Or, since the whole collection only cost me $1.42, the last three or four days of my life I spent reading The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath back. I haven't been this disappointed in a novel since I didn't read Tess of the D’Urbervilless in English Lit. (sorry, Mrs. Stonehill). If it were all just an excuse to provide an introduction for Nyarlathotep, then it was an overly-long and overwrought one. If it were an attempt to create a single universe where all of the events of the previous stories are codified and brought together, is succeeded but at the expense of the read. (I think I now truly understand horror–the horror of a horrible novel._ If it were an attempt to cash in on a larger audience of novel readers, and make more money than with short stories, I hope he has better luck in the future, because this single novel wasn’t worth what I paid for the whole collection, and had it been the first thing of his I’d read, I wouldn’t continue (A Farewell to Arms says 'Hi!')
I’m generally not a fan of adventure stories, especially not ones with so much violence (there’s a lot of violence and war in this), but I thought because I genuinely enjoy the writing of the previous short stories, and the had the hope that the hallmarks I’ve seen the previous stories would become more apparent, I decided to keep reading. But the writing is bogged down in the detailing of events that the explanation of motive (or lack thereof) which makes the other stories so interesting is completely missing here. Even Herbert West, which uses the detailing of event to create mood still remembers to give the reader a very conspicuous lack of motive as to why his friend sticks around, and that makes the story all the more gruesome.
The next one had better be damned good.
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