Customer Reviews

Titus Crow: The Burrowers Beneath, the Transition of Titus Crow

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Few authors are able to capture the trademark "other-worldly" dread that Lovecraft's stories inspire, Ramsey Campbell is one, and Brian Lumley is certainly another. This book includes two stories told in first person through "discovered" manuscripts about occult adventurer Titus Crow. The first story, The Burrowers beneath introduces readers to the Ancient Ones, dark gods banished to secret metaphysical prisons scattered about the Earth. These restless beings are continually trying to break-through to our world via channels ranging from the minds of weak willed men to deep sea drilling rigs. Lovecraft's opus, Cthulu is one of these such beings.The second story, The Transition of Titus Crow is an incredibly imaginative story with strong science fiction and fantasy themes as well as horror as the title character travels through time and space in a Grandfather clock made by unknown powers from ages past. Brian Lumley is best known in the USA for his unparalleled Necroscope series. The Titus Crow books are widely read in his home country of England and creating more and more fans here as they are published domestically in tradepaperback form. READ 'EM!

I have few words to adequately desribe this book. One reason is that it was a few years ago I picked this one up. The other is that one really has to read it to believe how immersive it can be. It builds slowly at first, but once Titus' adventure kicks into high gear, the flow from page to page is liquid. A spellbinding book, so much so that I felt the urge to say good things about this book that I still remember fondly. Somewhat comparable to the atmosphere of King's Gunslinger books, but more lighthearted and touching more on boundless fancy and imagination. Pick this up, you won't regret it.

From the moment I glanced at the horrific artwork on the dust jacket, until the turning of the last, fear drenched page, Brian Lumley had me firmly in the grasp of his skilled fiction.I'm a fanatical reader of H.P. Lovecraft, and thus, find it hard to criticize the Hemingway of Horror, but, in this case, someone has done Lovecraft better than Lovecraft.<Titus Crow> includes all of the wonders one comes to expect from the Cthulhu Mythos, such as Lurkers at the Threshold, Burrowers Beneath, Nuclear Chaos, Telepathy, and Elder Gods. However, Lumley has added his own, quite astute, interpretations of the Necronomicon. While Lovecraft's style is quite suited to the short story, his novel-length works tend to grate on the reader. Lumley has joined his style with Lovecraft, in order to make this first volume flow from page to page. The point of view from which the tale is told varies from section to section, serving to heighten the suspense by controlling the omniscience of the reader. At the same time, Lumley's skill avoids making a cliche out of "The Scholarly Review" and "The Unfolding Memory" methods he uses to tell the story. Lumley succeeds in doing what lesser writers have often attempted: Expanding upon Lovecraft's elegant worlds, without damaging their delicate balance of terror and reality. I would recommend this book to any follower of horror, and especially, lovers of the works of Lovecraft. Lumley has my highest praise for his excellent work, and I look forward to reading the future volumes in the series. Good luck, Titus Crow...

Concerning the Cthulhu Mythos, Brian Lumley is a writer of the August Derleth school. While Lovecraft and others had the total meaninglessness of the universe as their cosmological base, Derleth wrote the Mythos as a battle between good and evil between ultimate forces. Lumley takes this further, stripping the Mythos of its supernatural aspects and putting it solidly into the realm of science fiction. What were supernatural aspects of the mythos stories are now an alien science as the forces of good personified in the Elder Gods struggle with mankind to keep the evil beings of the Cthulhu Mythos trapped within their eternal prisons and foil the attempts of those who would release them.

Lumley's style is also reminiscent of the pulp genre popular in the 1930's with morally black-and-white heroic protagonists aided by beautiful heroines in a story of non-stop, bigger-than-life struggles and battles. So, if your taste goes toward the more amoral, often pornographic splatterpunk tales that pass for Mythos stories today, you're going to be disappointed.

In the first book, The Burrowers Beneath introduces Titus Crow and his sidekick Henri-Laurent dr Marigny as well as the Wilmarth Foundation, an organization of Miskatonic University dedicated to study and destroy the deities of the Cthulhu Mythos. Told through fragments of diaries and letters, the Burrowers are the spawn of Shudde-M'ell involved in an intricate plot to take over earth and release Cthulhu from his prison in sunken R'lyeh. Lumley's craft at writing shines through in many places, but special interest should be paid to Chapter 9, The Night Sea-Maid Went Down, a short story embedded within the novella that would have even satisfied the Old Gentleman of Providence himself.

In its delivery, The Transition of Titus Crow is sheer pulp taken from the 1930's in style and plot with Crow as the protagonist as he wanders the universe seeking Elysia, the heavenly home of the Elder Gods and then seeking a way to return back to Earth. Though not as good as The Burrowers Beneath, the reader is introduced to some familiar members of the Cthulhu Mythos such as Ithaqua, Cthulhu, Cthulhu's daughter, and we're given a logical, scientific interpretation of Yog Sothoth's other name, the Lurker at the Threshold that is quite creative.

