The Transition of Titus Crow

Titus Crow #2

by Brian Lumley

With the most powerful, and most evil, of the elder Gods, Cthulhu, roused from slumber and preparing to destroy all of mankind with a single blow, Titus Crow and Henri-Laurent De Marigny are hopelessly outmatched. But they are not hopeless- They have been joined by heroes from other times, other worlds, other planes of reality. In a marvellous climax, heroes from other Brian Lumley series gather for the dramatic final battle.

Genres: Horror, Fantasy, Cthulhu Mythos, Fiction, Science Fiction, Weird Fiction, Time Travel

200 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 20, 1975

About the author

Brian Lumley was born near Newcastle. In 22 years as a Military Policeman he served in many of the Cold War hotspots, including Berlin, as well as Cyprus in partition days. He reached the rank of Sergeant-Major before retiring to Devon to write full-time, and his work was first published in 1970. The vampire series, 'Necroscope', has been translated into ten languages and sold over a million copies worldwide.

He was awarded the World Fantasy Life Achievement Award in 2010.

Reviews

[Karl · Rating 4 out of 5]

DAW Collectors #151

Cover Artist:Michael Whelan

Name: Lumley, Brian, Birthplace: Horden, County Durham, England, UK, 02 December 1937

Lumley borrows wholesale from Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos, going into greater anthropological detail than Lovecraft, cared to on those indescribable protoplasmic horrors with tentacled faces, the underground spawn of the gray, mile long mass of evil called Cthulhu, who swims ``into the deeper magma, against strange tides of molten-rock oceans, those oceans which hold these lily pads we call continents afloat!'' Cthulhu's children build nests, slowly multiply, and are given such names as Yibb-Tsill, Yog-Sothoth, Ithaqua, Hastur, and Lloigor.

The premise of the book is Henri Laurent de Marginy wakes up ten years after the events of The Burrowers Beneath with no memory of how he got there or what he's been doing for the past decade. Titus Crow and his magical clock is missing as well, depriving Henri of answers until the titular character shows up one day after a harrowing psychic encounter. From there, the book discusses the fantastic journey Titus Crow has been on.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the sequel to the Burrowers beneath the re-imaging tales of the Cthulhu mythos as told by Brian Lumley - do not get me wrong these books (and the ones that follow) are great fun but through out them all there is something else - hope.

As a result of this as you read through this book you realise this is more and more like a fantasy story rather than a dark horror and yes I think the pantheon of stories has space for such a series but I also know some die hard fans will not take to it - me I think its great fun although the " uncovered notes from the ruins" plot device does wear a little thin at times.

I will confess at this time that I have a soft spot for these books - I discovered them in the first year at University and could no put them down (in fact I remember getting in to trouble more than once as a result) so of course I will go back to them time and time again and find as much fun now as I did then.

[Oscar · Rating 2 out of 5]

Diez años después de los hechos acontecidos en ‘The Burrowers Beneath’, Henri Laurent de Marigny es encontrado cuando se le daba por muerto. De Marigny no recuerda nada de lo sucedido en estos diez años, pero con la visita del profesor Wilmarth, de la Fundación que lleva su nombre, comienza a recordar. Resulta que tanto él como Crow emprendieron la huida en un reloj (!) capaz de viajar en el tiempo y el espacio. Ahora Henri recibe extraños sueños de Crow pidiendo su ayuda para regresar. Y el resto de la novela es eso, los viajes de que hizo crow por el espacio-tiempo.

Si bien ‘The Burrowers Beneath’ (‘Los que acechan en el abismo’ en la traducción española) fue un magnífico pastiche lovecraftiano, esta continuación se parece más a unos viajes de Gulliver bastante aburridos.

[Seth Skorkowsky · Rating 1 out of 5]

While The Burrowers Beneath was an adventure story that played out much like a classic pulp adventures, The Transition of Titus Crow is just a list of stuff.
Lumley does everything he can to cram as many Lovecraftian creatures as possible in this book. It's like a Mythos Shopping List. Worse, the plot does not drive froward, but is simply a long series of "and then this happened, and then this other thing happened." You could easily skip entire chapters and not even notice because the story is just a list with most of the events being isolated and not having any lasting effect on the plot or moving it anywhere.

