I had always wanted to read this novel since I was a Cthulhu-obsessed kid. After all, this was the book with the Cthonians in it! The very creatures who got me into Lovecraft!

I was a young D & D player, scouring Dragon Magazines in my local library, when I ran across ads for RAFM's Cthulhu miniatures line. Look!

http://i1341.photobucket.com/albums/o754/iwritemonsters/Cthulhu_Minis_zps2kc3nwa...

Behold! An array of bizarre creatures, only described (in the original ad) by two words each. I was hooked, and the Cthonian was the badass of my collection.

Of course, I wouldn't figure out what Cthulhu WAS until I hunted down [book:Terrors, Terrors, Terrors|7732900], but that didn't matter. The Call of Cthulhu rulebook only confirmed what I suspected: intelligent, spell-casting, blood-drinking tentacle worms were AWESOME.

Only this book showed me that, they were the Steve Urkels of the Mythos.

We start with a series of letters. Someone named Titus Crow is piercing together clues involving cave-ins, deaths, and madness around the globe, always dropping the hints that he knows the dark secret behind it all. Not a bad start.

Then our narrator, Henri, arrives on scene, and this becomes the Cthulhu Mythos version of the Pink Panther.

Titus Crow, occultist master, explains to Henri that the whole field of teh occult is the leftover science of the Elder Gods, who imprisoned the Cthulhu aliens on Earth. He describes this in such detail that we are eighty pages in by the time he's done. Lumley is a huge fan of Lovecraft, AND HE WANTS YOU TO KNOW AND ACCEPT HIS HEADCANNON, DAMMIT.

In-between, there's a very traditional Lovecraft short story as an aside. This sets the tone for the book: awesomeness in the middle of silliness.

By the way, Titus relies heavily on splashing holy water around for the rest of the goddamn book while singing the praises of alien science.
Finally, the tension hits. The world is infested with gigantic, telepathic worm aliens, and Titus has four of their eggs! Their breeding rate is so low that they will surely come for them. What to do?

Well, first he mails them away. Them he and Henri have some chicken sandwiches on a very nice picnic.

I started to realize that Brian Lumley understands what creates the tension in a tale of cosmic horror, and he will shoot it in the face until it is dead.

Worried about the earth-dwelling Cthonians, Titus and Henri decide to escape interference by living on a houseboat and hitting the pub everyday. In the meantime, the telepathic intrusions start to get worse! Titus's mind fills with the words of the Cthonians . . .

. . . who beg him to leave them alone, and they promise they'll forget all about him. Really.

They then send a protoplasmic zombie to sneak on board, who reiterates that the Cthonians aren't looking for any trouble, really, let's call the whole thing off.

You'd think that the suspense would be totally dead by this point, but a Miskatonic University professor comes to the house boat and reveals the existence of a badass, monster-fighting conspiracy that has been kicking SO MUCH ASS for decades that:

a) The Cthonians have NO IDEA they exist despite the fact that

b) They have captive Cthonian females in a stable breeding program for worm-killing experiments.

The good professor actually refers to the killing of alien gods as pest control. I begin to realize that these guys are the protagonists of the novel I actually want to read.

The cthonians haven't even shown up physically yet, by the way.

Before the end, there's alien dynamitin', a GREAT chapter featuring a letter from a oil rig worker, and some competence on the way of the Cthonians. I gotta give it to them; they're playing with the rules stack against them. Lumley's universe is tweaked to gimp the monsters at every opportunity, and I started laughing at how easily a shoggoth and even mighty Cthulhu himself were told to bugger off.

The great weakness of the Cthonians themselves? Water. A fire-hose can take care of one.

Also, the secret conspiracy telepathically discovers a breeding population of Loch Ness Monsters and has no idea what to do with the information.

In the end, you can clearly see that Lumley has a love of Lovecraft and a clear view of a Mythos universe. The problem is that this view turns the alien entities into mustache/tentacle-twirling bad guys who aren't as effective as Batman '66 villains. There's two great and one good Lovecraftian chapters with what seems like campaign notes from an 11-year-old's all of Cthulhu campaign.

If you love Lovecraft, this can be fun in an MST3K way. I smirked all the way through it.

Also, in the end, a TARDIS is involved. Just so you know. ( )

Good stuff! Kept me on the edge waiting to see what would happen next. I think he did a good job keeping it lovecraftesque in essence. Worth recommending to those who love Lovecraft's works. ( )