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Arkham Horror #7
The Sign of Glaaki
When an actress is brutally murdered on the set of a high-profile horror film, the list of suspects seems endless. After all, the movie’s ambitious young director has assembled an unsavory cast of circus folk and misfits, any one of whom might have committed the vile act. But when other bodies begin to appear, someone – or something – far more sinister than a mere murderer is clearly at work. Now, one of the twentieth century’s most influential authors will team up with history’s greatest escape artist, as they navigate the secrets and supernatural horrors of the small New England town of Dunwich!
An all new standalone novel, written by internationally bestselling authors Steven Savile and Steven Lockley, The Sign of Glaaki pits escape artist Harry Houdini, and author Dennis Wheatley, alongside a cast of familiar characters from the Arkham Horror universe against ancient evil!
An all new standalone novel, written by internationally bestselling authors Steven Savile and Steven Lockley, The Sign of Glaaki pits escape artist Harry Houdini, and author Dennis Wheatley, alongside a cast of familiar characters from the Arkham Horror universe against ancient evil!
279 pages, Kindle Edition
First published December 22, 2013
3 people are currently reading
203 people want to read
About the author
Steven Savile
246 books250 followersSteven Savile (born October 12, 1969, in Newcastle, England) is a British fantasy, horror and thriller writer, and editor living in Sala, Sweden.
Under the Ronan Frost penname (inspired by the hero of his bestselling novel, Silver) he has also written the action thriller White Peak, and as Matt Langley was a finalist for the People's Book Prize.
Under the Ronan Frost penname (inspired by the hero of his bestselling novel, Silver) he has also written the action thriller White Peak, and as Matt Langley was a finalist for the People's Book Prize.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
September 19, 2014
Young Dennis Wheatley, later known for his occult novels such as The Devil Rides Out, arrives in the United States to consult on a film shoot together with renowned escape artist Harry Houdini. It's all very pleasant, with carnival freaks (cf. Tod Browning's 1932 film) and all, but then actresses get murdered and various hijinks ensue, culminating at a lake that serves as a center of worship for local loonies. Or something.
It's all very confusing. The plot lacks purpose; after the somewhat clever beginning the novel seems to implode into a series of incoherent scenes, with the characters rambling around Dunwich (now a major city, apparently) until a strange whimper of an ending. The choice of characters is clever, and combining silent film with a Great Old One created by Ramsey Campbell just screams perfection; but there's no progression, no sense of menace, no plot to follow. It's all padding, with a few neat names thrown in the mix.
Oddly, the association with the Arkham Horror board game is the least of the novel's problems; the only glaring sign of the game seems to be the appearance of PI Joe Diamond, who naturally comes across as that much cardboard. Diamond seems almost glued-on to the novel, perhaps a late editorial addition to beef up the already far-stretched contents?
Some of the novels in the Arkham Horror line have been quite good fun; unfortunately, The Sign of Glaaki, despite having possibly the best premise, falls flat.
Read all my reviews at mikareadshorrorfiction.com
It's all very confusing. The plot lacks purpose; after the somewhat clever beginning the novel seems to implode into a series of incoherent scenes, with the characters rambling around Dunwich (now a major city, apparently) until a strange whimper of an ending. The choice of characters is clever, and combining silent film with a Great Old One created by Ramsey Campbell just screams perfection; but there's no progression, no sense of menace, no plot to follow. It's all padding, with a few neat names thrown in the mix.
Oddly, the association with the Arkham Horror board game is the least of the novel's problems; the only glaring sign of the game seems to be the appearance of PI Joe Diamond, who naturally comes across as that much cardboard. Diamond seems almost glued-on to the novel, perhaps a late editorial addition to beef up the already far-stretched contents?
Some of the novels in the Arkham Horror line have been quite good fun; unfortunately, The Sign of Glaaki, despite having possibly the best premise, falls flat.
