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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A good Cthulhu Mythos read, February 15, 1998
By A Customer
This book was slow to get started, but once the plot started to unfold I was very interested. Tierney could stand some work on his characters (they're a bit shallow), but the plot is suitably Lovecraftian once it begins to move. If you're a Mythos fan, this book is worth your time to read and add to your collection.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
For mythos fanatics and completists, May 25, 2008
The House of the Toad is a Cthulhu mythos novel by Richard Tierney. It was published in 1993 by Fedogan and Bremer; there has never been a reprint but used copies are readily available. I originally acquired my copy in 1994 and first started reading it back then, but then we moved (again), and it was packed into a box and never came to light again until a few months ago when I finally unpacked all my old book boxes. There were both limited and trade editions; I do not know which one I have, but it is a very nice cloth-bound hardcover with slipcover. Cover art is by Harry O. Morris, showing a toad-like face. It is pretty good but does not have the wow factor certain modern day mythos books have. The last page has a decent drawing of the fall of the House of the Toad. Page count is 248 with text starting on page 3, with an author bio on the slipcover (no longer current, as it was from 15 years ago). Editing was tight; I saw one slip up substituting compliment for complement, a common enough error with word processors. The only thing by Mr. Tierney I can recall reading was his Simon of Gitta book, The Gardens of Lucullus from 2001, co-written with Glenn Rahman. TGOL was a pretty good S&S sort of book with distinct mythos overtones; the authors' research on ancient Rome gave the descriptions some vivid immediacy. At any rate, I liked it well enough to look forward to The House of the Toad.
The events in The House of the Toad take place in the environs of Moline, IL, near where the Rock River joins the Mississippi. Mr. Tierney is from Iowa and I wondered if he ever lived there (which made me wonder if the persona of the protagonist was at all autobiographical). With the minimal internet research that I did he may have changed around some of the place names, but kept the geography the same. In a way the physical descriptions of the geography added to the immediacy of the story; however, all the street names and careful detailing of turns and cross roads read like a bunch of word salad. The novel starts in the middle of a nightmare. The protagonist is a priest in ancient Mesoamerica, surrounded by chanting throngs. He's holding a jade handled obsidian knife and other worshipers are bringing forward the sacrificial victim, a lovely blonde Caucasian girl as the crowd chants "Ghanta, Ghanta!" James Kerrick awakens, blaming his dream on a recurrence of malaria. He is a smuggler of antiquities from Central and South America, bringing his latest shipment to his most recent employer, Janus Wasserman. He begins to meet Wasserman's flunkies; not to be too coy about it, they are mostly from the Waite family tree and have the Innsmouth look (never called such). If it needed to be any more obvious, they have a restaurant that serves the best and freshest seafood...We briefly get to know Wasserman, who is more batrachians than is workers; his house is a, well, toad-like edifice supposedly erected in less than a week, so shaped to provide a place for various occult doings. It seems Wasserman is planning some big ceremony this week, and some of relatives are coming to call, swimming up river. Wasserman brings beautiful girls into his house and they then become zombie-like servants. Rosa, a chubby secretary in Wasserman's company seems friendly (although we get a few pointed remarks about how no could like her because she's so fat, compared to all the hot secretaries; need I mention that she's a bit brainy, compared to all the ditzy secretaries?). As it happens, James is still carrying a torch for an old flame, Susan Moreland. Sinisterly, it seems she disappeared a year ago while keeping company with Ted Philmont, and now James meets her daughter, Karyn who tries to coax him into looking for her mother. They hook up with Professor Ralph Duncan, an ornithologist, and Bill Holgrave, a photographer, and two conspiracies are slowly unveiled. Duncan and Holgrave are with a mysterious group fighting to oppose Wasserman (being a good guy, it's OK for Holgrave to take and display very explicit pornographic photos in his office; don't worry, he's a prince and the models were all professionals). Janus Wasserman is actually a very old servitor of the Primal Ones. These incredibly ancient and powerful entities sowed life throughout the universe and caused it to evolve both intelligence and the capacity to suffer. Wasserman is into distributing pornography, drugs, advanced weaponry and apocalyptic cults all around the world (naturally the center of all this is Moline, IL, a place simply crawling with portents) to bring about the Great Dying, a cataclysm of suffering that will allow these primal ones to feast upon all that psychic energy. Not a bad explanation for the interest these beings have in this world, which is, after all, a flyspeck in the universe. There is a major attempt to incorporate the mythology of the King in Yellow, with an ancient culture of Carcosa from the middle east (Sea of Galilee, not Lake of Hali)described. The ceremony Wasserman wants to create will allow the Phantom of Truth to sweep across the land, letting everyone perceive reality for the first time and precipitate the Great Dying. I was not particularly sold by this merging of Chambers and Lovecraft.
Man, did this book have problems! First of all, Mr. Tierney commits the mortal sin of saying Lovecraft wrote fiction but it wasn't really fiction. He conveyed Ghanta's name as Cthulhu, indicating he saw only part of the awful truth. Goodness this plot device is tired! Now we have our willing suspension of disbelief for the sake of a good story slapped down. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. At the same time he alludes to events in a certain coastal New England town destroyed by the feds in the 1920s. Although he never mentions Innsmouth, it's like he's winking at us, as he already mentioned Lovecraft. He also mentions other authors like Derleth. Ugh. Much of the dialogue was devoted to lectures given by any given character to another. The rest of the dialogue was stilted. The prose was pretty weak and the characterizations were paper thin. I never really got to know any of them, couldn't really believe in their motivations and didn't care much about their eventual fates. The first half or so of the book went at a plodding pace and then the action at the end wasn't especially exciting. I had to force myself to keep reading it, knowing I might not pick it up again if I stopped. I could have forgiven all if it had been less boring. I then had to force myself to write this review the very night I finished the book so I would not have to pick it up again later. The ending resolved events at the House of the Toad and then left the door wide open for sequels. Kerrick is invited to joins a shadowy group devoted to fighting the servants of the Primal Ones, and we find out Wasserman may be reincarnated somehow. If the last 15 years are any clue, no one ever was sold on the idea. I turned the final page with more relief than satisfaction.
What is a fan to do? A casual mythos reader may pass it up without regret or look for it at a local library. A completist can seek out a mint quality copy online for big bucks. The mythos fanatic who must see and judge for themselves (like me) can find a reasonably priced used copy online somewhere. Whenever (if ever) Mr. Tierney's Drums of Chaos is released I will certainly buy a copy, but I won't hold high expectations of it.
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by Richard L. Tierney
by Robert M. Price
by Ellen Datlow
by S. T. Joshi
by William Jones