[Marc *Dark Reader with a Thousand Young! Iä!* · Rating 3 out of 5]

My journey through Brian Lumley's early Cthulhu-adjacent works continues. Originally published in 1975 for DAW books, the story is set in 1980 (and other unfathomable timespans). I read the 1992 hardcover reissue by Paul Ganley, publisher, with a 1986 brief forward by the author, revealing that he trimmed the book from its original release to remove all but the most necessary recaps of The Burrowers Beneath, with the expectation that readers of the new edition are likely to have read that one already. This is fair, since in the wild earlier days of sci-fi and fantasy paperbacks, you were more likely to pick up any random thing. If I repeat my Lumley reread project at any point in the future, I will make an effort to obtain the 1975 paperback for comparison.

The trimming was welcome, and this book was much more enjoyable and singular than The Burrowers Beneath. It's not without its problems, though. There is a pair of early chapters in which the head of the Wilmarth Foundation, the semi-secret global (but headquartered in Arkham, Mass) organization attempting to counter the forces of the Cthulhu Cycle Deities ('CCD' in this series' parlance, a reductive acronym that I cannot rally behind), info-dumps a variety of Foundation activities that reference all kinds of expanded Cthulhu Mythos elements from unclear sources. Then later, in the heart of the book, multiple chapters are presented as "fragments" of tape recordings that jump through a number of Titus Crows time-and-space-and-dimension-hopping adventures that provide mere tastes. Some degree of this was welcome, little tantalizing tidbits, but it went on for too long and I felt slightly cheated, like further effort could have gone into providing an even grander adventure. I could have done without the extended Roman period of the story. I think Lumley felt required to tie Crow's story into every one of the prior short stories he featured in, first seen in The Caller of the Black and later recollected in The Compleat Crow. I know England has stronger ties to the Roman Empire that we do across the pond, but I don't share that particular historical interest.

But the core segments detailing Crow's spacetime adventures were wonderful. His pursuit by the Hounds of Tindalos, his prehistoric foray, his literal transition at the hands of (I won't spoil it), and his discovery of the wonders of Elysia, were all glorious. Cheesy, pulpy, but glorious all the same.

There's no denying that Lovecraft would have been aghast at the style that Lumley adopted for his own character's adventures, shifting from horror to very British pulp adventure, but I enjoy this portion of Lumley's oeuvre for what it is. One thing I could have done without, though, involves Crow's fated love interest, an insta-love to beat all insta-loves, when it was revealed that she has been in love with Crow, or at least the promise of a Crow to come in her future, from her ripe age of 12. And when the two finally meet, she is 22, while Crow is, although technically in a younger body, over 60. Yikes!

I can't say I'd recommend this book to many people, unless you were already a Crow fan from Necroscope and wanted to check out his other work, or are curious about this certain brand of psychedelic 1970s pulp SFF history. But since Lumley came into my life at a special time, I'm loving my journey back through it all.

This limited edition hardcover was a surprise, not quite knowing what, beyond the title, I was getting with a $3.85 order from Thriftbooks. This was in the glorious time before they set up their "Collectibles" category, when you could receive a random uncatalogued rare edition out of the blue. It made me first aware of the Paul Ganley editions that I would later go on to collect in full. Since the Goodreads catalogue is missing this cover art, may I present it:



It came with signed plates by both the author and illustrator:





And is a limited numbered edition:



I like the illustrations by Judith Holman much more than those by the illustrator of the prior book.



I love the quality of these slim hardcovers, although the chosen typewriter-style font still takes some getting used to, as does the use of bold rather than italics for emphasis, Pterodactyl, but at least compared to The Burrowers Beneath, the frequency of exclamations and ellipses has calmed down somewhat. I might say that Lumley's writing craft improved between the two books in other ways too. The prose remains excitable, evocative without verging into purple territory, but with a class and erudition and British tone that is simply lovely.

[Curtis · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book feels like that one friend who will spend a week/month dropping acid and then corners you at a party and subjects you to an in-depth travelogue of all the imaginary places they visited. Basically it's Alice In Wonderland with tentacles. Light on plot but lots of imagery.

