Customer Reviews

The Ithaqua Cycle (Call of Cthulhu Fiction)

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If you are reading this right now, you owe August Derleth a debt of gratitude. That is, if you enjoy Lovecraftian fiction, it is probably due to Derleth's efforts to keep it in print and widely read. This is certainly an inestimable service and one for which I appreciate him greatly.

His writing is another matter entirely.

This collection starts off with one of the best weird stories ever, "The Wendigo" by Algernon Blackwood. A deadly creature in the Canadian hinterland issues a siren call, summoning those who hear it to run alongside it in the air, and in the process, stealing the hearer's humanity. This concept is brought to life by atmospheric detail and ruminations on the cowering of men's souls when confronted with the vastness of the unknowable North. This is a masterpiece, recognized even by HP Lovecraft himself.

The next three stories are Derleth's work. Perhaps something about the Wendigo legend caught his fancy - perhaps he just saw an opening to be exploited. In any case, he created a mythos deity "Ithaqua" to be part of the Lovecraft pantheon that would fulfill the duties of the wendigo spirit. His first two stories in this book are the same, "The Thing that Walked on the Wind" and "The Snow Thing". They deal with "cultus interruptus", intruding on a deity's private worship and incurring that wrath. But of course, the trespasser has enough time to write a testimony before being gathered into the great beyond. These are certainly not his worst work; "Beyond the Threshold" would give that title a run for its money. Derleth descends to a new low in pulpishness while shilling for his own publishing press - THE OUTSIDER AND OTHERS is mentioned along with fan-favorite mythos tome THE NECRNOMICON as a source of forbidden knowledge. Why? Because Derleth was trying to sell his own press's copies! Well, a guy's gotta make a buck... In both this and "Dweller in the Darkness", Derleth shills his own books within the story and alternates between mythos baddies Ithaqua and Nyarlathotep as the actual source of the evil occurrences. As editor Robert Proce points out, many of Derleth's stories seem to be put together post haste as if he couldn't decide which Lovecraftian qualities to throw into the story. The collection would have been better selecting only the first Ithaqua story and just making an apology for Derleth and moving on.

That being said, the rest of the book, which builds on the foundation Derleth erected, is pretty good. Lumley has an entry "Born of the Winds", which is a rewrite of Derleth's original Ithaqua atory but with real character this time. Although the outcome was inevitable, I found the story engaging. "Spawn of the North" is a wendigo story involving a mountain man and a Texan in the Yukon, executing frontier justice against a corrupt mining company and trying to escape the bounty on their heads. In "Jendick's Swamp", Ithaqua is an Indian wind god without the arctic connotations, allowing the story to be set further south. This one was entertaining if for no other reason than variety. There are a few other stories with the same idea (Ithaqua as wind god), one involving an occult society and one with WWI fighter pilots.

Excepting only Derleth, the tales in this collection are quite good, with a variety of characters, locations, and motivations (and I'll even grant that Derleth's first was seminal). Robert Price's notations were also valuable in helping to understand how Derleth wrote, which was interesting in itself. My only complaint about the volume as a whole is that Price often interjects comments about Biblical higher criticism as he does his editor's notes. Why? The connection seems torturous at best. I don't expect to hear an evaluation of the Cthulhu Mythos in a sermon and I really don't expect to read a discussion on higher criticism when reading about the Cthulhu Mythos. Sometimes these collections are better if you don't read the editor's notes first. Well, caveat emptor!

This collection, like most of Chaosium's (insert Mythos name) Cycle books, starts with a series of stories exploring the genesis of the concept of (in this case) Ithaqua and moves on to stories written around the present day.

In this case the progrenitor story is Algernon Blackwood's "The Wendigo," about a strange encounter some hunters have with the legendary creature, which is an excellent story in its own right. This story, with its notions of an ancient, powerful creature with incomprehensible motives, is sort of a pre-Lovecraft Lovecraftian story. It's obvious why Derleth chose to import the Wendigo into the Mythos under the name Ithaqua.

Another story that might have inspired Derleth, "The Thing from Outside," is also included. This story involves a group of scientist's encounter with an incomprehensible alien. This story isn't as good, it's confusing, and it has the typical pulp horror flaw of the characters coming to realize the true nature of the monster with way too little information available. It is haunting at a few points though.

After this come a three Derleth stories, "The Thing that Walked on the Wind," "The Snow Thing," and "Beyond the Threshold." The first story isn't very well written and packed with too many mythos ideas (typical of Derleth). The Snow Thing, which has the same plot as the first (police investiagtor stumbles onto Ithaqua cult and gets killed) is better written and paced. "Beyond the Threshold" is alright, its main problem (as Price points out in the introduction to a different story) is that Ithaqua's identity isn't that important, the story could be rewritten with any Mythos diety.

The other stories range from middling to good, none of them are really bad, but some aren't that entertaining. My favorite was "Footsteps in the Sky" where a correspondant in the Russian Civil War finds his platoon being stalked by Ithaqua.

One last thing I'd like to mention is that Price's introductions (both to the book and each story) are some of his better ones, he generally sticks to the point and doesn't go off chasing some wild theory (like he did in "The Nyarlathotep Cycle).

this book opens with blackwood's great story: the wendigo. B is the master of the setting, noone can create the background and atmosphere like him. a very well written story from Brennan here. and Meloff's story is also an interesting read. derleth is at his best here. i don''t care that much for the guy, have never considered him to be HPL's great successor or anything, but he knows how to write, and i have always considered his story about Ithaqua to be his best contribution. the rest of the stories are well written. i don't think any of chaosium's anthologies contains of so much good writing than this. but good is not great. and the rest of the stories never turns out to be really good. the suspence killed by irrelevant writing going on for too long, mostly. sad. but the book is still wort reading