This review originally appeared on Goodreads on July 4, 2012.

Delta Green: Denied to the Enemy

By Dennis Detwiller – Armitage House – March 1, 2004

Review by Robin Marx

This was an interesting book, but it has some issues. As a game tie-in it's not very friendly to newcomers, the main plot isn't as exciting as an early subplot, and it over-promises for such a slender volume. That being said, I enjoyed what Detwiller tried to accomplish, and both the beginning and ending were quite strong.

This book is for established fans only. This book is billed as “A Cthulhu Mythos Novel of World War II,” and familiarity with the work of H.P. Lovecraft (particularly his Mythos stories “Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family” and “The Shadow Out of Time”) are effectively required to comprehend this story. Some knowledge of the Delta Green campaign setting for the Lovecraft-inspired Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game is also advisable if you want to get the most enjoyment out of the story.

After a cryptic prologue about an aged military officer contemplating suicide, the story gets very interesting, very quick. We're introduced to a member of the Ahnenerbe, a (historical) Nazi organization dedicated to occult study. It soon becomes clear that he's been left disaffected and not a little mentally unstable by his studies, and that he's just biding his time until he can defect to the Allies and throw a monkey wrench in the Axis's literal scorched earth strategy. The narrative takes him to a coastal town in occupied France, where he becomes an unwilling bystander to the Ahnenerbe's efforts to broker an alliance with the Deep Ones, mutant fish-men introduced in Lovecraft's “The Shadow Over Innsmouth.” The close encounters with the Deep Ones are very creepy and obliquely written, Detwiller does an excellent job portraying the characters' sanity leach away through close proximity with the unknowable. Here we had unhinged (yet sympathetic) people committing atrocities to curry favor with disturbing allies; this was the peak of the book for me, it's a shame it came so early.

Unfortunately, the Deep Ones section of the book comes to an abrupt end as the books' true protagonists arrive on the scene: Delta Green, a subdivision of the OSS tasked to deal with supernatural threats. The story to follow is still fun—particularly if you enjoy Delta Green—but after such an atmospheric build-up it felt like a vaguely disappointing bait-and-switch. The story's true antagonists are somewhat undefined, and the primary plot twist towards the end seemed poorly foreshadowed, with baffling motivations.

In the end, the story ends up being a Call of Cthulhu story set during World War II, rather than a “Cthulhu Mythos novel of World War II”. There are two slight distinctions here. One is that readers hoping for an grand reveal of the occult side of World War II will be disappointed; this book is nowhere near that epic in scope. The second distinction is that—perhaps unsurprisingly, given the origins of the Delta Green property—Denied to the Enemy leans more towards the Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game's interpretation of the Cthulhu Mythos than Lovecraft. I counted about five different creature types appearing over the course of the story, while most literary Mythos authors tend to limit themselves to one or two. While monster-spotting is sort of fun for RPG fans, some of the cameos were a little gratuitous, like attempts at fan service. (Don't have the Tcho-Tchos show up if you're not going to do anything with them!)

If you're already a Delta Green fan, by all means give this book a shot. But if you're not, this book won't turn you into one.

★★★☆☆

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This review originally appeared on Goodreads on August 27, 2019.

The Book of Cthulhu

Edited by Ross E. Lockhart – Night Shade Books – September 1, 2011

Review by Robin Marx

This is an uncommonly strong anthology of recent(ish) Cthulhu Mythos stories. Anthologies of this nature often fall prey to Lovecraft pastiche, but for the most part the stories here offer fresh and imaginative takes on the source material and span a wide variety of time periods.

While the average quality is high, a number of stories stand out in particular. Although I had read it before, “A Colder War” by Charles Stross remains a masterful melding of Cold War paranoia with the Mythos. “The Men from Porlock” by Laird Barron and “The Crawling Sky” by Joe R. Lansdale are particularly creepy and effective tales of rural folk encountering the otherworldly. “Fat Face” by Michael Shea offers a fun update of a classic Lovecraftian creature.

Lovecraft has attracted a great deal of negative attention in recent years for his vehement racism, to the extent that some argue that he should be excluded from the horror/science fiction canon. I think that would be a terrible shame, however, as a number of writers have combined Lovecraftian inspiration with more palatable views on race. “Shoggoths in Bloom” by Elizabeth Bear and “Jeroboam Henley’s Debt” by Charles Saunders are both very Lovecraftian stories that benefit greatly by centering race and starring black protagonists. Outside of this anthology, a number of other recent stories and novels have worked with a Lovecraftian foundation while dealing with race-related issues to good effect.

Overall, this is an easy book to recommend to Lovecraft fans curious about recent Mythos-related fiction.

★★★★☆

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This review originally appeared on Goodreads on February 6, 2019.

The Burrowers Beneath

By Brian Lumley – Grafton Books – January 1, 1974

Review by Robin Marx

This was a fun but not earthshaking (oh-ho-ho) addition to the Cthulhu Mythos.