Read all my reviews at mikareadshorrorfiction.com
January 20, 2019
I admit it: I originally picked up this book simply because I wanted to be irked by their use of Glaaki...because I am a huge Ramsey Campbell fan and Glaaki is one of his creation (though originally written when Campbell was in full Lovecraft pastiche mode). I know the Glaaki of the Arkham Horror universe, being derivative of The Call of Cthulhu RPG universe, was not necessarily Campbell's beast, but I still had a bit of a mean streak about me. I wanted to read this book to dislike it. However, as I was going along, I found myself very nearly enthralled by the tale. I was getting into it.
It makes the audacious move to have at its core Harry Houdini and Dennis Wheatley working for a Tod Browning stand-in as said stand-in, Ulysses Monk, is making a movie that seems to be largely based on an alternate universe version of Browning's Freaks, albeit one made six-years earlier and as a silent film. I presume a silent film though I'm pretty sure there is a scene where they are talking about sound quality....but I might have hallucinated that part. At any rate, Houdini and Wheatley make something of a oddish couple crime fighting duo that gets caught up first investigating a murder that happens on the set, and then later the cult activities that are plaguing the production.
Houdini is very much the Houdini of the "Imprisoned with the Pharoahs" style: a pulp hero that combines his real life exploits with the fantasique. Wheatley is...I'm not sure what he is. He is presented as a semi-pulp hero, a plucky if naive protagonist. Not bad. Kind of enjoyable. Just sort of...there as a main character to do main character things.
This story has elements of authorial irony, or whatever you call it when a real-life author is inside of a fictional story that is, partially, based off that authors works (homage, pastiche, rip-off, reference-to, inspired-by, whatever term you prefer) which in turn is meant to be the inspiration (or the real secret message) of the work in question. In this case, it seems mostly names - Mocota, Tanith, Simon Aron, I assume others I overlooked - that are generally wholly unconnected to the Wheatley characters from The Devil Rides Out. In fact, even as I was starting to really like the novel this was one of my chief complaints: for a story that is meant to inspire Wheatley's own writing career, specifically his "Dark Magic" novels, it seems to have very little of the Wheatley-mode about it. The man wrote fairly pulpy and very actiony stories, but that doesn't really show up here, overall. It almost feels like he is here because his name is close to Whateley and for no other real reason.
As you can guess from my two-star score, my love-affair with this novel dried up before it was all said and done. There is just too much mashed together and jumbled up: Glaaki, in Dunwich, with Deep Ones, Houdini, Armitage, the Necronomicon, film-making, Darke's Carnival, Wheatley, a potential reference to Campbell's "Cold Print" and maybe some of his other stories, and a definite reference to Nosferatu (including the second most brazen misstep of the whole novel: the inclusion of Max Schrek as a pseudo-vampire running around the place...and I guess that's a spoiler, but anyone with any horror background at all will get that reference fairly early on). Plot threads and characters sort of bubble up and then some pop and recede. There is a bit with police being an antagonistic force that just stalls out, only to return with something like a few minutes of actual plot-usefulness, then stalls out again. There is a bit with the film either being the work of the cult or its biggest bane (something the ending somewhat resolves, but the back and forth of this just bogs down). A couple of characters show up, feel like they might be plot significant, and then never return (one of which might have been killed as described in a "intermission" scene, but if so...their death is never confirmed). The film-making aspect is virtually nil and used only to get a few spooky reels for the characters to watch. The deadly cult is randomly deadly or not depending on the scene. There's a hidden room that does very nearly nothing despite being a major focus of several pages to ratchet up suspense. There are parts of the book that are meant to emulate the structure of a film, but it rarely remembers to keep this up.
It ends up being a hodge podge with a fairly anti-climatic series of back to back climaxes, none of which sustain their energy to completion and all of which kind of peter out and discharge any tension they are trying to build up. I very nearly suspect that this novel is actually the by-product of a gaming session that the authors played through (at least one of them) with characters that were very nearly the Houdini and the quasi-Wheatley (maybe an escapologist or stage performer and an author) and they faced off against a Glaaki cult in some Dunwich-esque town. Some of the scenes have that vibe, such as one where the pair are facing off against the cult on the film set and manage with a couple of quick actions make an escape which, despite being actually not an escape based on the way the scene is told, resolves everything and gets them to relative safety (you can just imagine the gamemaster going, "Oh, you rolled really well on that snatch and toss...yes, you get the item and are able to distract the monster...").
