The Quest for Cthulhu

This book was put together from two seperate Derleth novels, "Mask of Cthulhu" and "Trail of Cthulhu." Of these "Trail" is by far the best. "Mask of Cthulhu" is basically six unrelated Lovecraft pastiches. None of the stories are horrible, but none of them equal Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos stories. Derleth's insertion of a good/evil dichotomy and hokey elemental alignments for the Great Old Ones is annoying, but easy to ignore, especially since Derleth acknowledges in the afterword that the Elder Gods and Great Old Ones are above conventional human morality, and that he intended "good" and "evil" to be shorthand for a more complex "order" vs. "chaos" dichotomy. What hurts the stories more is that they have very similar plots, generally consisting of someone finding some artifact of Cthulhu or some other Great Old One. At first being entranced and then scared then finally having something dreadful happen to them. The stories seems routine and formulaic by the time you've gotten to the end of "Mask." Luckily the final story "The Seal of R'Lyeh" breaks the formula to some extent, particularly in its sympathetic portrayal of certain minions of Cthulhu, and is much better than all the other stories. "Trail of Cthulhu" is much better. Rather than simply rehash Lovecraft's ideas, like he did in "Mask" Derleth expands upon them. Whereas most of Lovecraft's stories (and Derleth's from "Mask") deal with the discovery of the Great Old Ones and the character's immediate reaction to them Derleth's character Dr. Shrewsbury already knows of the existence of Cthulhu as the story begins, and is taking steps to stop him from escaping his watery prison by aligning himself with Cthulhu's enemy Hastur. He and the various viewpoint characters who help him travel around the world, often stopping at places Lovecraft had covered in earlier stories, like Innsmouth and the Nameless City, in their attempts to stop Cthulhu's followers from freeing him. It gives the story an epic feel and ties together elements from previous stories in a fairly satisfying way. Even if the reader doesn't neccessarily like what Derleth does with the Mythos in this book, it's certainly nice to see him work up the guts to try to do something new, instead of just rehashing previous Lovecraft stories. If you are a fan of the Cthulhu Mythos you should get this volume, but if you're only interested in reading some well written cosmic horror stories you might want to find a standalone copy of "Trail of Cthulhu" in a used bookstore somewhere first.

Quest For Cthulhu is some of the the best "Lovecraft" there is, aside from HP himself. I don't believe that any other author has as good a feel for the Mythos as August Derleth, and this is some of his best work. "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah' nagl fhtagn".

The stories presented in this book are definitely in keeping with standard Lovecraftian themes and style of story telling. That being said, if you like HP Lovecraft, you'll like this book. Die-hard Lovecraft fans might want to take a look at the table of contents to make sure they don't already own the stories (the last of which was originally printed in the 1950's), but this is an excellent purchase for others. The text at the end discussing Lovecraft's view on the Cthulhu mythos and its evolution is excellent and helps to dispel many lies that have been spread about Lovecraft.