House of the Worm

House of the Worm

By: Gary Myers  

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Average Customer Rating: 4.0 out of 5

Publisher: Arkham House Pub

Customer Review: 5 out of 5
Good book - I _am_ a hardcore Cthulhu mythos fan, and I loved it.

Customer Review: 3 out of 5
Even Lovecraft would be confused.... - Gary Myers' "House of the Worm" is an excursion into the rich worlds of H.P. Lovecraft. This slim volume from Arkham House is a collection of short stories that delve deep into his various Mythos. Myers admits in his introduction that he does take some liberties with his titular tale, "The House of the Worm", even admitting, in his own words, "...perhaps heresy..." is the best way to describe the story. The rest of the book falls into a plethora of Lovecraft and August Derleth (HPL's inheritor of his Mythos) and others' references a first time HPL reader will be confounded.

Ten tales in all of 77 pages, Myers weaves together quite smoothly a handful of loosely connected stories dealing with worship of "Old Gods" and greed and revenge, all in wonderfully grotesque forms of which HPL would be proud. Myers combines the creations of a number of Mythos contributors, illustrating his extensive knowledge of this sub genre. Each tale stands on its own, at times only taking place near another tale's happenings.

Some of the stories, such as "House of the Worm" and "Yohk the Necromancer" deal with the worship of almost forgotten deities and its horrible results. Others like "Xiurhn" and "Passing of a Dreamer" handle human greed for wealth and/or power with that deliciously horrible HPL style. In fact, there seems to be an effort to at least approximate HPL's style throughout. All the stories all follow a single style as a result.

The book really fails when one picks up a work of HPL and this one of Myers and compares. Lovecraft never intended to confound the reader with his even then somewhat archaic writing style. Myers, in his attempt to replicate the former, instead creates a work that only the well-versed Mythos reader would seek out. Even HPL himself would be hard-pressed to understand the multitude of references that Myers seems so eager to use. A first time reader of Mythos would have dual difficultly with the archaic writing style and strange names of people, places, etc. If this is what Myers intended then he has succeeded immensely. For the majority of readers, "House of the Worm" should be left to the hard core Mythos reader.

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