Monday, January 22, 2024

The Slaves of Cthulhu - Tony Richards


I was in the mood for something completely different from what I usually read, and I figured a novel that, from its description, sounded like a collaboration between F. Scott Fitzgerald and H.P. Lovecraft ought to do the trick.

As a matter of fact, the narrator of THE SLAVES OF CTHULHU mentions Fitzgerald and a couple of his novels, and Lovecraft makes an amusing cameo appearance as a character when the narrator pays a visit to Providence, Rhode Island.

THE SLAVES OF CTHULHU is set in the summer and fall of 1923. The narrator/protagonist is Jay Sinclair, heir to the Sinclair diamond fortune, who is tired of being a wealthy young playboy and wants to do something worthwhile with his life. So he decides to become a novelist (there’s the Fitzgerald connection) and rents an isolated house on a lonely island off the coast to have a place to write undisturbed. Only, as you might guess, he winds up being disturbed. Boy, does he.

Nearby is the sinister-looking mansion of notorious libertine and poetess Anastasia Gorsting, who dropped out of public view several years earlier. Anastasia has an occasional party at which the dull, reclusive, and odd-looking inhabitants of the local village gather and carry on in crazed fashion. Strange lights also emanate from Anastasia’s mansion, and Jay hears indecipherable shouts coming from these gatherings. An old friend of Jay’s comes to visit him and seemingly falls under Anastasia’s spell. Jay also meets Anastasia’s beautiful but strange daughter.

Look, I’m no Lovecraft expert, as I’ve mentioned many times in the past, but it seems pretty obvious what’s going on here. And for the most part, it is. However, author Tony Richards does spring a nice twist about three-fourths of the way through the book that I didn’t see coming. It worked well for me, and do did the book overall, although I do have a few quibbles.

The first of those is that some of the words and phrases Richards uses just seem too modern for a tale set in 1923. There aren’t very many of these, but when they cropped up, they knocked me out of the story for a moment. There’s also a continuity glitch where a character has one eye, then two, then one again. That’s a pretty minor deal, too, and it’s a mistake I’ve made myself, but again, it disrupted the flow of things.

My obsessive carping aside, I really enjoyed THE SLAVES OF CTHULHU. Richards keeps things moving along at a very nice pace, the writing does a fine job of capturing the Jazz Age feel (with those minor exceptions mentioned above), and Jay Sinclair is a likable protagonist who at least tries to battle against overwhelming odds. No, this isn’t quite the Gatsby vs. Cthulhu mash-up I thought it might be, but that’s probably a good thing. If you’re in the mood for an entertaining horror yarn, I can certainly recommend this one. It’s available in e-book and trade paperback editions on Amazon. I intend to read more by Tony Richards.

Now, somebody needs to write THE ELDER GODS ALSO RISE. Jake Barnes vs. Cthulhu in Paris. The running of the shoggoths in Pamplona. I can see it now . . .

1 comment:

Patrick Murtha said...

“Some of the words and phrases Richards uses just seem too modern for a tale set in 1923. There aren’t very many of these, but when they cropped up, they knocked me out of the story for a moment.”

When I was reviewing self- and independently published fiction, I saw this ALL THE TIME, and it was a deal-breaker for me. Many of the examples were really egregious. People need to go a little more Hilary Mantel when they write stories set in the past. 🙄