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A review by dragonlilly
At the Mountains of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
4.0
This was quite good. I see why some say it's a bit dry, but it's still actually quite brilliant past the longer, perhaps more boring and technical sections. Yet, these sections give the story a nice bit of credibility and immersion so I still greatly appreciate them. I can truly imagine that this was written by a scholar and geologist who went on an expedition that turned out horrifically, and that he wants to prevent anyone else from meeting their end, or unleashing any sort of doom upon the world.
The best parts of this story are of course the ending and the more dramatic and clever scenes and descriptions, which I will describe, but mark as spoilers:
Loved when we finally got to the description of what happened to Lake's camp, because it exceeded my expectations. I of course had guesess that it would relate to the Elder Things they dug up eventually thawing and lashing out, but it was even more fascinating. I like Dyer's imagining of the scene at the end of the story, where he can see that the Elder Things may have been acting out of confusion and self defence, after they were dug up, thawed, woken, attacked by dogs, attacked by men, and neither side could be blamed for what they had done. But, the Elder things won out here, butchering the men, even salting them fascinatingly, and no doubt full of curiosity about eating them.
Seeing one of their fellow members who had not survived rhe freezing had been dissected by the humans, they too performed their own, rough diessection of a human and dog, and took a 'specimen' of each along with them, along with the supplies the Lake's group had. Great scene, which Dyer and Danforth slowly make sense of as they make their journey together into the terrible city.
The reveal that Gedney and a dog had been taken by the Elder Things, probably for further research, was great too.
I also loved Danforth's reaction to seeing the shoggoth, which appeared to them out of the mists like a great, black subway train with glowing lights shooting theough a tunnel. And so he repeats, in a bit of a breakdown, the new-england subway stations. Just brilliant.
The best parts of this story are of course the ending and the more dramatic and clever scenes and descriptions, which I will describe, but mark as spoilers:
Seeing one of their fellow members who had not survived rhe freezing had been dissected by the humans, they too performed their own, rough diessection of a human and dog, and took a 'specimen' of each along with them, along with the supplies the Lake's group had. Great scene, which Dyer and Danforth slowly make sense of as they make their journey together into the terrible city.
The reveal that Gedney and a dog had been taken by the Elder Things, probably for further research, was great too.
I also loved Danforth's reaction to seeing the shoggoth, which appeared to them out of the mists like a great, black subway train with glowing lights shooting theough a tunnel. And so he repeats, in a bit of a breakdown, the new-england subway stations. Just brilliant.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Death, Panic attacks/disorders, Blood, and Injury/Injury detail