[Allen Garvin · Rating 1 out of 5]

The Burrowers Beneath was reasonably fun. This sequel, though, is dull dull dull. It's set 10 years after the first. Titus Crow has gone missing in time and space. He returns about half-through and details his adventures time-travelling, which are pretty dull. He visits the dying planet earth and finds a race of spacefaring beetles. Goes back to the dinosaurs and nearly gets pecked to death by a pterodon. Gets stuck in Roman England for a while but does nothing exciting. Crashlands on a planet where an advanced race of aliens rebuild his body so he doesn't need to breathe or eat or stuff. Meets some dragons and falls in love with some Elder Goddess. Expands and explains the cthulhu pantheon to the point of dreariness. Bleagh.

[Kevin Potter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although there is a neat premise here, the Mythos elements are about as tender hearted as they could possibly be and the rest of it reads like an Edgar Rice Burroughs "Barsoom" novel.

Simon Vance is, as always, an excellent narrator. His voices are varied and distinct. His tempo shifts are effective. And if somewhat less (accurate to the text) than I'd like, his inflections are skillful.

Now, there are some really inventive elements to this story and much of it is quite entertaining. I've spent so much time being so curious about just what Titus Crow's "Transition" is that I'm not sure anything could have done it justice for me.

That element, sadly, came off as pretty anti-climactic. It wasn't a big event, and honestly I almost missed noticing it for what it was.

There is a lot of exploration with adventures that very strongly resemble early 20th century pulp fiction.

My biggest complaint, far and away, is this is basically the literary equivalent of a "found footage" film, which for me just comes across as lazy and uninspired. Especially because a good chunk of the words were pointless. A tiny fragment that says nothing about story or character should have been left out.

And there were many such fragments.

I would have been much happier without the fragmented narrative. It could still skip around to the aspects the author found important. Or it could have been a longer book with more character development. Either way would have been fine. But the disjointed structure of the "found record" made to very irritating to follow.

Without spoiling anything, I'll just say that while I do find Lumley's explanation of The Great Old Ones and The Old Gods to be very interesting, I'm not sure I agree that it fits in with the Cthulhu Mythos.

I did enjoy the ending, but again, this just doesn't feel like a Lovecraftian story. It was way more in common with early pulp fiction.

[C.T. Phipps · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Transition of Titus Crow is the second book in the Titus Crow series by Brian Lumley. It also represents a transition from the first novel's Pulpish but grounded flair to something significantly more cosmic, which will continue throughout the rest of the series. In a very real way, while The Burrowers Beneath was occult Sherlock Holmes vs. The Cthulhu Mythos, this is more Doctor Who.

This isn't to say the book is bad, far from it. Instead, I would go to say this is some very good classic science fiction which just so happens to be set in the Cthulhu Mythos. It also counteracts some of the more unfortunate themes which H.P. Lovecraft placed in his works. As a modern 21st century fan of his writing, I can still appreciate Lumley taking a moment to contradict what he didn't agree with.

Lovecraftian purists might want to give this one a pass while those who are capable of appreciating a variety of different takes on the Mythos will find it quite enjoyable. Certainly, I derived a great deal of enjoyment from the entirety of the Titus Crow series and its antecedents.

The premise of the book is Henri Laurent de Marginy wakes up ten years after the events of The Burrowers Beneath with no memory of how he got there or what he's been doing for the past decade. Titus Crow and his magical clock is missing as well, depriving Henri of answers until the titular character shows up one day after a harrowing psychic encounter. From there, the book discusses the fantastic journey Titus Crow has been on.

The majority of the book is told in flashback form, the events narrated to Henri by Titus Crow. What is described is a fantastical magical journey from Earth's primordial history to the dying days of the Sun. Titus Crow will have to deal with Ancient Romans, Other Gods, the dreaded Hounds of Tindalos, Yithians, and even a black hole.

The problem is the novel becomes so overtly amazing that it's difficult to really feel much in the way of horror at Titus Crow's situation. He is guided almost every step of the way by Kthanid the Elder God and Tiania the Girl Goddess. These omni-benevolent entities as well as the freakishly powerful abilities of Titus' magic clock make it difficult for us to be worried about our hero. During the novel, no less than two of Lovecraft's "gods" get punched out by its capacities. Once you've made a fool out of them, it's hard to take anything less seriously as a threat.