By the time the "twist" ending shows up, there was little love left. Little love left in me for the book and it feels like little love left in the authors to complete it. It just winds down, mostly, with the last 10% being basically just a padding of book length. The main characters, and Joe Diamond, were fairly fun, but the weight of the rest of its odd threats and threads and assertions and Lovecraftian properties just pulled it left and right and it leaves the reader with a sense of unfulfilled promises.
The fact that it makes several missteps on top of this only add to the disappointment. Not only does it do some real world people some casual to not-casual-at-all disrespect- Houdini's death is associated with the events of this novel, Max Schreck is played off as pitifully insane - the whole "freak" element comes across as distasteful, with the book occasionally giving ear to the distinction between "carnival freaks" and "the Servants of Glaaki freaks" but more often just mushing up anyone with abnormalities as sinister and deviant. Even the word "freak" begins to tire on the reader after a bit because the book uses it so much.
It wanted to be a high pulp sort of novel, through and through, but also wanted to have the despondency of a Call of Cthulhu session, to be a tie-in to the Arkham Horror universe that illuminates some of the lore of that material, and bring in some more modern storytelling techniques, and it achieves none of this fully. It has some highlights, some high points, and moments where it was a delight, but overall the whole mostly toddles and wavers and fails to hit home where it needed it most.
It makes the audacious move to have at its core Harry Houdini and Dennis Wheatley working for a Tod Browning stand-in as said stand-in, Ulysses Monk, is making a movie that seems to be largely based on an alternate universe version of Browning's Freaks, albeit one made six-years earlier and as a silent film. I presume a silent film though I'm pretty sure there is a scene where they are talking about sound quality....but I might have hallucinated that part. At any rate, Houdini and Wheatley make something of a oddish couple crime fighting duo that gets caught up first investigating a murder that happens on the set, and then later the cult activities that are plaguing the production.
Houdini is very much the Houdini of the "Imprisoned with the Pharoahs" style: a pulp hero that combines his real life exploits with the fantasique. Wheatley is...I'm not sure what he is. He is presented as a semi-pulp hero, a plucky if naive protagonist. Not bad. Kind of enjoyable. Just sort of...there as a main character to do main character things.
This story has elements of authorial irony, or whatever you call it when a real-life author is inside of a fictional story that is, partially, based off that authors works (homage, pastiche, rip-off, reference-to, inspired-by, whatever term you prefer) which in turn is meant to be the inspiration (or the real secret message) of the work in question. In this case, it seems mostly names - Mocota, Tanith, Simon Aron, I assume others I overlooked - that are generally wholly unconnected to the Wheatley characters from The Devil Rides Out. In fact, even as I was starting to really like the novel this was one of my chief complaints: for a story that is meant to inspire Wheatley's own writing career, specifically his "Dark Magic" novels, it seems to have very little of the Wheatley-mode about it. The man wrote fairly pulpy and very actiony stories, but that doesn't really show up here, overall. It almost feels like he is here because his name is close to Whateley and for no other real reason.
As you can guess from my two-star score, my love-affair with this novel dried up before it was all said and done. There is just too much mashed together and jumbled up: Glaaki, in Dunwich, with Deep Ones, Houdini, Armitage, the Necronomicon, film-making, Darke's Carnival, Wheatley, a potential reference to Campbell's "Cold Print" and maybe some of his other stories, and a definite reference to Nosferatu (including the second most brazen misstep of the whole novel: the inclusion of Max Schrek as a pseudo-vampire running around the place...and I guess that's a spoiler, but anyone with any horror background at all will get that reference fairly early on). Plot threads and characters sort of bubble up and then some pop and recede. There is a bit with police being an antagonistic force that just stalls out, only to return with something like a few minutes of actual plot-usefulness, then stalls out again. There is a bit with the film either being the work of the cult or its biggest bane (something the ending somewhat resolves, but the back and forth of this just bogs down). A couple of characters show up, feel like they might be plot significant, and then never return (one of which might have been killed as described in a "intermission" scene, but if so...their death is never confirmed). The film-making aspect is virtually nil and used only to get a few spooky reels for the characters to watch. The deadly cult is randomly deadly or not depending on the scene. There's a hidden room that does very nearly nothing despite being a major focus of several pages to ratchet up suspense. There are parts of the book that are meant to emulate the structure of a film, but it rarely remembers to keep this up.
