Lumley builds on Lovecraft's mythos, name-checking each and every one of his creatures and worlds,2 but he's ultimately inverting Lovecraft.
Lovecraft's characters faint at the hint of monsters. Lumley's characters seek out monsters and fight back.3
Lovecraft is know for nihilism, despair and hopelessness. Lumley's work is lively, humorous, and imbued with a sense of wonder and optimism.4 Lumley is firmly rooted in pulp horror fiction from the 30's5 and he wears his influences on his sleeve as he transcends them.
His main protagonist, Titus Crow, is basically Doctor Who crossed with Sherlock Holmes.6 He's proactive, quick, clever, mildly clairvoyant, and relentless.
In "Burrowers," there are giant worms on the loose that give the sandworms in "Dune" a run for their money. They cause earthquakes and wreck cities everywhere they go and Titus Crow wrecks them in return!
Crow gets lost in space and time AND dimensionality in "Transition of Titus Crow." At one point, he ends up on an alien robot planet, trapped as a brain with two dangling eyes in a jar. His journey only gets weirder from there. We're talking crystal cities, visiting the ancient Romans, the Hounds of Tindalos let loose, rides on giant lisping lizards, confrontations with bubble beings of pure chaos, you name it. It flows a lot like Lovecraft's overlong "Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath," but it doesn't feel nearly as scattershot.7
The first book is largely told through letters and articles, with Lumley jumping around in search of a functional structure.8 It's at its best when we hear directly about Crow's hijinx.
Lumley's background in short stories shines through in his wonderful anecdotes about sea shoggoths, expeditions to eldritch underwater kingdoms,9 abortive deep sea drilling expeditions, monster origin stories,10 and brief visits to planets outside of space and time.
All in all, these two short novels whet the appetite for more Crow stories, since they seem like "very special episodes" of Titus Crow. I want more episodic adventures where Crow gets to crack jokes in the face of Godzilla-sized octopoid monstrosities.11
But if you like Lovecraft and wish he had more engaging and colorful protagonists, you'll definitely get a kick out of these books.12
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1. Originally planned as a single book, "Necroscope" spiraled out into SIXTEEN books and counting. George R.R. Martin is notorious for stretching his planned "Song of Ice and Fire" trilogy into seven books (unless he writes more...), but Lumley has way more padding skillz!
2. He drops a "King in Yellow" reference at one point, to show he knows his pre-Lovecraft mythos, as well.
3. Robert E. Howard deserves credit for taking this approach first, though. His "Conan" stories from the 1930's basically take the unspeakable monstrosities of Lovecraft and hurl a fearless barbarian adventurer at them.
4. Also Lumley is not a frothing-at-the-mouth racist. Cthulhu's miscegenation is a major plot point, though, so Lumley tips his hat to Lovecraft's xenophobic tendencies.
5. Interestingly- this 1975 book is 40 years old and it's hearkening back to literature 40 years older than itself!
6. And like the Holmes stories, these books are largely narrated by his Watson-like assistant, de Marigny.
7. Lovecraft always had trouble with novel-length works. His style's a better fit for short stories.
8. And true- it gets bogged down by a LOT of mythos talk. If you're a fan, mythos stuff is like having a fun bull session on monsters with a friend, but if you want action and adventure, the lengthy conversations and descriptions of ancient tomes slow it down a bit much.
9. Including a revelation that the giant monster in Lovecraft's "Call of Cthulhu" wasn't actually Cthulhu, but merely one of HIS SMALLER CHILDREN!!!
10. Their origin stories actually provide scientific explanations for why certain chants and signs work to repel or defeat the monsters. Lumley thought this stuff through!
11. Or "CCD"s, as Lumley labels the "Cthulhu Cycle Deities." I understand there's a short story collection that collects all Lumley's previous Crow stories, in addition to several more volumes of Crow shenanigans- I'ma read the crap out of all of them.
12. In fact, this feels more like playing a game based in his world than his fiction. And that's fine. "Arkham Horror" is good fun:
-Phony McFakename
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