Customer Reviews

The Lurker at the Threshold

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Of all the reviews written here about this long out of print work I am astonished by all the misinformation written by so-called fans. Most of this comes from very young readers, I am assuming, who know little of the pulp magazines and are confused by paperback editions of books that are recycling stories and novels that have been around for a LONG time. Derleth never wrote a story until the 1950s? What hogwash! His weird fiction appeared as early as 1932 and the bulk of his weird fiction and mystery novels appeared throughout the late 30s and into the 1940s. Never collaborated? No, not in the flesh. But he knew Lovecraft while he was still alive, for heavens sake. But most of the "collaborations" were based on notes and plot outlines found among the dozens of papers Derleth and his friends inherited. "Buy anything by Lovecraft especially something from Arkham House." This book was ORIGINALLY Published by Arkham House in the 1940s! A publishing house I might add, created by Derleth and his pal Donald Wandrei. Readers should be celebrating the republication of a book that is highly sought after by collectors. It's a lot more affordable now at a mere ten bucks! It's hardly trash or garbage. Untidily written perhaps and derivative yes. But most of this fiction is derivative anyway. All the writers in the genre borrow from each other and little of it shows any real originality. Rehash after rehash. Readers and fans of this genre ought to read LURKER AT THE THRESHOLD for its literary historic value and keep in mind that Derleth's arch, sometimes annoyingly, baroque style is meant to evoke a mood of long forgotten era. I kind of like this quaint stuff. It sure beats the heck out of the gore-fests crammed with dismemberment, disembowelings, torture and sexual perversity that pass for horror these days.

It's a good read. It's not an action-packed, thrill-a-minute magnum opus, as it seems some wish it wouldve been. It's a rich, Gothic story... not trendy modern neo-Gothic. There is a vast distinction.

It has a good pace. It's nicely done. It's enjoyable.

This is a fairly good novel and one of the better Mythos works August Derleth ever wrote. Yes, I said August Derleth. H. P. Lovecraft is given credit on the cover, but he only supplies two short fragments that are about a page's worth of material each and were probably not intended to go together. The rest is entirely August Derleth's work. In all fairness, this is Carroll and Graf's problem, not Amazon Book's.

Do you like slow-paced Gothic horror? If so, you're going to like "The Lurker at the Threshold," a leisurely paced novel concerning British gentleman Ambrose Dewart's descent into madness upon returning to the Massachusetts estate his family all but abandoned in the 19th Century. This isn't the best example of such a book, but it does have its pleasures and would have made a nice black-and-white thriller with Vincent Price back in the day. As such, I can recommend this if you like the style and aren't looking for endless arrays of grisly phantoms popping their skulls into your face every 20 pages or so. I've read it and enjoyed almost every minute of it.

However, this novel most certainly is not a true collaboration between authors H.P. Lovecraft and August Derleth. That's where the trouble starts. Anyone truly familiar with Lovecraft's writing style is going to instantly realize that the byzantine sentence construction, the eldritch wizardry of the imagery, and the often archiac and cerebral language we associate with Lovecraft just aren't there. (Derleth, to his credit, writes dialogue better than Lovecraft did and adds some human touches usually lacking in Lovecraft's characters.) Derleth seems to have used just a few paragraphs by Lovecraft as the springboard for an entire novel, padding it out with some paraphrased language from other Lovecraft stories such as "Charles Dexter Ward."

This doesn't make the novel bad, just misleading. And a lot of unsuspecting people read this book and developed an opinion of Lovecraft that has nothing to do with the author's actual work. Why on earth can't the publisher include a foreword letting us know the truth behind the collaboration? I doubt it would hurt sales, and it would help to mend some broken fences.

As might be expected, Lovecraft's infamous Mythos provides some color to the supernatural happenings. Persons more expert than I will have fun picking apart how Derleth's versions of Lovecraftian locations and monsters differ from Lovecraft's takes on the same creations. To me, the references work in adding some mysterious overtones to the story. To you, they may serve only as reminders that Lovecraft wrote much more frightening work elsewhere, especially in "The Dunwich Horror."

