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3.49 AVERAGE
3.49 AVERAGE
Yes it all looks like the “strange Asian paintings of Nicholas Roerich”, I didn’t need a fifth reminder of this.
Sadly a disappointment, given how much I enjoyed The Colour out of Space and The Call of Cthulhu.
Maybe shorter is better with Lovecraft.
Will still give a few of his other works a go, they’re all relatively short after all
Sadly a disappointment, given how much I enjoyed The Colour out of Space and The Call of Cthulhu.
Maybe shorter is better with Lovecraft.
Will still give a few of his other works a go, they’re all relatively short after all
Good god!! The amount of tedious detail in this book is just ridiculous and it just drags the story down! With such a great idea and amazing setting this book should have been awesome, however, what we get is a lot of foreshadowing with very little payoff, repetition of minute details, and forgettable characters that the reader cares little about. Filled with convoluted writing and superfluous adjectives, At the Mountains of Madness is a tedious and dense read that has a cool concept which never gets fully fleshed out. I'm disappointed, I have a whole collection of HP Lovecraft short stories and novellas that I don't know if I'm going to read now. If this story is supposed to be his crowning glory, then it doesn't bode very well for his other works.
Also, how many times can Lovecraft possibly write, "the strange Asian paintings of Nicholas Roerich", before he thinks, "hmm, maybe I've mentioned that enough now"?
Also, how many times can Lovecraft possibly write, "the strange Asian paintings of Nicholas Roerich", before he thinks, "hmm, maybe I've mentioned that enough now"?
As far as cosmic horror goes, this is one of the best. The story is vivid you can picture the terrifying sight of the mountains. I wish this would have been made into a movie, but sadly Prometheus is the reason is probably never will be.
dark
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Estupendo relato de uno de los grandes del terror que me ha fascinado.
Es una novela descriptiva, contada en primera persona donde el protagonista, un científico, lleva al lector a un territorio inhóspito y salvaje mediante la expedición de la que forma parte.
El libro es un continuo suspense de principio a fin, la ambientación es estupenda porque el autor logra transmitir a través de sus palabras la situación de los protagonistas detallando los pasos que dan, el recorrido de su viaje y los materiales con los que cuentan. Es imposible no sentirse uno más del grupo y, aunque es verdad que el escritor se detiene en dar mucha información geológica, paleontológica e histórica que puede ser abrumadora, sus descripciones de la Antártida no dejan indiferente.
Me ha gustado mucho este libro porque la narración juega con la imaginación del lector, los descubrimientos asombrosos de los personajes crean un ambiente de terror psicológico que se mantiene hasta el final. La historia solo tiene un par de escenas que pueden considerarse brutales y desagradables que sirven para ilustrar de manera gráfica el suspense que rodea la trama. Es un magnífico relato de terror de enorme calidad literaria.
Es una novela descriptiva, contada en primera persona donde el protagonista, un científico, lleva al lector a un territorio inhóspito y salvaje mediante la expedición de la que forma parte.
El libro es un continuo suspense de principio a fin, la ambientación es estupenda porque el autor logra transmitir a través de sus palabras la situación de los protagonistas detallando los pasos que dan, el recorrido de su viaje y los materiales con los que cuentan. Es imposible no sentirse uno más del grupo y, aunque es verdad que el escritor se detiene en dar mucha información geológica, paleontológica e histórica que puede ser abrumadora, sus descripciones de la Antártida no dejan indiferente.
Me ha gustado mucho este libro porque la narración juega con la imaginación del lector, los descubrimientos asombrosos de los personajes crean un ambiente de terror psicológico que se mantiene hasta el final. La historia solo tiene un par de escenas que pueden considerarse brutales y desagradables que sirven para ilustrar de manera gráfica el suspense que rodea la trama. Es un magnífico relato de terror de enorme calidad literaria.
dark
informative
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
ATMOM was my first book by Lovecraft and have got to say it’s not for me. Without sounding too harsh, At the Mountains of Madness is not a conventional story; by that I mean it doesn’t have the conventional parts to a story, like a plot or character development.
