I confess I bought this book because the trailers for the TV series looked interesting - and scary! I still haven’t seen the show, as I don’t have the pay TV service that would let me watch it, but I can wait.
Meanwhile, I have just finished the book, which I thoroughly enjoyed, and I have to say, it’s not particularly scary. It’s good fun. Yes, there are a few monsters from the Dawnatime, as you’d expect from anything with the name Lovecraft in the title, but they are nowhere near as frightening as the racist humans encountered by the main characters.
This is not so much a novel as a series of linked stories, each seen from the viewpoint of a different character introduced early in the book, in the first, title story.
The year is 1954. Young African American Korean War veteran Atticus Turner is returning to Chicago, his home town, after an unpleasant time spent in Florida, which is part of Jim Crow country. He has a frightening encounter on the way - oh, and also meets some Lovecraft type monsters.
Atticus is a science fiction/fantasy fan, as is his uncle George, so they both know a Lovecraft creature when they see one. Atticus, George and Letitia, a childhood friend of Atticus, go in search of Montrose, Atticus’s father, who has been kidnapped, and find an over-the-top lodge of sorcerers, the Order of the Ancient Dawn, who want Atticus, not Montrose...
Each main character who appears or is mentioned in this story gets a viewpoint story of their own. They are good, strong characters, who deal with the issues thrown at them, and in the end, it’s not the ghosties and ghoulies who are the problem, but humans.
There is a sort-of-villain who isn’t all that villainous, really, or not towards the black characters, anyway. He does pressure them to do things for him that he can’t do, but compensates them well. However, they find him more annoying than scary.
I won’t say more, because of spoilers, but it’s well worth a read, unless you are a devoted horror fan, in which case you might find it not scary enough. I don’t think it’s intended to be too terrifying.
You should be able to buy it in the usual on-line bookshops; I bought mine on Apple Books, which also has audiobook, but if you want a print edition, or Kindle, that will be easily available too.
10 comments:
Well, I just finished a short story I liked very much -- "OZ is Burning" by Sue Bursztynski. Do you know her work? (tee hee). Sorry it took me so long to get to it -- I just needed a quiet, rainy, autumnal Sunday afternoon to enjoy it, far from the threat of out-of-control bush fires.
Aw, thanks! So glad you enjoyed it. It’s a good anthology. It’s rather sad that, after all these months, the fires are happening in California. At least we only had the fires to worry about - we hadn’t been through months of COVID!
I also have not seen the television series. It does look good and fun. I love HP Lovecraft stories. I know that this is related to those.
Hi Brian! From what I’ve read about the current series it has strayed a long way from the novel. And an element that was in the novel has been reassigned from one character to another, from a memory shared to time travel... Still, it may be enjoyable, when we do get to see it.
Nope, you lost me at "scary". I can't do scary, not even a teeny bit because my subconscious doesn't like it (I get the worst nightmares).
Hi Anita! I’m not generally a horror fan, but the novel isn’t very scary, except the racist incidents,
I've started watching the show. It's very enjoyable, but difficult for me to get through an episode as I can't watch horror when my son is awake. And I've got lots to read as well. I find it interesting that they use the work of a very racist man to twist it around to illustrate the struggle of Black people against racism.
Hi Guillaume! Yes, I thought it was odd that some of the black characters are Lovecraft fans, though they absolutely know about his racism. At the same time, it does help when, for example, Atticus can pretty much predict what’s going to happen to those evil sorcerer types who have set him up for sacrifice, because he has read his Lovecraft! 😂
I think it makes sense. You love a genre regardless of the personal opinions of its leading authors. If Atticus love scifi and horror, he was bound to love HPL's stories, in spite of his racism.
True, though you don’t necessarily read the work of those authors who make you angry. In this novel, Atticus’s father shows him a very racist poem by H.P Lovecraft, and he gets the point, but reads the books anyway. His choice. A lot of other people wouldn’t.
Mind you, in recent times, when we have social media, there have been a lot of angry discussions about authors who have offended their fans in one way or another. Even the likes of Asimov and Harlan Ellison are being boycotted!
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