It's hard for me to get excited about this novel one way or another, but it's a pleasant enough read and as a Lovecraft fan I had to own it.

I first read THE LURKER IN THE THRESHOLD when I was a young Mythos fanatic in the early 1970's, and I loved it. At that time I loved all things Mythos. Moft of ye reviewers here know that this book is the work of August Derleth, not H. P. Lovecraft. The publishers of this book have been criminally deceitful in putting only Lovecraft's name in large letters on the front cover, a crime for which they should be prosecuted. Derleth was a strange man who liked to play practical jokes -- he would sometimes write stories in Arkham House books that were supposed to be by Robert E. Howard or J. Sheridan LeFanu but were actually by Derleth. But I do not think that we can regard THE LURKER AT THE THRESHOLD as a hoax, for I believe that Derleth meant it to be an authentic tribute to his hero, H. P. Lovecraft. Derleth would lie about the origin of the book (claiming that it was a novel left unfinished by Lovecraft, when in fact Lovecraft left no novel unfinished at his death), but then state plainly that the novel was completely his work based on notes left behind by HPL.

If you are looking for a book by Lovecraft, don't buy this book. But if you want a fairly good and imaginative novel in the Cthulhu Mythos tradition, one that is rich in imagination and well-written, this is a good book for you. The huge mistake made by Derleth in the writing of this book was his delusion in thinking that it is, in its narrative voice, "like Lovecraft." It is nothing of the kind, and Derleth was completely misguided in thinking he knew how "to write like Lovecraft." He wrote like Derleth -- and Derleth was a good writer of weird fiction. The story is imaginative and creepy -- and it is certainly Lovecraftian, which merely means that it is a work inspired by the weird fiction of H. P. Lovecraft. I rank it as the second-best of Derleth's fake "collaborations with" Lovecraft, my personal favourite being "The Survivor."
Begging to remain,
Ever thy hmbl obt srvt,
W. H. Pugmire, Esq.

NOW THE GATES ARE OPEN FOR YOG-SOTHOTH.

Amazing book...

A very involving,trip to a different time and reality. I enjoyed this book,and will add it to my Lovecraft collection.

This book begins with an heir to a haunted family dynasty reclaiming his ancestral home and quickly doing some research into his ancestors and their contribution to mysterious noises and disappearances. He digs through old histories and newspapers in order to put together the puzzle of what happened in those weeks leading up to his great great grandfather leaving the country and never coming back. And then the scene shifts to his cousin who ALSO researches old tomes and family documents. Seriously, that's what actually happens in the thing. More research. And in the third chapter, there's EVEN MORE research happening.

Oh sure, there's a lot of the Lovecraft touches like the lurkers from beyond space and time and the old gods and our pal Yog Shoggoth but really most of the book is all about the research and the hunting through hoary old books. It's like a graduate student fantasy but instead of digging through archives and looking for all those receipts and diaries in order to discover Aaron Burr's tax record or evidence about the affects of the New Deal, you get to discover an ancient religion in which the deities are ready to get to you. And they are possessing your grandfather - and that weird indian.

Of course, you can't really avoid the problems with Lovecraft including the bad dialogue and the casual racism, but for the most part this is a pretty entertaining read about nerds doing research. And some have noted that the ending is a bit anti-climatic but I thought it was awesome. And rather hilarious.

I highly recommend this book. I loved the way it switched points of view and the overall 'feel' of the book is fantastic. In my opinion, the book is written well and the plot fascinated me. I was impressed with the book and intend to read more of Derleth's work in the very near future.

But remember... do not invite him who lurks at the threshold!

I know August Derleth wrote most of the novel and finished Lovecraft's beginning, but he did an amazing job here. There was always a sense of creepiness, something not quite right going on all the time, even with casual conversations with the locals. I loved that. And how the characters slowly became mad, to the point where they were beyond comprehension, was illustrated amazingly well through both Derleth and Lovecraft's writing. Everything worked great. A damn fine book, worth your time and money.