It ends up being a hodge podge with a fairly anti-climatic series of back to back climaxes, none of which sustain their energy to completion and all of which kind of peter out and discharge any tension they are trying to build up. I very nearly suspect that this novel is actually the by-product of a gaming session that the authors played through (at least one of them) with characters that were very nearly the Houdini and the quasi-Wheatley (maybe an escapologist or stage performer and an author) and they faced off against a Glaaki cult in some Dunwich-esque town. Some of the scenes have that vibe, such as one where the pair are facing off against the cult on the film set and manage with a couple of quick actions make an escape which, despite being actually not an escape based on the way the scene is told, resolves everything and gets them to relative safety (you can just imagine the gamemaster going, "Oh, you rolled really well on that snatch and toss...yes, you get the item and are able to distract the monster...").
By the time the "twist" ending shows up, there was little love left. Little love left in me for the book and it feels like little love left in the authors to complete it. It just winds down, mostly, with the last 10% being basically just a padding of book length. The main characters, and Joe Diamond, were fairly fun, but the weight of the rest of its odd threats and threads and assertions and Lovecraftian properties just pulled it left and right and it leaves the reader with a sense of unfulfilled promises.
The fact that it makes several missteps on top of this only add to the disappointment. Not only does it do some real world people some casual to not-casual-at-all disrespect- Houdini's death is associated with the events of this novel, Max Schreck is played off as pitifully insane - the whole "freak" element comes across as distasteful, with the book occasionally giving ear to the distinction between "carnival freaks" and "the Servants of Glaaki freaks" but more often just mushing up anyone with abnormalities as sinister and deviant. Even the word "freak" begins to tire on the reader after a bit because the book uses it so much.
It wanted to be a high pulp sort of novel, through and through, but also wanted to have the despondency of a Call of Cthulhu session, to be a tie-in to the Arkham Horror universe that illuminates some of the lore of that material, and bring in some more modern storytelling techniques, and it achieves none of this fully. It has some highlights, some high points, and moments where it was a delight, but overall the whole mostly toddles and wavers and fails to hit home where it needed it most.
November 6, 2015
Aside from more than a few flaws and pet peeves, "The Sign of Glaaki," by Steven Savile and Steve Lockley, was an entertaining read for fans of the Arkham Horror board game and H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos.
Though, if I had to say, I would assert that this book has much more in common with the "Call of Cthulhu" role-playing game than it does with Arkham Horror. The tone of this novel is much more bleak and dark than most of the other Arkham Horror books. Plus, it references very little from the actual board game it's supposed to be an extension of.
Like "Feeders From Within," this book is a stand-alone novel. Considering the mess that was made of the "Lord of Nightmares" Arkham Horror "trilogy" recently, I think stand-alone books may be for the best for the folks over at Fantasy Flight Publishing.
In "The Sign of Glaaki," a Brit named Dennis Wheatley comes to Dunwich to aid Harry Houdini with the production of a movie about "real-life" freaks, like the Tod Browning film from 1932. Max Shreck, the first man to play a vampire on-screen (in F.W. Murnau's 1922 silent film "Nosferatu") also shows up along the way.
(side note: The peculiarities of Max Shreck and the production of the film "Nosferatu" are depicted in the year 2000 film, "Shadow of the Vampire" with Willem Dafoe and John Malkovich.)
So there are more appearances from real-life figures of the time than there are the Arkham Horror characters we players know and love. The lone character who shows up is Joe Diamond, the private eye. He doesn't have a main role in the story, but he does provide aid to Wheatley and Houdini from time to time.
Why Houdini recruits Wheatley in the first place is never made clear. Wheatley wants to escape to America because he was somehow involved in covering for a murderer who killed his best friend. That plot, other than to make the Arkham police suspicious of Wheatley later on, goes pretty much nowhere.
