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A review by brizreader
At the Mountains of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft
4.0
3.75 stars. Starts wonderfully strong. Ends okay. One big, disbelief-straining infodump loses a star.
I'd been meaning to read Lovecraft for a while, since I love all the Lovecraft fanart I see on the internet (e.g. this!), and I was in the mood for something weird and about monsters.
This short novel is reminiscent of 19th century horror stuff like Dracula and Frankenstein. The pacing feels a little slow at times, the infodumps are very infodumpy, and the general voice is just super 19th century dude.
Which is fine. I enjoyed the slow build-up to the eventual reveal, and I enjoyed how the TRUE HORRORS (!!)!!)!) which the protagonist keeps alluding to but never actually, totally materialize (I guess it's "read the sequel for more").
Brief plot: Protagonist Man (didn't get his name), a professor of geology from some New England college, goes on a science expedition with his scientist bro friends (and some grad students and interns, heh) to the Antarctic. They drill some holes. They find some weird striations. When they investigate stuff more, they find, well, CTHULHU. Well, sort of. Cool stuff. Then bad things happen. Then, AFTER the bad stuff, the Professor and his friend decide to go explore those "mountains of madness" and see what's on the other side. I will admit that I did LOL a little at WHAT WAS ON THE OTHER SIDE: I don't think it's spoilery to say they do, at one point, find penguins and marvel at domestic stuff like window hinges. I'm sorry, but it was kinda funny to have them be like, "the horror! the horror! but what good window hinges". Also, "what good art, that is good, wow". Hahahaha. Also, okay, how did they literally deduce the entire history of the planet from some (apparently quite good but still just) murals? I know the late 19th century was when folks were pumped about archaeology, but I thought it took them more than a minute to understand the hieroglyphs and the pyramids?! RIGHT?
THE HORROR
I'd been meaning to read Lovecraft for a while, since I love all the Lovecraft fanart I see on the internet (e.g. this!), and I was in the mood for something weird and about monsters.
This short novel is reminiscent of 19th century horror stuff like Dracula and Frankenstein. The pacing feels a little slow at times, the infodumps are very infodumpy, and the general voice is just super 19th century dude.
Which is fine. I enjoyed the slow build-up to the eventual reveal, and I enjoyed how the TRUE HORRORS (!!)!!)!) which the protagonist keeps alluding to but never actually, totally materialize (I guess it's "read the sequel for more").
Brief plot: Protagonist Man (didn't get his name), a professor of geology from some New England college, goes on a science expedition with his scientist bro friends (and some grad students and interns, heh) to the Antarctic. They drill some holes. They find some weird striations. When they investigate stuff more, they find, well, CTHULHU. Well, sort of. Cool stuff. Then bad things happen. Then, AFTER the bad stuff, the Professor and his friend decide to go explore those "mountains of madness" and see what's on the other side. I will admit that I did LOL a little at WHAT WAS ON THE OTHER SIDE: I don't think it's spoilery to say they do, at one point, find penguins and marvel at domestic stuff like window hinges. I'm sorry, but it was kinda funny to have them be like, "the horror! the horror! but what good window hinges". Also, "what good art, that is good, wow". Hahahaha. Also, okay, how did they literally deduce the entire history of the planet from some (apparently quite good but still just) murals? I know the late 19th century was when folks were pumped about archaeology, but I thought it took them more than a minute to understand the hieroglyphs and the pyramids?! RIGHT?
THE HORROR