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Kuninori Hashimoto info3001 — In his introduction, C.J. Henderson expresses a disappointment that Lovecraft's heroes are never able to fight back, that they never just get a gun and start shooting at any otherworldly interdimensional beasts that show up. Perhaps he also feels a disappointment that more people don't fire their guns to fend off encroaching lightning bolts or tornadoes. Lovecraft's entire point is that there are some things larger than the human arsenal. Beyond that, there are a multitude of stories featuring more stalwart heroes facing the horrors of the mythos. Firstly, there's Lovecraft's own 'The Case of Charles Dexter Ward' which features a remarkably complex protagonist surviving in the incomprehensible world of the elder gods. There are also Alan Moore's 'Yuggoth Cultures' and Neal Gaiman's 'Only The End of the World Again'. Lovecraft often corresponded with R.E. Howard, whose Conan the Barbarian provides an excellent example of a hero who faces the cyclopean horrors and comes away relatively unscathed. Conan also provides many parallels with the classic hard boiled detective, the other genre from which Henderson draws inspiration. Conan's no-nonsense machismo and sense of self-preservation in the face of the unknown could have served as an excellent mold for a detective protagonist. Hard boiled detective fiction meshes rather well with Lovecraft, as the protagonists must know not to get in too far. Private eyes know there is such a thing as knowing too much. That's why we have a witness protection program. Henderson could have created an interesting setting by pointing out the similarities of both genres, especially being 'drawn in too far' and 'losing one's humanity'. However, despite wanting a strong hero, and drawing from a genre renowned for men who place survival above all else, Henderson instead creates the most cheery, incautious detective he can. While both Lovecraft and hard boiled fiction depend on mood to create a sense of depth and danger, Henderson's book has none. Though claiming Detective fiction and the Mythos for inspiration, he instead writes a rompy adventure. While Douglas Adams was able to pull humor from detective fiction, and Joss Whedon managed it with otherworldly horror, Henderson is, unfortunately, neither funny or quirky, despite numerous attempts. The book doesn't fit with either the horror or detective genre, it is almost pure monomyth adventure. The soft boiled protagonist is a literal 'chosen one' with magic powers, and the cast is filled out by a beautiful damsel-in-distress with zero personality, an 'average guy' and two 'magical minorities'. The latter two are both apparently American-born, firstly a black voodoo weaponeer, and secondly a mystical Asian psychic with the requisite chilled emotions. Though she does not seem to be an actual foreigner, Henderson still describes her by the racist 19th-century epithet 'an oriental'. The Mandingo is suitably oversized and laconic, and apparently able to get his hands on the most unlikely of weapons. They will certainly need them, if they want to shoot that hurricane before it has a chance to kill them. Besides land mines and rocket launchers, he gets the whole party a set of Pancor Jackhammers, which are fully automatic shotguns. Unfortunately, these weapons were never actually produced, except for two prototypes. Only gun nuts and fans of certain classic VRPGs would know this fact, so it would only harm disbelief in a small percentage. But then, why add a small detail that will be meaningless to most of your readers, who won't get it, and faulty to the few who will? The weapon also brings up both the question of how the guy got a hold of them in the first place and why he would give unique weapons to some guy for free. The answer to the latter point is that everyone in this book intuitively knows whether anyone else is telling the truth. It's never explained whether that's a characteristic of this particular magical world, or whether Henderson thinks that's actually how human beings interact, but it certainly saves him from having to write multi-syllabic dialogue or portray human conflicts. Our weaponeer (who Henderson once describes as shushing the hero with 'a thick black finger') also bores out the middle of the shotgun slugs and puts nitroglycerin inside of them. Nitro is the most unstable explosive we have, meaning these slugs would explode if you dropped them on the floor. Let's all imagine what would happen if you suddenly set off a firing pin next to one. That's right, exploding gun. Now lets imagine you have a whole clip full of these things. Take that, you damned flash floods! Our Celestial psychic serves the purpose of introducing us to the main mover of this books' plot: the intuitive message from beyond. Nearly every problem Henderson sets before his characters is solved within the next half page, and usually by some