Book Review - The Call of Cthulhu

The Call of Cthulhu by H.P. Lovecraft
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Those Old Ones were gone now, inside the earth and under the sea; but their dead bodies had told their secrets in dreams to the first men, who formed a cult which had never died. - H.P. Lovecraft

This is the second book I have read that has been penned by Lovecraft. "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward" blew my imagination away, but the "The Call of Cthulhu" felt more like a short prequel to a thrilling adventure that awaits Lovecraft fans.

The story's narrator, Francis Wayland Thurston, begins the story by recollecting the belongings and highly detailed notes of his great Uncle Professor Angell. His investigation bears a strange resemblance to the curious antiquarian, Charles Dexter Ward, and similarly both characters unearth findings from their ancestors to uncover dark secrets that go beyond the realm of time and matter itself. The secret is so horrifying, it convinces Francis that has does not have much longer to live. The discovery should have never been found, nor discovered by any sane living mortal on earth, and so the reader is warned of a dark, powerful force that threatens our humanity itself.

The opening paragraph is tantalizing brilliant! It is no wonder so many readers have included it in the opening of their book reviews. There is nothing like an ill foreboding, a chilling presage of the things to come...

"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far."

View all my reviews