The book has a lot of fun ideas. The subterranean squid-like Chthonian creatures themselves are great. The Wilmarth Foundation, a secret organization of like-minded individuals working against the Mythos, is also an interesting addition to the canon. The execution of the book is a bit less than ideal, however.

The book is structured as an epistolary novel, composed of both letters and diary entries from a variety of characters. Some of the letters are very atmospheric and engrossing. The stories about about a mine inspector who encounters extraterrene eggs and a coastal rig that strikes more than oil stand out in particular. The result is a bit uneven, with mostly self-contained vignettes that are actually more entertaining than the primary narrative. And although he's positioned as the protagonist, Titus Crow is a passive figure for much of the book, either being directed by or receiving exposition from helpful supporting characters that seek him out.

While apparently set in the modern day (the early 1970s, when the book was published), Lumley's obvious affection for Lovecraft and old-fashioned gentleman's club occult detective yarns leads to a story that seems strangely untethered in time. Lumley's master occultist character Titus Crow seems like he'd be more at home in one of William Hope Hodgson's Edwardian Carnacki, The Ghost-Finder stories and Crow's Watson-style sidekick Henri-Laurent de Marigny also seems like a similar throwback to an earlier era. It felt a bit off reading about these smoking jacket / brandy snifter types discussing atomic testing.

There are some creepy moments as the Chthonians' capabilities are gradually revealed, but they don't get as much time in the spotlight as I would have liked. For ageless, godlike beings they turn out to be pushovers once the humans in the story figure out what's going on and get their act together. Apart from one fascinating scene detailing an attack on a massive captive Chthonian, the expulsion of the Chthonians from the British Isles is mostly glossed over. The book's conclusion feels like “Yeah, we lost some guys along the way but things mostly went according to plan.”

It's also interesting to note that the Chthonians only start acting directly against humans when their eggs are stolen or tampered with. They don't seem like much of a menace to humanity otherwise, apart from worshipping unappealing alien gods. In this aspect they brought to mind the misunderstood Horta from the original Star Trek episode “The Devil in the Dark.”

Some readers describe Lumley's Cthulhu Mythos output as Lovecraft fanfic. While that feels a bit uncharitable, it's not wrong, either. Lumley also borrows heavily from August Derleth's reinterpretation of the Mythos, where human beings have a certain level of Elder God support in the war against the “evil” Great Old Ones. Star-Signs of Mnar are wielded like crucifixes in the face of “CCDs” (Cthulhu Cycle Deities). While this sort of thing can be fun—I personally believe the Cthulhu Mythos is a sort of “big tent” that can accommodate everything from The Dunwich Horror to Bride of Re-Animator—readers hoping for actual cosmic horror are likely to be disappointed.

I enjoyed this book, but Lovecraft purists are better off reading something closer to the original source.

★★★☆☆

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This review originally appeared on Goodreads on September 5, 2019.

The Ballad of Black Tom

By Victor LaValle – Tordotcom – February 16, 2016

Review by Robin Marx

This novella is a companion piece to H. P. Lovecraft's “The Horror at Red Hook.” While the original story focused on a New York detective named Malone and his investigation of the rich, aging occultist Robert Suydam, this book introduces a new character named Charles Thomas Tester to the mix. “The Horror at Red Hook” is one of the more racist Lovecraft stories—full of “swarthy” types of various ethnicities up to no good—and Victor LaValle counters this by centering the African American perspective. The result is sort of an inversion of the original tale, elevating racism as one of the multiple horrors in the story and turning the original protagonist into one of the villains.

The writing was generally fine, but the story was a bit sleight. “The Horror at Red Hook” isn't particularly interesting as Lovecraftian source material, so it's a little baffling why it was chosen as a story. The above-average racism is basically the only element recommending it for use in a progressive reaction to Lovecraft. And while Cthulhu doesn't play a role in “The Horror at Red Hook,” he's been shoe-horned in here. His inclusion seems more like fan-service, or something especially blatant to clue in those unfamiliar with Lovecraft's work of the connection. It just seemed a little extraneous to me.

“The Ballad of Black Tom” interweaves interestingly with “The Horror at Red Hook,” providing a more intimate view of events elided in the original story, but it's also lacks subtlety in places. The racist abuse faced by Charles Tester is horrific, but it also felt that the story lacked the page count to handle his descent into villainy in a realistic manner. I see it singled out for praise in other reviews, but the “Every time I was around them, they acted like I was a monster. So I said goddamnit, I’ll be the worst monster you ever saw!” line is so cheesy and on-the-nose.

Overall I liked this story and thought the confrontation of racism in Lovecraft's work was interesting, but I can't help feel there was a missed opportunity. By all means, confront retrograde elements in Lovecraft's work, but “The Horror at Red Hook” is one of the lesser works in the canon. Deconstructions tend to work best when they target a great piece of art, not one that even die-hard Lovecraft fans are lukewarm on.

★★★☆☆

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