Review: At the Mountains of Madness

At the Mountains of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Interesting ideas and concepts, but poor execution.

Lovecraft is typically known for the eponymous genre he inspired, Lovecraftian horror (see also Cthulhu, games inspired by this genre like Amnesia and Eternal Darkness, Arkham Horror, and anything else that references Arkham or Eldritch or the Necronomicon that isn't Batman). But ironically this novella, apparently one of his better known works, isn't very terrifying aside from maybe parts of the last ten pages... and even then I had to go back and reread a section to feel remotely scared because I didn't catch it the first time.

The main problem with this story is the excessive exposition that takes place for the first 100+ pages or so. Not to say that it's all entirely bad by any means; for Lovecraftian enthusiasts, or open-minded role-playing game masters looking for ideas, or anyone who just likes immaculately detailed fictional universes, this will float right up their alley, because Lovecraft has quite the imagination. But the thing is, the defining aspect of Lovecraftian horror that effectively makes it... well, horror, is its emphasis on the fear of the unknown and the unknowable. It's effective because it takes advantage of our imagination to fill in the gaps, and our minds are really just that good at scaring ourselves.

But in this case, Lovecraft spends a good amount of time describing in much intricate detail the entire history of the species of the main otherworldly creatures featured in this story: their origins, their biology, their relationship with other earth and alien species, their placement in the geological timeline of Earth's past, and many other details that the narrator somehow magically is able to translate from these archaeological hieroglyphics he's just discovered for the first time, written in a language he's never seen before and has only hours to decipher, before... something predictably bad happens. (I mean, really? Do you know how hard it is for archaeologists today to interpret and even agree on excavations that have existed for decades??)

It really broke the suspension of disbelief to go through so many pages of this- and then finally come back to the original premise, by which point I was in no position to be scared of anything anymore because so much of the mystery had been dispensed with for no apparent reason other than to stroke Lovecraft's overactive imagination, ego, what have you. It's sad, because this story had so much potential, especially the setting (which has been fantastically revisited in the more recent past by another title you may be more familiar with, The Thing).

Even up until the infodump happened, it at least seemed like it was heading in a direction similar to other Lovecraftian stories that I'd had better experiences with- the premise had promise, the setup set up, the monsters mythified- and okay, I've written enough words and tacky alliterations about this novella-that-should've-been-a-short-story for one day. Read other Lovecraft stories (Call of Cthulu, Colour Out of Space, Shadow Over Innsmouth, Dunwich Horror, etc.) if you want to get a better sense of what his kind of horror is like, but only go for this one if you're can't get enough and are still hungry for more of his universe. Lovecraft can be pretty fun, but realism (and brevity) isn't exactly one of his strong points, and it shows here.