In "The Sign of Glaaki," Dunwich is covered in a thick, evil fog, and in that fog are many twisted and freakish worshippers of Glaaki mixed in with the "normal" freaks trying to get into the movie. Yet even though the book is called "The Sign of Glaaki" and that "sign" shows up a number of times, said sign is never described or depicted clearly. And the chanting of "Glaaki" by the cultists is a bit over done. And I'm sorry, it really doesn't sound like the clacking of mandibles, like the author says, no matter how many times I say it aloud.
And naming the main character "Wheatley" when one of the main antagonists is from the often corrupt and bizarre "Whateley" family just seems pointless if it doesn't lead anywhere...and it doesn't.
(side note: Here's a big pet peeve of mine...SO many books lately (including this one) have glaring errors in them...and not just these Arkham Horror novels. I'm pretty sure spell-check has replaced actual proofreading by intelligent individuals. So words that are spelled properly yet are wrong in context show up about a dozen times in this novel.)
The basic plot is simple--the worshippers of Glaaki want to sacrifice people to their god and bring him forth. Houdini and Wheatley must track down the murderous cultists and stop them. Or that's what the plot seems to be. Yet the murder that attracts the heroes attention at the beginning is never quite explained. It wasn't a sacrifice like the others later in the novel. And as the "shocking" film revealed at the end of the book shows, Glaaki did rise...probably before Houdini and Wheatley were on the case. And nothing happened...other than Glaaki rising. Shrug.
The authors seem to just want to throw as many different, tangentially related plots as they can at the reader and hope that the instances of the grotesque and the episodes of high adventure will distract from the fact that the book doesn't make a heck of a lot of sense. All in all, "The Sign of Glaaki" is a fun read. But if you pull the threads of the various plots, it all unravels pretty quickly.
Though, if I had to say, I would assert that this book has much more in common with the "Call of Cthulhu" role-playing game than it does with Arkham Horror. The tone of this novel is much more bleak and dark than most of the other Arkham Horror books. Plus, it references very little from the actual board game it's supposed to be an extension of.
Like "Feeders From Within," this book is a stand-alone novel. Considering the mess that was made of the "Lord of Nightmares" Arkham Horror "trilogy" recently, I think stand-alone books may be for the best for the folks over at Fantasy Flight Publishing.
In "The Sign of Glaaki," a Brit named Dennis Wheatley comes to Dunwich to aid Harry Houdini with the production of a movie about "real-life" freaks, like the Tod Browning film from 1932. Max Shreck, the first man to play a vampire on-screen (in F.W. Murnau's 1922 silent film "Nosferatu") also shows up along the way.
(side note: The peculiarities of Max Shreck and the production of the film "Nosferatu" are depicted in the year 2000 film, "Shadow of the Vampire" with Willem Dafoe and John Malkovich.)
So there are more appearances from real-life figures of the time than there are the Arkham Horror characters we players know and love. The lone character who shows up is Joe Diamond, the private eye. He doesn't have a main role in the story, but he does provide aid to Wheatley and Houdini from time to time.
Why Houdini recruits Wheatley in the first place is never made clear. Wheatley wants to escape to America because he was somehow involved in covering for a murderer who killed his best friend. That plot, other than to make the Arkham police suspicious of Wheatley later on, goes pretty much nowhere.
In "The Sign of Glaaki," Dunwich is covered in a thick, evil fog, and in that fog are many twisted and freakish worshippers of Glaaki mixed in with the "normal" freaks trying to get into the movie. Yet even though the book is called "The Sign of Glaaki" and that "sign" shows up a number of times, said sign is never described or depicted clearly. And the chanting of "Glaaki" by the cultists is a bit over done. And I'm sorry, it really doesn't sound like the clacking of mandibles, like the author says, no matter how many times I say it aloud.
And naming the main character "Wheatley" when one of the main antagonists is from the often corrupt and bizarre "Whateley" family just seems pointless if it doesn't lead anywhere...and it doesn't.
(side note: Here's a big pet peeve of mine...SO many books lately (including this one) have glaring errors in them...and not just these Arkham Horror novels. I'm pretty sure spell-check has replaced actual proofreading by intelligent individuals. So words that are spelled properly yet are wrong in context show up about a dozen times in this novel.)
