LUMLEY, Brian, Mythos Omnibus Volume 2: Spawn of the Winds; In the Moon of Borea; Elysia, HarperCollins Publishers, London, 1997.
Octavo;
paperback; 684pp. Spine creased; corners slightly bumped; wrappers showing mild
shelfwear
I
have to say that I was looking forward to reading this material. I had already
picked up an edition of Volume 1 and had enjoyed most of what I found there; I
was destined to be very disappointed with the second round.
Initially,
I had only encountered Titus Crow by flipping through the Encyclopedia
Cthulhiana. What very little Harms
reveals in that work was tantalising – here was a capable, modern-day agent to
oppose the forces of the Mythos; very much the sort of individual that most of us
wish to embody when we roleplay in HPL’s sandbox. And the first volume didn’t
disappoint, although The Transition of Titus Crow and The Clock of Dreams did
start to fall into the deathless kind of rambling prose that one finds in HPL’s
Through the Gate of the Silver Key. Still, with all that water under my
personal bridge, I decided to push on.
Something
goes horribly wrong between the two books. Two chapters into Spawn, I began to
wonder if I was reading the synopsis for a graphic novel: suddenly, instead of
well-read and justifiably dour researchers, I was rubbing along with a
worldwide community of superhero types, packed to the gills with the Right
Stuff and thumbing their noses in testosteronal good humour at the “bad guys”.
Characterisation went by the wayside as the dramatis personae were reduced to
name, point of origin and applicable skill-set. My eyes glazed over, despite
all of the crashing aeroplanes, inexplicable interplanetary journeying and
manful stiff-upper-lipping over the bleak outlook before the party.
What
we learn from HPL is that the Mythos doesn’t particularly care about us in any
way; all we can do is arrange to be standing way over there when the cataclysm
comes down here. That’s all any of the canon ‘heroes’ really ever manage to
achieve. Going ‘mano a mano’ with Ithaqua, defying it, and then facing its
‘revenge’ is so out of the genre, that this ceases at once to be a Mythos work
and starts to resemble a Marvel Comic (no offense). I was even waiting for the Wind-Walker
to start monologuing.
The
other disappointment was characterisation. Without a psychological insight into
the characters, there is no tension, no horror. At no time do we get any deep
revelations about Silberhutte and his derring-doers. The tale unfolds like some
colourful boardgame: move the big Wendigo piece over here; watch the little
action figures scurry (nice paintjob, by the way). At the end of the day, the
game, like this adventure, goes back into the box and life goes on. An HPL tale
stays with you, resonating in your head for several days.
Some
might say that At the Mountains of Madness reads very much like this series,
and I’d agree to some extent. In that story, HPL has many characters to present
and facilitate; however, at no time do we fail to gain an impression of the doom,
the terror that those characters are feeling. To my mind, HPL is channelling
the same skills that Melville employs to bring to life the crew of the Pequod
in Moby Dick, or that Conrad uses to animate Heart of Darkness. This product
shows that Lumley is either not up to the task at hand, or that he wasn’t
really committed to the work.
To
be honest, I didn’t finish this book. At a certain point, I gain the impression
that life is too short to be wasted on a lesser enterprise; like the moment of
turning the cover on a Stephenie Meyer book. This is no Dagon’s Bell; it’s
certainly no Fairground Horror. It has some cute concepts that might be employed
in a gaming adventure but not a lot of anything else.
I
give it one-and-a-half tentacled horrors.
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