bored and even dozed off while reading. I wanted to like it better. The setting was interesting since it was in Antarctica. I have read a few short stories by Lovecraft before that I liked much better. I will probably give him another chance at some point and hope for a story that is more appealing to me.
A fine piece of horror fiction. Take me to the blasphemous mountains of the Elder Ones. Bring me to young Cthulhu.