The basic plot is simple--the worshippers of Glaaki want to sacrifice people to their god and bring him forth. Houdini and Wheatley must track down the murderous cultists and stop them. Or that's what the plot seems to be. Yet the murder that attracts the heroes attention at the beginning is never quite explained. It wasn't a sacrifice like the others later in the novel. And as the "shocking" film revealed at the end of the book shows, Glaaki did rise...probably before Houdini and Wheatley were on the case. And nothing happened...other than Glaaki rising. Shrug.
The authors seem to just want to throw as many different, tangentially related plots as they can at the reader and hope that the instances of the grotesque and the episodes of high adventure will distract from the fact that the book doesn't make a heck of a lot of sense. All in all, "The Sign of Glaaki" is a fun read. But if you pull the threads of the various plots, it all unravels pretty quickly.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 15, 2015
I really liked the premise, but it ended up being too derivative. Missing words, poor spelling and the likes did not help the book.
October 3, 2023
I had such high hopes for this, but by the end I was left quite disappointed. How do you mess up an occult murder mystery with Harry Houdini?!
The details about the setting and Mythos seem to be very off: Dunwich doesn’t feel/look anything like itself, Arkham Horror character Joe Diamond has an office in this not-Dunwich for some reason, Gla’aki’s cult seems to have conflicting motivations surrounding the movie that’s being made, Gla’aki itself doesn’t line up with its usual modus operandi or appearance, etc. There also seemed to be a missed opportunity to make a connection between Dennis Wheatley and the Dunwich Whateleys, since there was even a Whateley present but it doesn’t really go anywhere.
It did get a little repetitive hearing for the umpteenth time how famous Houdini was - especially since we spend a disappointingly little amount of time dealing with the actual filming of the movie or the film sets.
My biggest problem with the book was Gla’aki and the sloppily written motivation of its cult. The authors seemed to have an idea in mind of what they wanted to write but were told by the editors/publishers to make it about Gla’aki and so they filed some edges off and copy-pasted its name throughout the story. Because why else would you take a Great Old One like Gla’aki who has a very specific and vivid method of creating followers for its cult and then…. Completely change how this cult recruits followers. It's one of the defining traits of Gla’aki and its cult. Instead, the servants of Gla’aki seem to convert followers in a method similar to a new Arkham Horror book Litany of Dreams, except that was a much better book. The cult seems to also want to destroy the movie film, yet at the end we find out they want the film to be seen far and wide? The abrupt ending might work better with most Lovecraftian fiction, but it makes for a poor ending to what is essentially an occult murder mystery novel.
If you want an Arkham Horror book that deals with filming a movie, check out Mask of Silver. For similar cult vibes, Litany of Dreams.
Just sloppy. Harry Houdini and Gla’aki deserved better.
The details about the setting and Mythos seem to be very off: Dunwich doesn’t feel/look anything like itself, Arkham Horror character Joe Diamond has an office in this not-Dunwich for some reason, Gla’aki’s cult seems to have conflicting motivations surrounding the movie that’s being made, Gla’aki itself doesn’t line up with its usual modus operandi or appearance, etc. There also seemed to be a missed opportunity to make a connection between Dennis Wheatley and the Dunwich Whateleys, since there was even a Whateley present but it doesn’t really go anywhere.
It did get a little repetitive hearing for the umpteenth time how famous Houdini was - especially since we spend a disappointingly little amount of time dealing with the actual filming of the movie or the film sets.
My biggest problem with the book was Gla’aki and the sloppily written motivation of its cult. The authors seemed to have an idea in mind of what they wanted to write but were told by the editors/publishers to make it about Gla’aki and so they filed some edges off and copy-pasted its name throughout the story. Because why else would you take a Great Old One like Gla’aki who has a very specific and vivid method of creating followers for its cult and then…. Completely change how this cult recruits followers. It's one of the defining traits of Gla’aki and its cult. Instead, the servants of Gla’aki seem to convert followers in a method similar to a new Arkham Horror book Litany of Dreams, except that was a much better book. The cult seems to also want to destroy the movie film, yet at the end we find out they want the film to be seen far and wide? The abrupt ending might work better with most Lovecraftian fiction, but it makes for a poor ending to what is essentially an occult murder mystery novel.