As I read The Burrowers Beneath, I found myself actually drawn to the main character, Titus Crow, and his companion, Henri-Laurent de Marginy. In fact, the Lovecraftian texture of this story, complete with Shub-Niggurath and a drove of accounts about his followers, carried me through this tale with ease. Twined within the story are cryptic tales of mishap brought on by these busy little bees (if you can call slug-like vampiric beings with no head bees), plus an exploit involving the "big guy" himself. Here, you also find yourself introduced to a new breed of rebellion brought on by those prior, and most of the time tragic, Cthuluian playthings, led by our main man, one Mr. Peaslee. Delving inside this group who have worked through translations of long discarded tombs, you find new and unique way to fight back against those deadly star-fiends, even going so far as to confront a few "men to beast." If the book would have ended here, I would have given it five stars!
That said, the book had The Transition of Titus Crow placed inside as well, which turned out to be a page turner only after sleep visited me and gravity played its dirty tricks. Here, we follow the exploits of Titus as he rides the waves of time and space on his wonderful time-travelling clock, a tale just as loathsome and boring as it sounds. Still, Burrowers Beneath is a good read and, if you set the book down directly afterward, you'll find your purchase a fine one..

Titus Crow's adventures are a lot like the role-playing game exploits of player characters: they start out believable enough, but as the power creep and leveling sets in, the character's achievements and enemies seem to grow exponentially.

There are a few things that modern Cthulhu fans should be wary of when reading Lumley's foray into the Cthulhu Mythos. According to Lumley:

* Mythos beings can be repelled quite handily with "star stones." These are made with tiny chips of the original soap stone elder signs. That's right, they're mass-produced "extract of Elder Sign." And they work against shoggoths.

* The Tikkoun Elixir is actually holy water, which also works against the Mythos.

* There is a globe-spanning organization of psychics known as the Wilmarth Foundation. This Foundation has men in every level of government and business, and marshals their resources in times of great need, like when battling the Mythos. They also keep the Mythos hidden to prevent worldwide panic.

All of this is told to the reader after the fact in The Burrowers Beneath. In the tradition of Lovecraft, the stories are all from journals and letters of those who were there, shifting from character to character to build a story around giant psychic killer worms known as Chthonians. Mind you, they're just minions of the larger Cthulhu Cycle Deities (who are, irritatingly, referred to as the CCD).

Lumley seems intent on explaining everything in Lovecraft's fiction and providing a logical framework behind it all. This is great for a role-playing game but makes for boring reading. But when Lumley writes an action scene, such as when DeMarginy (the Watson to Crow's Holmes) is attacked directly by a Chthonian, it's absorbing. Unfortunately, there's so little action that the rest of the tale becomes a dry retelling, sometimes bordering on parody.

Did you know that there are dinosaurs swimming in Loch Ness? Lumley drops that and other nuggets matter-of-factly throughout the narrative - and it has absolutely nothing to do with anything other than to perhaps explain that the Wilmarth Foundation, with its uber-psychics, knows everything there is to know about the world.

By the time we get to the second part of the book, The Transition of Titus Crow, Lumley just gives up. Crow experiences every pulp trope, from the love of a green-haired "girl-goddess" to riding a lisping dragon, to replacing his shattered body with cybernetics manufactured by robots, to time traveling in an extradimensional clock. Crow, it turns out, is both the descendant of the Elder Gods and a cyborg. It's like a Rifts game in prose.

But the most unforgivable of all is that Transition is told in fragments. A terrible attack on the Wilmarth Foundation means its records have been lost, so we are left with a story that has been pieced together. Where the pieces are missing, Lumley uses ellipses. A lot. Reading the book becomes painful... whenever Lumley doesn't feel like filling in the blanks...he uses ellipses...until you get just fragments like...ENERGY RAY...INTERDIMENSIONAL TRAVEL...OH MY GOD MY EYES ARE BLEEDING...

There's a particular standout scene where Crow, confused and lost in a prehistoric era, engages in a battle of survival with a pterosaur and a giant crab. It's good stuff, but doesn't make up for the sheer insanity of what can only be described as lazy writing. We get it: the fragments of what happened to Crow are hard to piece together. But since this is, ya know, a WORK OF FICTION, it would be nice if the narrator made a token effort to craft a full story for the reader rather than transcribe the bits and pieces literally. And for that only Lumley can be held accountable.

In terms of characterization, Crow is a bit of a cipher. De Marigny has most of the personality, and even he tends to bluster through the book with very British exclamations of surprise and horror. The characters are rarely in actual danger and their stiff upper lip attitude becomes so overbearing that they begin to feel invincible even in the face of the mind-blasting insanity that is the *cough* CCD.

