(no subject)

a rather benign picture of Yog-Sothoth, one of the major players in The Dunwich Horror (sort of)

I just read The Dunwich Horror by HP Lovecraft and it was pretty much a slog. There were good points to it that I'll get to at the end of this, but for the most part it was a lesson about how if you let your neighbours inbreed they're going to summon nameless horrors from beyond and frankly, I got enough of that from educational videos back in middle school.

The plot: Things are afoot in Dunwich as Old Man Whately (a wizard) and his daughter (an albinistic woman, I'm not sure if that was meant to scare me or be some sort of inbreeding crack or HP just thought it was cool. IDEK) play caretaker to the daughter's newborn son who is growing at an unnatural rate.

Then things get wacky.

What I like about this book is that during the brief bits with action, I really liked the action. And the heroes of this book? Librarians. One of them is a sprightly old fellow of 73 who was pretty darn feisty. He had two librarian sidekicks and between them, they were ready to save the world.

I also like that when he specified various people in the town, he (HP) would say where they were on the decadence scale. If they were of the un-decayed branch of Whatelys, the decayed branch, or caught in-between.

Also, excellent use of phone horror.

But otherwise, a slog. This is not on my list of stories I will rec to people who want to get into Lovecraft. Maybe later on, but not as an introduction.

Final thoughts: This would have made a great short animated film, done right.

Link to read it here. I wish to god their layout wasn't white on black. I've been reading an ebook.

it's free. Someone check this out for me

I'm confused and intrigued.

It says in the summary that this book, 'The Dream Quest Of The Unknown Kadath Reslept by Holly Phillipa Lovecraft' is a gender switch adventure.

The pothead poster picture on the cover has me a little concerned that perhaps in this alternate universe HP really liked his/her outfits made of shoelaces and hankies. And then I picture that for the real HP.

And on that note, bedtime!