I'm not too fond of the character Tiania either. Titus Crow's introduced love interest has a personality which mostly consists of how much she loves the hero as well as how perfect she is. The two fall in love at first sight, before either of them has met the other, and seem to have no real interaction but how much they adore the other. As a married man who has to deal with a real woman, I have to say I'm predisposed to find this as preposterous as my wife undoubtedly would find the reverse.

Despite this, I can't be too hard on the book because it is a trippy fantastic journey. The plane of Elysia does not invoke so much cosmic weirdness as a 1970s album fantasy world cover. The sheer staggering breadth of the magnificent vistas Brian Lumley is able to conjure up in a short amount of pages is tremendous. I also enjoyed Titus Crow's awe at the alien sights he viewed, absent the horror and disgust of Lovecraft's protagonists.

In conclusion, The Transition of Titus Crow is not my favorite of the Titus Crow series but there's much to recommend the novel. While I would have preferred more novels like The Burrowers Beneath, I do not begrudge the author for going in a different direction.

7/10

[William Mansky · Rating 1 out of 5]

Quite simply, this book has nothing to do with the works of Lovecraft in anything but name. In fact, it's not even horror: it's pulp science fiction, with a value-set that belongs more to the '50s than the '80s, with a few ham-handed references to the Cthulu Mythos thrown in. A few sections are decently interesting, if not original - in particular, the sections that make no mention of Cthulu or pretense to horror. It's rarely that I've found myself rooting so fervently for something terrible to happen to a protagonist. If you read this, read it as popcorn adventure, and close your eyes whenever Lumley's boring, toothless Great Old Ones float by.

[Eric · Rating 2 out of 5]

The first Titus Crow novel set the tone for a Lovecraft experience, the follow up was more Gulliver’s Travels, than Cthulhu mythos.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've read the first book in this series several times over the years, but for some reason I never went on to the rest of the series. This book was not as gripping as the first book, and the epistolary style of the narrative is fragmentary and disjointed for large parts of the book. Rather than making the story seem mysterious or interesting I found myself skimming through those sections searching for more coherent sections of the story. Despite these disappointments I'm going on to the next book to see how that one goes.

[Jordan · Rating 3 out of 5]

While the first one was very much a love letter to pulp horror, this one is more a love letter to weird fantasy. At times it felt like I was reading a Ballantine Adult Fantasy novel.

But I found it less enjoyable than the first; it was fine, but not great. The plot sort of ambles along until it finishes.

[Dru · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well...I promised myself I'd read the entire Titus Crow series and so I will. But I didn't promise to enjoy it...

Picking up where The Burrowers Beneath left off, we follow Titus via de Marginy's notes as we learn how Titus used "the clock" to traverse space and time. All well and good, and a fun romp, but again, Lumley's resemblance to the horrible fanboy writing of August Derleth is striking. He departs evermore radically from the tone and canon as established by Lovecraft as the book progresses. Let's break it down, shall we?....

* Sarnath and Mnar are NOT in Saudi Arabia but rather in The Dreamlands. This is just a STUPID attempt to change canon.

* Basically called HPL a liar in that Lumley downgraded Cthulhu himself as seen in the story Call of Cthulhu to a "spawn" of Cthulhu. That is, he said HPL's story, the core canon of the entire mythos, was WRONG. Unforgivable and this alone brought the story down 1-2 stars

* Introduced a fairly stupid storyline having Cthulhu planning to reincarnate as Cthylla's son with Dagon as father? Dagon is a Deep One, not a Spawn of Cthulhu!

* His repeated use of the term "CCD" to lump all Great Old Ones and Outer Gods into one group makes the entities sound lame and not horrific.

* He claims that Dagon and Hydra live in Y-ha'nthlei, but there is no evidence of this in HPL. In fact, Dagon's only appearance in HPL is in the Pacific, far from the New England coast!

* Despite the size of the universe, Titus's RANDOM movements of the time clock land him in many Lovecraftian locales. He never lands on an uninhabited planet.

* Titus claims to have met Genghis Khan, been to Yuggoth, fought in Conan's army, seen Hadrian's wall constructed, but then when he recounts his journey, NONE of these things are mentioned! Crappy writing and crappier editing!

