Customer Reviews

Titus Crow, Volume 3: In The Moons of Borea, Elysia

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With flying, time-jumping, interstellar Grandfather clocks, immortal Outer-Space monsters, drop-dead gorgeous alien women, and an (unintentional, I assume...) oddly homoerotic "friendship", Volume Three of Brian Lumley's Titus Crow series wraps up the set in a mostly satisfying manner.

The first half, In The Moons of Borea, unites Hank Silberhutte, former Texan turned Warlord of the Ice-Planet Borea, with Henri-Laurent de Marigny, the former crony of Titus Crow. Together they ride a HURRICANE through Space (!) to try to retrieve the Time-Clock from the clutches of Ithaqua. With Outer-Space Vikings, frozen evil priests, and space-travel-via-weather-anomaly, this is perhaps the weirdest story I have ever read. Lumley manages to save the story by introducing some truly unique bad guys at the end, the aforementioned Ice-Priests of Ithaqua, but his penchant for describing the Eyes of Ithaqua as "Burning Carmine Orbs...." almost made me throw the book in the trash. He must use that line, or some "Carmine_ _ _" variation line, at least once a page in the "Moons" half of the book.

In the second half, "Elysia, The Coming of Cthulhu" we should be getting an epic battle between the forces of good and evil, but we get almost 200 pages of Henri pining over his friend Crow, while scouring the Universe for characters from other Lumley books. (Considering the fact that Henri and Crow are both involved with women who are portrayed as stunningly beautiful, they seem to spend a lot of time thinking about how much they miss each other. Strange...)The characters of Hero and Eldin (and the villainess Zura) are very interesting, though, and the brief final battle against The Elder Gods is compelling, with an ending worthy of a summer popcorn movie. All in all, not a great book, but some truly original moments make it worth a look.

This the final installment of Titus & Henri's adventures against the Elder gods is another masterpiece from the mind of Brian Lumley. Continuing the saga of Silbuerhutte and his allies/friends in IN THE MOONS OF BOREA by conecting De Marigny with the Borean saga and then sliding in to the final battle with Cthulhu and his allies is a spellbinding tale woven as only Lumley can. A great, great example of his work.

I always check the book section when we go grocery shopping. Whenever there's a Brian Lumley book on the shelves, I grab it and read a random paragraph at Gwyneth because it makes her wince amusingly. Yes, I'm a bad parent.

In that vein, here are two random paragraphs from "In The Moons of Borea."

"Slowing the speed of the cloak as they approached the settlement, de Marigny asked the Warlord: 'What now, Hank? Do we simply fly in and see what develops?'"

"And approaching, seeing his friend standing there alone atop the peak, finally de Marigny understood. He had not wondered how Armandra might go about sending them a tornado, for he knew well enough that she was capable of that. What had puzzled and worried him was how such a whirlwind could possibly pick them up and then power them on their way to Dromos; and, with fighting still in progress and increasing in ferocity along the ridges, how such a rescue could be achieved in time. Now he saw that no such intervention from Borea was planned, that their passage to Dromos would have its origin right here on Numinos!"

Read out loud to friends for best effect.