Worth reading to provide a foundation for Titus Crow and as a template for a role-playing game universe where the player characters actually have a chance against a Lovecraftian menace. If you can stick with it, the next book in the series gets much better.

I have always been divided in my love of the great H.P. Lovecraft. Works like At The Mountains of Madness are classics- Well written, imaginative, creepy.....true masterpieces. Others, like Imprisoned With The Pharoes, were clearly paid-by-the-word pulp trash. And I have always hated his Dream-stories, finding them to be nothing but run-on nonsense filled with weird names, and devoid of any kind of coherence. Lumley here delivers one great "Mountains of Madness"-esque story, The Burrowers Beneath, and one Dreams-esque story, The Transition of Titus Crow, that is virtually unreadable.

Burrowers introduces us to Titus Crow and his sidekick, Henri, who tells the story through diary entries and news clippings. The story concerns their fight against the monstrous titular Burrowers, spawn of Lovecraft's horrific Cthulhu and his ilk. Burrowers is nothing short of gripping, a real treat for Lovecraft fans. Had Lumley stopped there, the book would have been a 5-Star affair.....Unfortunately he gives us Transition, which brings us from the creepy horror of Burrowers to flying interstellar clocks, robot planets, the youthening of the elderly Crow (Via a robot body!), and his trip to the home of the Elder Gods, where he meets with lisping, flying Dinosaurs, and falls in love with a green haired girl. This IS all as bad as I'm making it sound.....

Horror fiction walks a tightrope between the believable and the laughable, and with the second part of the book, Lumley leaps right into the laughable, and I'm now sorry I bought the other two books, which I'm really dreading reading, since they seem to be in the same vein as Transition.....I spent most of the second half of this book either saying "Oh, Stop...", or "COME ON, ALREADY!!!". It was a really torturous read. I would advise reading Burrowers, and quitting while you're ahead.
On the plus side, Bob Eggleton's cover is great, and the three hardcovers look great together on the bookshelf, with their unifying "Eyeball" motif.....

Brian Lumely has successfully carried on the tradition of Lovecraft, Derleth, Bloch, Smith, Howard, and the rest of the original Cthulhu mythos writers. Though some may scorn Lumley for straying outside the lines of the Lovecraft Mythos, I praise him for his acheivments. Instead of just building on what Lovecraft started Lumley takes the Mythos and adds to it and takes it in a new direction.

Lumley expounds on his classic hero Titus Crow and molds a somewhat Mythos of his own in these books. Like those before him who took liberties and created dieties in the Mythos (Chaugnar Faugn was created by Frank Belknap Long and Tsathoggua was created by Clark Ashton Smith) Lumley creates Shudde M'ell in THE BURROWERS BENEATH and takes what Lovecraft started to a new level.

With these books Lumley cements his place as one of Lovecraft's hier's and the leader of today's Mythos writers. Anyone who likes Lovecraft will see that these books take the reader into the life of one of literature's greatest occult heroes, Titus Crow.

This series is Brian Lumley doing a science-fiction fantasy take on Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos. Titus Crow is an erudite scholar of the Supernatural, with an assistant (I forget his name) that conjures up images of the Sherlock Holmes/Dr. Watson duo.

Once again, the Old Ones (Cthulhu, Hastur, etc.) are at it again, trying to take over the world, and what ensues is a wonderfully pulpy adventure with Crow trying to save the world.

Not terribly deep, but more than anything a fun read.

Oh, this was nice. This was *very* nice. One *ought* to be a Lovecraft fan before reading this happy work, but--as I am an example--it isn't a requirement for enjoying the heck out of it. I have read some small amount of Lovecraft, but my interest in the mythos stems primarily from a vast fascination with squid and other squamous beings.

Then was lent this book by a friend, on the premise that it might do well toward broadening my appreciation of the Cthulhoid. It was immediately engrossing, written in the grand old vocabulary-expanding style. Readers of H.P. will find that the tone rings perfectly true, complete with the lapses into rhapsodic description (of, say, a prehistoric pear's flavor). Titus does, in classic form, lapse at intervals into raving insensibility. Oddly comforting, that. While The Burrowers Beneath deals with Cthulhu himself, and his creatures, and is gloriously well-written, I shall direct most of my comments toward The Transition of Titus Crow. The Burrowers Beneath is a fine Cthulhu yarn, but I found 'Transition' to be a more fascinating read. The world, and the metaphysical realms it resides in, are still undoubtedly Lovecraftian. The territory explored, however, is utterly new and it s a joy to see how well and freshly the science-fiction-flavored material can be treated with the old master's pen.