* Cthulhu isn't equal to Yog Sothoth at all. Great Old One vs Outer God.

* Kthanid, an elder god, shouldn't look like Cthulhu. Why? Because (a) the Elder Gods are never represented as horrifying by HPL and (b) each Great Old One is unique in how it looks, according to HPL and again (c) the Great Old Ones aren't gods...they are a lower form of life than Elder Gods or Outer Gods

* Further to the above, if Kthanid's blood flows in Tianias veins, she should resemble him. The one clear example of God/human interbreeding in HPL is the Whately twins...they are horrific and rightly so with horrific Yog-Sothoth as their father, yet Tiania has the blood of horrible looking Kthanid in her veins but she is beautiful!

All in all, I'll repeat what I felt upon reading the first book -- a complete MISS in representing the tone that HPL set. Amateurish, and frankly it's like someone who didn't GET it tried their hand at expanding canon.

I'm reminded of two other examples:
1) "Wicked"--set in a land with fixed canon and tone set up by L. Frank Baum, and then mutilated by whomever wrote Wicked. Same principle here.
2) The letters of St. Paul -- a man who never met Jesus, wasn't liked by Jesus's actual followers, and who usurped Jesus's brother James as the rightful successor to carry on Jesus's work. Much of what people consider "Christianity" was made up by this one "fanboy"

[JM · Rating 3 out of 5]

So, this is the book where we get to find out just what happened after Titus Crow and his friend Henri de Marigny escaped using the weird clock-like contraption at the end of the last novel and it was nowhere near what I expected. It wasn't as fun to me as the previous volume, and I'm not so sure that the Sci-Fi elements mesh all that well with the Mythosian themes, not to mention the Fated Romance (tm) included, but they weren't as jarring as I'd expected if I had been forewarned about them.

I now know why people complain so much about the shift from pure Cosmic Horror to a more traditional Good vs Evil narrative that some of Lovecraft's circle decided to pursue, since it does seem a bit cartoon-y and way less interesting, especially with the reveal that Titus' new-found superhuman love interest is both descended and sponsored by one of the Elder Gods who turns out to be Cthulhu's non-evil brother that looks just like him except for different colored eyes. Yeah, I'm all for not judging a book from its cover but an immortal giant dragon-squid-man with pretty golden eyes somehow seems like an odd choice for a benevolent deity given the context.

About half the book is comprised of incomplete transcriptions of audio recordings, which I guess was supposed to add to the mystery but felt disjointed instead. I feel 2 stars is too low, but 3 is too high. It's more like a 2.5 star book. We'll see how the series improves.

[Jorgon · Rating 2 out of 5]

Rather silly pastiche of Lovecraft, not without an occasional charm (the Hounds of Tindalos are pretty cool here) but overwrought, bombastic and, well, by numbers overall. Like I said, silly. Still persevering with the series!

[Glen Engel-Cox · Rating 4 out of 5]

The second of Lumley’s five books about Titus Crow (a character he also featured in a number of short stories) is set in the H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos, as well as dedicated to Lovecraft, but the two authors couldn’t be farther apart. While structured as part of a series of reports, transcriptions, and diary entries, similar to many of Lovecraft’s stories, Lumley does not attempt to match Lovecraft’s arch style nor does he only hint at the elements of the shapes and substance of the various Elder Gods and their more evil brethren. This is because in these books Lumley is a fantasy novelist, in which its the adventure that matters, not a horror novelist attempting to provide shocks or eke out terror in the mind of the reader. Yog-Sothoth, et al., continue to be the things of utmost insanity and horror, and Crow is affected by them, but the plot is a thriller—you know Crow will survive, just now how. Within that framework, however, Lumley is able to come up with some interesting surprises, such as when Crow crashlands on a planet and is basically reconstructed by an advanced mechanical intelligence.

Lovecraft aficionados probably wouldn’t care for how Lumley interprets their idols’ creation, but I actually find I prefer it, enjoying the adventure. I hadn’t read these first two books until recently, having discovered Lumley’s work instead with the third volume, The Clock of Dreams, which I plan to re-read next to remind myself of what I found fascinating about the book I had picked up secondhand and why for years I searched in vain for the other books in the series. Thanks to ebooks, these long out of print volumes are easily available for those seekers like me.

