Brian Lumley's Titus Crow series: part 1

Brian Lumley's Titus Crow series - The Burrowers Beneath, The Transition of Titus Crow, The Clock of Dreams, Spawn of the Winds, In the Moons of Borea, and Elysia - is often criticized for being totally un-Lovecraftian in tone. This is certainly a valid criticism - Lumley includes such elements as benevolent Kthanid, the golden-eyed cousin of Cthulhu, Eminence (ruler) of the Elder Gods; Elysia, the Elder Gods' paradise-world; Cthulhu and Kthanid presented as rulers of their respective factions, equal or superior to universal beings like Yog-Sothoth; Nyarlathotep as not an actual being but the telepathy used by the Great Old Ones; et cetera. Furthermore, Lumley's characters are far more resilient and far more proactive than Lovecraft's, tracking down and destroying minions of the Great Old Ones in a variety of locations. Psychic powers flow freely, and Titus Crow is "rebuilt" by alien robots into something of a literal superhero.

However, despite all of the above... the books are highly enjoyable. They are simply not in the same theme, arguably not even the same genre, as Lovecraft's work; they use elements of the Cthulhu Mythos freely, but present a very different interpretation of these beings. This isn't a bad thing, though; Lovecraft himself wrote in what we would now consider distinct genres (though the lines were nearly nonexistent in his time); "In the Walls of Eryx" is undeniably science-fiction, The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath and "Celephais" nearly pure fantasy. The Titus Crow books, in theme and style, belong to the pulp adventure tradition of writers like Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E. Howard, and C. L. Moore; and they are good pulp adventure, especially for something written so late in the 20th century.

If you come to the Titus Crow books expecting cosmic horror in the manner of Lovecraft, you will likely be disappointed. If you take them for what they were written to be, however, they are very fun reads.

Part 2 will review the first two books of the series - The Burrowers Beneath and The Transition of Titus Crow.