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Franklyn Searight

Teoksen Lair of the Dreamer: A Cthulhu Mythos Omnibus tekijä

13+ teosta 31 jäsentä 1 Review

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Erotteluhuomautus:

(eng) Please do not confuse with Richard Franklyn Searight, born on 13 June 1902.

Tekijän teokset

Associated Works

The Innsmouth Cycle (1998) — Avustaja — 109 kappaletta
Tales Out of Innsmouth (1999) — Avustaja — 91 kappaletta
Weirdbook Annual #2: The Third Cthulhu Mythos MEGAPACK (2019) — Avustaja — 12 kappaletta

Merkitty avainsanalla

Yleistieto

Syntymäaika
1935-08-05
Sukupuoli
male
Erotteluhuomautus
Please do not confuse with Richard Franklyn Searight, born on 13 June 1902.

Jäseniä

Kirja-arvosteluja

Coming to it on the tail end of a bunch of dogs like The Iron Maiden, The Dark Destroyer and Dead Ground, I had precious little patience left for Lair of the Dreamer. Lair of the Dreamer is a single author collection by Franklyn Searight, published by Hippocampus Press, a very respectable small press specializing in the history and influences of Lovecraft. It is a very nice trade paperback with 307 pages. Text starts on page 9; preceding it are contents and a pleasantly nondescript introduction by Robert Price. As is typical with Hippocampus Press, production is flawless and editing was tight. I may have seen an occasional typo. List price is $20 with no discounts on Amazon, but with free shipping available if you buy $25 worth of stuff. Cover art was by Robert Knox, who also gave us the art for The Fungal Stain by Hippocampus. It didn't do much for m; I was similarly lukewarm to the interior art. Unfortunately, there was no biography of the author. Also unfortunately, no publication history of the stories is provided. The Black Sutra from Mythos Books had a very complete publication history, and in WH Pugmire's The Fungal Stain the author provided a detailed history of the provenance of the stories. So I ended up knowing very little about Mr. Searight. His father corresponded with Lovecraft, but was not a Cthulhu mythos author. Mr. Searight has been dabbling in the mythos genre for decades. I think I read The Innsmouth Head online years ago, and a few other stories were vaguely familiar but this was mostly new material for me. In the chapbooks from Rainfall Books, Mr. Searight is a regular. He has written a few stories set in Chancellor Town, an over the top set of stories with rather weak humor.

Mr. Searight's Cthulhu mythos, as I read it, is very Derlethian. All the mythos tropes are firmly in place. This is comfortably well trod ground; if you liked the Black Sutra by DeBill you'll probably like this. Problem is, I didn't like The Black Sutra. The most original touch is the main character in the short stories is Alan Hasrad, the direct descendent of the mad Arab himself, Abdul Alhazred. This connection gives Alan familiarity with the Necronomicon and the eldritch entities and tomes so near and dear to the mythos heart. Alan is a reporter drawn into occult investigations, a sort of Arkham based Kolchak. That's as far as the originality goes. Alan is not Muslim nor is his Arabic heritage explored in any way, his character has nothing of mystery about it. In fact, none of this has any mystery about it. Many stories take place in Innsmouth. And in just about every dang story, we have to have a re-accounting of the background of The Shadow Over Innsmouth by HPL. We are told over and over about the basic texts in the eldritch library, about the Derlethian ordering of the mythos and the Innsmouth look. I mean, really, who is going to read this de novo, not having already delved heavily into Lovecraftian fiction? Do we need the background again? Even if all these stories were written independently of each other and appeared in disparate magazine, it is nonetheless difficult to tediously reread this kind of mythos tripe over and over. If half the effort had been devoted to snappy dialogue, tighter plotting or interesting character development, this would have been such a better book. So after I was lost by the trappings that ages ago wore out their welcome, I was then subjected to some plot devices I really can't abide. Alan works for an Arkham newspaper, right in HPL's fictional universe. But HPL is actually in these stories as an author who really knew the truth but couched it as fiction. Ugh. Boring. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. In the endless novella that gives the book its title, HPL's ghost is even summoned from the dead to appear as a character. Also, the author himself is written in as a character in one story, a friend of Alan Hasrad who transcribes his adventures to be released as fiction to the public. I guess I could have forgiven all if the prose had been better but the characterization, plot execution and dialogue were all wooden. It literally took me two months to finally slog to the end because I could not manage more than a few pages at a time; I kept bogging down. Here are the contents:

There is a Pond - In this story, we are introduced to Alan Hasrad, who finds something strange about a pond on his family's property near Arkham, and he begins to realize what it means to be descended for Abdul Alhazred.

Interlude at the Bridge - Maybe this was the best story in the book. Part of it is told from the perspective of a Deep One. A friend of Alan has an accident on a bridge while driving with his fiancé, encountering a Deep One.

The Sorcerer's Pipe - Not an Alan Hasrad story, a collector of pipes acquires a priceless antique and alas puts it to use. Not a bad little read!

The Innsmouth Head - Another friend of Hasrad's goes fishing off Innsmouth and hooks something he should have thrown back.

Armillaria - The title is from the scientific name of an enormous fungus. Searight combines a modern festival and some Native American lore into a decent mythos story. Maybe this one was the best in the book.

The Guardian of the Pit - Alan Hasrad goes into Innsmouth to find out the secret behind what happened to Old Man Marsh's gold.

The Closing of the Gate - On Walpurgis Night some nutty cultists want to open some gate, and a friend of Hasrad's wants to stop them. Fortunately Alan knows all about the Necronomicon.

Mists of Death - This story is a posthumous collaboration between Franklyn and Richard F. Searight. It read like most of the other stories here to me; I could not discern the different contributions from the authors. Near Bramwell, MA, a cavern has been entered and an entity given access to the modern age, to the woe of the nearby town. Maybe Alan Hasrad can figure out what to do.

Stomach Pains -This is the last of the Hasrad stories for now at least. Full credit to Mr. Searight for retiring his favorite protagonist. Hasrad and a friend go into the belly of the beast.

The Lair of the Dreamer - This story was a full fledged novella, sprawling across 147 pages. A dashing anthropologist's secretary and girlfriend falls into a coma under the influence of a brand new Elder God. The anthropologist and the damsel-in-distress' brother must perform Herculean feats to restore her. We are mercilessly subjected to the appearance of HPL's ghost and Laban Shrewsberry putting in a rare appearance from Calaeno , as well as once again the entire Innsmouth story. If I semi-liked a few of the previous works, the prose here sunk the book beyond the point of recovery. I also wondered, as I do from time to time, if mythos authors have to put in racist-sounding phrases like "thick negroid lips" because that's the way HPL wrote in the 1920s and they have to imitate him in all respects, or if it just spills out into the text unintentionally.

What is a mythos fan to do? Some completists must have everything. Some readers like their mythos like a comfortable pair of old shoes where nothing is too surprising and nothing changes, ia ia etc. Certainly it was a better buy than Dead Ground, The Iron Maiden or The Dark Destroyer. I know I was very curious about Searight's mythos stories before I read this book, so nothing would have dissuaded me from getting it, certainly not a tepid review. But those of you who are impecunious or more discerning would be much better off with the single author collections of Fry's World Wide Web, Myer's Dark Wisdom, Webb's When They Came, or anything by WH Pugmire.
… (lisätietoja)
½
 
Merkitty asiattomaksi
carpentermt | Sep 26, 2010 |

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