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3.48 AVERAGE
3.48 AVERAGE
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Dull, boring and tedious.
dark
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
N/A
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
dark
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
dark
informative
tense
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
H.P. Lovecraft is called the father of cosmic horror. Maybe for the time period his tales seems horrifying, but to me it was ridiculously dense. He throws so much science jargon at you that one is immediately lost. In this book in particular the scientific terms become unbearable and I just tuned most of it out…and the horror was more mental than descriptive. I am not sure what all the fuss is about with this tale, but it was very lackluster.
I'm pretty much done with this book, now just picking away at/skimming through Lovecraft's essay at the back ("Supernatural Horror in Literature"), so I'll go ahead and mark it as finished.
If you could see a photograph of my copy, you'd see that absolutely all of my dog-eared pages are from China Mieville's introduction and the aforementioned essay -- I think the literary criticism and overview of the horror genre is more up my alley than this actual story, unfortunately.
It's my first proper Lovecraft read, which is funny because I've always been a 'fan' in theory (talk about culture-text!) because the idea of the Lovecraftian mythos appeals to me deeply, from such things as playing Arkham Horror, Anchorhead, Munchkin Cthulhu, or reading Neil Gaiman's "A Study in Emerald". After reading Mieville's introduction, I acknowledge that this story does some groundbreaking things in terms of introducing new horror, completely imaginative monsters that had nothing to do with established myth and folklore (werewolves/vampires etc), and Lovecraft's offhand meta reference to nonexistent texts is a good technique. The deep, wending expedition seems to have echoes of the atmosphere I loved in, say, House of Leaves. The way this story builds on Edgar Allan Poe's "Arthur Gordon Pym" is interesting, especially considering the racial tension/fear in both texts (hahahahaha god, the HPL quotes Mieville sprinkled into his introduction are downright nauseating, hello problematic authors).
But frankly, there just isn't enough dread for what I'd expected? In the end, the structure just didn't do it for me: the long, tangential (and fundamentally implausible!) 'history of the Old Ones' section dragged everything else down, IMO, because it felt like what Lovecraft really wanted to write was an alternate history textbook or bestiary. And it's interesting that he does such a flip of reader sympathies, eventually turning us towards feeling for the Old Ones and empathising with them -- but these are things that I only consciously appreciated after Mieville pointed them out in his essay.
I liked it just fine, but I don't know if his writing just isn't my cup of tea and I'm more of a Poe gal or what -- because Poe's tangents on proper stowage or penguin nests are frankly just as dull as Lovecraft's tangents on soil, but I swallow the former (and his language/style) much more easily, and I was more nauseated/discomfited/anxious by "Arthur Gordon Pym" which meant that it succeeded better with me as horror.
If you could see a photograph of my copy, you'd see that absolutely all of my dog-eared pages are from China Mieville's introduction and the aforementioned essay -- I think the literary criticism and overview of the horror genre is more up my alley than this actual story, unfortunately.
It's my first proper Lovecraft read, which is funny because I've always been a 'fan' in theory (talk about culture-text!) because the idea of the Lovecraftian mythos appeals to me deeply, from such things as playing Arkham Horror, Anchorhead, Munchkin Cthulhu, or reading Neil Gaiman's "A Study in Emerald". After reading Mieville's introduction, I acknowledge that this story does some groundbreaking things in terms of introducing new horror, completely imaginative monsters that had nothing to do with established myth and folklore (werewolves/vampires etc), and Lovecraft's offhand meta reference to nonexistent texts is a good technique. The deep, wending expedition seems to have echoes of the atmosphere I loved in, say, House of Leaves. The way this story builds on Edgar Allan Poe's "Arthur Gordon Pym" is interesting, especially considering the racial tension/fear in both texts (hahahahaha god, the HPL quotes Mieville sprinkled into his introduction are downright nauseating, hello problematic authors).
But frankly, there just isn't enough dread for what I'd expected? In the end, the structure just didn't do it for me: the long, tangential (and fundamentally implausible!) 'history of the Old Ones' section dragged everything else down, IMO, because it felt like what Lovecraft really wanted to write was an alternate history textbook or bestiary. And it's interesting that he does such a flip of reader sympathies, eventually turning us towards feeling for the Old Ones and empathising with them -- but these are things that I only consciously appreciated after Mieville pointed them out in his essay.
I liked it just fine, but I don't know if his writing just isn't my cup of tea and I'm more of a Poe gal or what -- because Poe's tangents on proper stowage or penguin nests are frankly just as dull as Lovecraft's tangents on soil, but I swallow the former (and his language/style) much more easily, and I was more nauseated/discomfited/anxious by "Arthur Gordon Pym" which meant that it succeeded better with me as horror.
adventurous
dark
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
adventurous
dark
mysterious
fast-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
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated