House of the Worm

House of the Worm

By: Gary Myers  

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Average Customer Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Publisher: Arkham House Pub

Customer Review: 5 out of 5
A Wonderful Lovecraftian Gem! - Ye Contents of Ye Booke:
Introduction by ye author
Chapter
I. The House of the Worm
II. Yohk the Necromancer
III. Xiurhn
IV. Passing of a Dreamer
V. The Return of Zhosph
VI. The Three Enchantments
VII. Hazuth-Kleg
VIII. The Loot of Golthoth
IX. The Four Sealed Jars
X. The Maker of Gods

From ye inside flap:

It is with special pride the publisher offers this first book by the young California writer Gary Myers. The imperially slim volume is an episodic novel, a collection of ten tales each a masterpiece of macabre fantasy structured to present the author's own special insight into the Cthulhu Mythos--what Mr. Myers calls "an interesting heresy."

Brevity is the soul of Gary Myers' style; his viewpoint is mordant, ironic and always perfect for striking a note of chilling terror. Whether he is being ocularly descriptive as with "The House of the Worm" and "The Maker of Gods," in which the unrelenting terror is established as if a report from the pupil of the eye transferred from pen to paper, or creating an abstraction of eerie strangeness as in "Hazuth Kleg," Myers captures perfectly with few words the mood of cosmic horror.

With an introductory note by the author and fanciful illustrations by Allan Servoxx, readers who appreciate the literature of macabre fantasy will find this novel worthy of leading them through the "gates between dreamland and our own world.

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I have loved this book ever since first buying it new in 1975. I love it for any number of reasons, one of which is the sheer beauty of the writing and the fanciful and provocative nature of the author's imagination. He is absolutely original, and authentically Lovecraftian with a Dunsanian twist. The gorgeous prose is delightfully poetic; as here, in ye first paragraph of "The Loot of Golthoth":

"Over the desert of Cuppar-Nombo and the city of Golthoth, named by some the Damned, Night rose and shook his hoary wings. An evil twilight was creeping across the sky, with multitudenous waxing stars; hidden bats stirred uneasily in doubtful sleep; and in the painted wagons men lighted incense whose duty it was, and chanted the old songs, as they have always done at evening for the last four thousand years."

Gary Myers will be appearing, in January 20111, at MythosCon in Phoenix, Arizona, along with an eldritch crew of other professional Mythos writers. That will be a perfect place to get him to sign your copy of this magnificent book!

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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