sudden epiphany from out of the blue. Whether it's simple mistrust or the secret location of the bad guys, nothing is too small or too large for the author to simply put directly into his characters' brains. Ironically, this bypasses any thought or emotional strength that would make the characters 'strong in the face of overwhelming odds', as he originally envisioned them. By removing any purpose or will, he ensures that the characters can have no personality, growth, or ability to actually overcome challenges. At one point, the protagonist begins to doubt, falling into an uncharacteristic moment of introspection, which is then rudely interrupted by a magical voice in his head saying 'believe' and removing all his doubts in one fell swoop. Apparently, Henderson has to personally enter his books and bully his characters back on track, because not even they can believe how poorly-written their world is. This book also gives an opportunity for him to represent his lack of understanding in the areas of science and mathematics when he begins to explain all about the world of the elder gods. While explaining that the evil only comes at times of grand syzygy (no cliche left behind) he suggests that planets are kept in motion by their own gravitational wells, which is the opposite of true. Gravity saps away energy. His original suggestion that the placement of planets allows the otherworldly creatures to enter our world is likewise fraught, since the effect of gravity quickly diminishes over distance For example: the gravitational pull of Jupiter on you at its greatest is about equal with the television set across the room. If you really want to stop the elder gods, just rearrange the furniture. He then misquotes 'A Brief History of Time' concerning the expansion and contraction of the universe. Between that and the Pancor reference, I expected this book to have been written circa 1987, not 2006. As a sort of final insult, Henderson indicates that Lovecraft's own works were the result of him psychically connecting to the coming horrors which occur in this book. This is like saying that the Bible was only written so it could eventually be a footnote in the Da Vinci Code (not that Dan Brown actually cited references). The title of the book really says a lot more than it means to. It evokes the Lovecraft story "The Things That Should Not Be", except Lovecraft's title is frightening. We are naturally afraid of things that should not exist, but things which don't exist are understandably less threatening. The title clearly doesn't refer to the monsters themselves, which show up early and often, and leave their very corporeal body parts all over. Rather, it refers to the fact that this book is without many things, including mood, tone, character, humor, suspense, fear, conflict, research, or editing. Henderson misuses numerous words and metaphors throughout. One example is using 'sweating bullets' to indicate lots of hard work, instead of anxiety over the fast approach of death. Finally, the book bears as much resemblance to Lovecraft's work as a Michael Bay film. The hero even talks to 'Cthulhu' at length, showing that Henderson has never come close to comprehending Lovecraft's style or philosophy. The very thoughts of these creatures are too complex for the human mind to comprehend. Just as no single person could memorize all the books that have been written, so too we could not comprehend such complex, alien minds. Instead of blasting the hero's brain with unbelievable thoughts, 'Cthulhu' prattles on about death, sounding like a child paraphrasing Sauron from Lord of the Rings. Then Henderson puts into effect the threat from the introduction of taking on incomprehensible forces of nature with blazing pistols. It's much easier to shoot them once Henderson makes the naive mistake of creating a theological pseudoscientific explanation to make the creatures small, simple, and understandable. At which point, nothing remains at all which ties this book to Lovecraft's legacy. In the end, Henderson is not creative enough or experienced enough to produce anything new or interesting, even when mixing two such promising and interesting genres. One comes away with the sense that his personal experiences with fear, human conflict, and the insurmountable are so limited that he couldn't imagine anything that would create more than a half-page's difficulty for his characters. This book achieves about the same level of horror, plot, and character depth as your average made-for-TV sci fi channel movie. His monsters even feel rubber-suited, which is odd, since books don't have limited CGI budgets. I hope Henderson's Kolchak novelizations are better than this, because one man shouldn't make fodder out of two previously enjoyable worlds.

Andrea Abarca _ndrea_barca_ — It was a deep memoir that was haunting. It was quite short but it was written with great depth.

Lena Goh lenagoh — Think: Oscar the grouch meets Hemingway