The Spiraling Worm: Call of Cthulhu Novel (Call of Cthulhu Fiction)

HP Lovecraft was a pretty awful writer in some ways, producing tenebrous, rugose, squamose prose that was deep in arcane and dark adjectives that could not adequately describe that which could not properly admit of description. And enormous blind penguins.That's not a bad thing, per se, and he did do good work, not just for kickstarting the Cthulhu Mythos, but for inculcating some sense of creeping dread in his readers, even if you might not have been sure what he was talking about all of the time. And as long as you like everyone dying.The Spiralling Worm's authors, on the other hand, seem too scared to kill off the characters that they care about, even using the non-Euclidean geometric universes to cure their protagonists when Bad Things Happen. Lovecraft wouldn't have allowed you to cure your cancer by crossing dimensions, or if he had, you could guarantee you'd catch something worse.Whereas in the Spiralling Worm, there's not really a sense of creeping dread; the whole thing is more like Cthulhu-pantomime, with men rushing around with guns and suitcase nukes and helicopters, and fighting back the nameless horrors from Beyond The Stars. Ftaghn! Etc.Sadly, what we really read Lovecraft for is the feeling that everything is going to go wrong and we're all going to have our brains eaten. This is much less depressing - it's like reading a B-movie. It rushes along and you can overlook the cheesy (if not quite non-existent) characterisation, the barely choreographed fight sequences and the occasional failures to spell-check properly, but at the same time it never goes quite fast enough that you forget what you're reading.Oh, and there's some truly dreadful material involving terrorists running around the catacombs of the Vatican, which read to me like it had been written by somebody who'd heard the plot of something by Dan Brown in a pub, and was trying to excite his five year old son by recounting it in whatever lurid detail he thought he could get away with. But if you wanted to base a Call of Cthulhu campaign off it, you'd probably enjoy yourself quite a lot. It really does have that feel of RPG-sourcebook rather than work of literature about it. If that sounds good, go for it - otherwise, stick to Charles Stross and  The Atrocity Archives .

You know what? I've been reading HPL stories for maybe over 25 years now and yeah, as entertaining as they are there are still some things that frustrate me, mostly that the Human race is so stupid and doesn't have the brains to fight back and kick some Great Old Ones @$$!!!But this book breaks the mould. This book bites back. It grabs those tentacles and shoves them where R'lyeh doesn't shine! (yes I know that doesn't make sense but hey ho...)No seriously, this book's ace, the cover threw me a bit, (never judge... etc etc..) as I thought it looked 'too cartoony' but the stories are far from that. If you like Spooks, which again is one of my favourite TV shows, or even the Professionals... or for that matter any 'spy' type show, or even Torchwood / Dr Who, then this is for you, reminded me a bit like Delta Green type stuff and indeed there could (please please please) be a sequel that may refer or even feature DG operatives in their fight against the Great Old Ones and their minions.Great book, great characters, great stories. ;-)