Pete Rawlik

What starts out auspiciously devolves into a simple monster-fest as Rawlik goes into excruciating detail about every Lovecraftian being ever mentioned by anyone. It reads at times like a Call of Cthulhu scenario manual. Since he starts with [b:At the Mountains of Madness|32767|At the Mountains of Madness|H.P. Lovecraft|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1388341769s/32767.jpg|17342821] as a premise he's forced to come up with a plot eventually having used up all of Lovecraft's other stories to write [b:Reanimators|16129182|Reanimators|Pete Rawlik|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1390433962s/16129182.jpg|21954122]. However, this doesn't keep him from eventually strip mining the Dreamlands stories once he runs out of original ideas.

Characters and monsters alike are seemingly all immortal and are resurrected willy nilly after being "destroyed" whenever it is convenient to move the story forward.

Any sense of the outre or weird is completely lost as Rawlik can't seem to decide if he wants to be clever-funny or serious. The whole thing ends up as a blend of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Ghostbusters complete with tank fed green slime guns.

I can't believe that after how much I hated [b:Reanimators|16129182|Reanimators|Pete Rawlik|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1390433962s/16129182.jpg|21954122] I wasted money on this.… (more)

Let's get one thing clear from the start, I hate this novel. It is an example of the worst sort of current "Lovecraftian" writing (more on that later).

Rawlik is technically a fine, scrub that, adequate writer. He can put together sentences and paragraphs and chapters. This novel has a definite beginning, middle, and thank god, an end. But it just isn't any good. You cannot string together a bunch of Lovecraft stories, or rather pastiches of Lovecraft stories, with a hair-thin plot involving Herbert West: Reanimator as the template and have it be any good. It ends up just being a Lovecraftian "Where's Waldo?" for Lovecraft geeks to identify the bits and pieces from the obtuse, or in some cases, overt references. Not interesting or entertaining.

The chapters read like a standup comic with a one gag repertoire who keeps telling the same jokes with different words. So if Rawlik was aiming at some sort of comedy via self parody, then you have a story's worth here not a novel. Not funny then either.

This sort of thing is an example of the worst vein of ongoing Lovecraft writing: trying to write or imitate a Lovecraft story. The ability to do that properly ended in 1937. Lovecraftian writing, the best contemporary Lovecraftian writing, is being done by writers who take the themes Lovecraft created and putting their own creativity into making something different not imitative or parodying of Lovecraft's stories, something new and beyond. Something that transcends the original stories into new areas. This pastiche writing is the basement of Lovecraftian writing today. While writers like [a:Laird Barron|466494|Laird Barron|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1376696519p2/466494.jpg], [a:Thomas Ligotti|128466|Thomas Ligotti|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1371462738p2/128466.jpg], and [a:Caitlín R. Kiernan|4798562|Caitlín R. Kiernan|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1304526440p2/4798562.jpg] are writing stories that are fugues on Lovecraft's themes and concepts, this sort of writing smacks of the same sort of imitation that [a:August Derleth|20598|August Derleth|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1263314065p2/20598.jpg] and [a:Brian Lumley|20602|Brian Lumley|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1246727488p2/20602.jpg] were accused of.

If you want to do this kind of "Lovecraftian" writing you are better off with a shovel, a syringe of luminous fluid, and a one-way ticket to Providence.

… (more)

...and I'm out. More than a quarter of the way through this book and, well...

Okay, remember in school, you had that one teacher that would drone on, and your mind would drift away to anything other than what they were talking about?

Yeah, that was me with this novel. I'd find myself ten pages past where I last remember, having read all the words, but not retaining any of them. Unfortunately, Rawlik has stuck too closely to the Lovecraft style of writing, which tended to go overboard with descriptions and precise measurements, while ignoring character development or dialogue.

Couldn't finish it.… (more)