If you want an Arkham Horror book that deals with filming a movie, check out Mask of Silver. For similar cult vibes, Litany of Dreams.
Just sloppy. Harry Houdini and Gla’aki deserved better.
October 20, 2020
There's a weird convention going on in this novel, where the authors merge Harry Houdini and Dennis Wheatley (the two main characters) with the movie industry, and there's something off-kilter about it. Aside from the fact that Houdini comes across as more Sherlock Holmes than anything else, the timing of the characters and the industry being together don't quite add up. By the time Wheatley had become a popular author, Houdini had been dead for several years, and there are suggestions that the movies in the book are talkies, and those weren't common during the time when Houdini and Wheatley were both alive at the same time. It feels incongruous, and it kept taking me out of the story.
The story, though, is entertaining, even if it's light on the Lovecraftian details. I don't know enough about the characters in Arkham Horror to know which characters from the game were featured in the book, but I'm fairly certain that Houdini and Wheatley aren't characters. Despite enjoying the book, I couldn't help but feel like this was a book someone had written for a lark, and then made some changes to it to fit the IP when Fantasy Flight came calling.
The story, though, is entertaining, even if it's light on the Lovecraftian details. I don't know enough about the characters in Arkham Horror to know which characters from the game were featured in the book, but I'm fairly certain that Houdini and Wheatley aren't characters. Despite enjoying the book, I couldn't help but feel like this was a book someone had written for a lark, and then made some changes to it to fit the IP when Fantasy Flight came calling.
February 13, 2018
This was an interesting solo AH story. Dennis Wheatley and Harry Houdini as protagonists. Interesting...it plays out in multiple parts as a movie since it's about a movie being made where something has been seen that shouldn't have been...maybe...GLAAKI, GLAAKI, GLAAKI! What lies beneath the lake! Can they solve the mystery of the deaths on the set of the film, or will they become the next victims? Ramps up over time until you get to the end and get a surprise...
February 21, 2021
Please, for the love of god, hire an editor. Have an intern read it. Anything.
I know comments like these come across as hyperbolic, but this is truly one of the most error-ridden books I've had the misfortune of reading. Obvious typos in nearly every chapter and characters that contradict themselves from page to page join forces to make this reading experience a genuine misery.
I know comments like these come across as hyperbolic, but this is truly one of the most error-ridden books I've had the misfortune of reading. Obvious typos in nearly every chapter and characters that contradict themselves from page to page join forces to make this reading experience a genuine misery.
March 21, 2022
I thought that this was an entertaining read. The plot was original. The story was compelling. It was an Art Imitates Life story about a series of murders near Arkham about a Monster killing people on the set of a movie where a Monster kills people.
March 14, 2022
Excellent read
This has everything: Harry Houdini, cultist, multiple mysteries, a drowned god, and murderous mutants. It’s very atmospheric too. Highly recommended
This has everything: Harry Houdini, cultist, multiple mysteries, a drowned god, and murderous mutants. It’s very atmospheric too. Highly recommended
June 8, 2018
Poorly writen, without much connection while the story goes on, making no sense. One of the worst books I've ever read - I'm happy it only cost me $2!
October 18, 2014
For the most part I actually enjoy reading the Arkham Horror books from Fantasy Flight but this one fell a little short. Initially, I was excited to read a story feature Houdini (a celebrity that Lovecraft used in one of his stories) and the story actually started out intriguing. But then half way through it started falling short and the ending was very lacking in my opinion. Too bad when it had such promise...
June 5, 2014
This is by no means a great book, but it isn't trying to be. This is a pulpy almost film noir style with pace and action that is done well and really keeps the reader engaged however the greatest achievement of this book is to really convey the feeling you get from playing a game of Arkham Horror. If you like Arkham Horror then this is well worth reading.
January 4, 2016
Neháčkovala mě ani trochu.
May 8, 2016
One of the lesser Arkham Horror books. Not one I would recommend
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