Is it a trick? Or is it something else?īut no. So we could have read this book on the fence. What will Holmes discover? There are plenty of Sherlock Holmes stories where Holmes proves that something everyone assumed was supernatural was actually perfectly ordinary. Had the title been something else, maybe just Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Deadly Dimensions, then we might also be curious. So we spend most of the book smarter than Sherlock Holmes.
Which is all fine and good, deductive reasoning, but WE KNOW HE'S WRONG. He is told that some police saw something impossible, and he says the police are obviously mistaken, or they were drunk, or they mistook something for something else. Totally impossible things happen, like a machine coming alive and killing people, and we-the reader-know that it is "From Beyond" as it were. The title tells us this in no uncertain terms. We know before we read page one that there are other worldly things at play here. That absolutely sets the reader up to enjoy Holmes diving into the Lovecraftian Mythos. The first and foremost is right there in the title. This is a good book, a lot of fun to read, an interesting story with some fun details, and all in all a fine read. There is promise and good ideas in this book, but it's ultimately not as cool as the Holmes/Cthulhu showdown you're imagining. In general, she does a better job of channeling Lovecraft than Conan Doyle. Her nameless horrors and sinister constructs are vivid and properly unnerving.
Lois Gresh really has a way of describing the indescribable. The book is at its best with the Lovecraftian bits. Holmes and Watson spend way too much time denying what they see happening, and I found myself wishing they'd just get on with it already.
This book just seems a little long for what it is. It's actually rather dreary, which is not the sort of reaction you want to have to Book 1 of 3. If the two of them faced off literally on page one, there wouldn't be much of a novel, let alone a trilogy (Book 2: 101 More Ways in Which Sherlock's Soul is Mangled in Agonizing Tortures.) Pretty much this entire book exists to bring Holmes around to the point of considering that the supernatural entities of the Cthulhu mythos may just possibly exist. This is the first book of a projected trilogy, so don't start it expecting a nice, tidy resolution.įirst of all, Cthulhu-though referred to-does not actually appear in this book. You know things are bad when a certain someone appeals to Holmes for help. Horribly mutilated bodies, stacks of bones arranged in bizarre figures, buildings and furniture constructed with unnatural angles and carved with strange symbols. A series of bizarre deaths draws Holmes and Watson into the case of a lifetime.
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