The whole book is written from the perspective of scientist who gives an account of an expedition to the arctic. This account is very matter of fact, I can’t recall any characterization or anything at all that would get me invested in the story. It reads a lot like a world building exercise that does nothing to get me spooked or in a horror “mood”. Lovecraft attempts to get you afflicted by a fear of unimaginable cosmic entities by simply telling you it’s unimaginable over and over and over again. Telling you people can’t fathom what they saw, telling you what was there was terrible and awesome. Then when the author finally decides to stop telling you what to feel and finally uses words to describe one of the monsters, it’s a 2 page scientific description you’d find out of a field guide that I couldn’t stop laughing at because the narrator kept wondering if this cosmic horror alien was actually a vegetable (from his analysis it was about 1/4 vegetable but who can really tell.)
The repetition in the writing was also nearly unbearable, if I have to hear the words “decadent”, “aeons”, “honeycombed”, “Cyclopean” or “regularities” again I’m gonna lose it harder than the scientists did. It's not just repetition of words that's the problem, but he would describe the same scene over and over and over again. I must have read the description of the caves on the side of the mountains 5 times. Yes man, there’re caves on the side of that mountain range and they don’t look entirely natural, thank you. Some of the caves were semi-circled and some squared, thank you bro.
As far as the main story of the book, the majority of the novel is just telling you about the culture of aliens that seeded life on earth. Yes half the book is about an alien's culture. How do we know nearly everything about a culture down to how they liked to arrange their furniture? Well the scientist was able to discern everything by looking at statues with a flashlight over the course of a few hours. In my eyes there truly is nothing frightening about this story whatsoever. I had thought lovecraftion horror was about playing with your imagination and letting it run away with dread of things unspoken? That is not what this book is because there is zero imagination. You know those frightful cosmic alien horrors? Well I now know there farming patterns, proclivity of animal domestication, and their measured responses to a multitude of climate crises.
Overall I gave the book 2 stars and not 1 because the last 20 (out of 120) pages had something that resembled a decent narrative that got me flipping through the pages.
The whole book is written from the perspective of scientist who gives an account of an expedition to the arctic. This account is very matter of fact, I can’t recall any characterization or anything at all that would get me invested in the story. It reads a lot like a world building exercise that does nothing to get me spooked or in a horror “mood”. Lovecraft attempts to get you afflicted by a fear of unimaginable cosmic entities by simply telling you it’s unimaginable over and over and over again. Telling you people can’t fathom what they saw, telling you what was there was terrible and awesome. Then when the author finally decides to stop telling you what to feel and finally uses words to describe one of the monsters, it’s a 2 page scientific description you’d find out of a field guide that I couldn’t stop laughing at because the narrator kept wondering if this cosmic horror alien was actually a vegetable (from his analysis it was about 1/4 vegetable but who can really tell.)
The repetition in the writing was also nearly unbearable, if I have to hear the words “decadent”, “aeons”, “honeycombed”, “Cyclopean” or “regularities” again I’m gonna lose it harder than the scientists did. It's not just repetition of words that's the problem, but he would describe the same scene over and over and over again. I must have read the description of the caves on the side of the mountains 5 times. Yes man, there’re caves on the side of that mountain range and they don’t look entirely natural, thank you. Some of the caves were semi-circled and some squared, thank you bro.
As far as the main story of the book, the majority of the novel is just telling you about the culture of aliens that seeded life on earth. Yes half the book is about an alien's culture. How do we know nearly everything about a culture down to how they liked to arrange their furniture? Well the scientist was able to discern everything by looking at statues with a flashlight over the course of a few hours. In my eyes there truly is nothing frightening about this story whatsoever. I had thought lovecraftion horror was about playing with your imagination and letting it run away with dread of things unspoken? That is not what this book is because there is zero imagination. You know those frightful cosmic alien horrors? Well I now know there farming patterns, proclivity of animal domestication, and their measured responses to a multitude of climate crises.
Overall I gave the book 2 stars and not 1 because the last 20 (out of 120) pages had something that resembled a decent narrative that got me flipping through the pages.
Interesting stuff, but presented in what was, for me at least, a very dry and somewhat unnecessarily boring way. I like the idea he was going for, but I had a hard time getting into it.