Abandoned by Booklikes

Ten percent of this book was an introduction to H.P. Lovecraft, a story that would cure insomnia (49 percent), thirty four percent which was about supernatural horror in literature, then a listing of all of Lovecraft's works with the last few pages devoted to links to something that I refuse to re-read.

I really don't know what to say besides yawn. I wanted to be frightened, scared silly, not bored over and over again reading about an expedition to Antarctica where our narrator finds out about ancient beings called "The Great Old Ones" and proceeds to tell us every little thing about them to the point I was saying who cares.

This story was told in the first person by a geologist named Dyer. Apparently something so horrific that would scar mankind from life was found during one of his expeditions. Coming across an advance party Dyer finds all of the men and dogs dead. From there he and a student named Danforth fly past the mountains and come across some hieroglyphics that they can read (which also made me roll my eyes) and come to know the story of these things called the Great Old Ones.

I just didn't care. This story dragged on forever. There was too much science and then way too much explanation on the Elder Things and other beings that were created. I felt like I was reading a biology book. To me, the scariest thing is the unknown. This story made the unknown plainly known until somehow Danforth sees something that drove him mad and he proceeded to just bellow out random things. I guess that was the scary part.

The writing was not that great and so repetitious. I hope you like the words, Jurassic, Comanchian, mountains, mountains of madeness, Cyclopean, etc. I just at one time started highlighting those words every time I saw them and finally stopped because it was slowing down my reading and I wanted to be done with this story.

The flow was terrible. I think because of all of the science and discussion of latitude, longitude, dogs and sleds I would just wonder how the heck we were getting from scene to scene.

The setting of the Antarctica should have been better used. Being in a vast cold place where all you see is ice should have upped the scary factor. But honestly, it sounded like a walk in the park.