[Sylri · Rating 3 out of 5]

I can see why this book would be so polarizing for people.

It does indeed in the middle devolve into Crow giving de Marigny a list of what happened to him when he was spirited away in the time clock while de Marigny was chumming it around on Earth.

The list part becomes kind of boring, even though there are some really cool events Crow recounts (Yithians in Roman times??)

Though I think what probably really gets people is the high fantasy elements of this. Crow comes into contact with Yog-Sothoth , and manages to cow the thing before entering a realm that sounds right out of Lovecraft’s Dreamlands. And since Lumley seems to be a fan of Lovecraft’s Dreamlands and has written stories there, I can’t say I’m too surprised.

Thankfully for me I happen to be a huge fan of Lovecraft’s Dreamlands stories, but many people are lukewarm on them. And if you don’t like those, you’re probably not going to appreciate this story here. Cause towards the end there are dragons and capes that can let you fly and you get to meet an Elder God.

So the lackluster at times listicle from Crow as well as the Dreamlands-esque fantasy could very easily drive people away, and I understand that. But seeing as how I am a fan of both Lumley and the Dreamlands, I think my opinion of this book is gonna be more positive than most.

Keep your expectations correctly tuned when you start this. It isn’t gonna be a Mythos horror story by any stretch of the imagination, which the first book in this series,The Burrowers Beneath, approached in tone at times. But if you go into it knowing it’s gonna be a fantastical adventure about a guy in a Tardis, you might still end up enjoying yourself.

[Kenneth · Rating 4 out of 5]

A sequel to the author's "The Burrowers Beneath", it starts 10 years after the end of the first book. Henri-Laurent de Marigny suddenly reappears and is rescued from a river, but he has multiple injuries and so is in the hospital for awhile. Slowly his memory returns and he discovers that he has lost 10 years. The first chapter or so recapitulates the Cthulhu Mythos background. Henri and Titus Crow had escaped the demonic entitles in a coffin-shaped "time clock" which was a creation of the Elder Gods and which allowed for time travel and could propel itself to other worlds. Henri got dropped out after the aforementioned 10-year period, but Titus remained in it until Henri, guided by Mother Quarry, got him back to earth, and he had a much younger body. The bulk of the rest of the book is Titus' recounting of his adventures of time travelling and going to other worlds. On one where he crashes, it is inhabited by robots and one of them, T3RE, restores his body to make it much more durable and younger. In another episode, he goes back to the earth's Cretaceous period and has to deal with dinosaurs and erupting volcanoes, and just barely escapes. He later finds himself in a dimension dominated by Yog-Sothoth, of Cthulhu Mythos fame, and is rescued and is brought to Elysia, a paradise world where he again meets a female Chosen One, Tiania, who is the love of his life. The benign Elder God, Kthanid, rules over Elysia and while approving of the union of Titus and Tiania, sees that Titus needs to return to earth. The Wilmarth Foundation has been working on attacking Cthulhu and his minions and all hell is about to break loose on Miskatonic University and Arkham, Massachusetts, and with dire consequences on the rest of the earth.

[Ian Casey · Rating 2 out of 5]

In his second novel-length adventure, Titus Crow 'transitions' through a series of bizarrely disjointed vignettes of serviceable Doctor Who fan fiction whilst being extremely intent on name-dropping as many Cthulhu mythos references as possible (including those of Robert W. Chambers and Frank Belknap Long).

To put it another way, the diaphanous overarching plot and clunky plot structure are almost endearing in being so brazenly at odds with any modern conception of 'good writing'. One can scarcely imagine a good genre publisher taking it seriously today.

As Titus careers wildly around the space-time continuum in his 'Time Clock' (*cough* TARDIS), one is left feeling that not only the content but also much of the prose style of the novel is a throwback to Victorian prototypes.

The Time Machine of H.G. Wells is one point of reference among many such quaint sci-fi travelogues as the Professor Challenger tales of Arthur Conan Doyle, Erewhon by Samuel Butler and Flatland by Edwin Abbott.

As such, it's presented in a epistolary style, usually with Titus waffling on endlessly and uninterruptedly to de Marigny to say "I went to X, then did Y, and Z occurred!", but with many gratuitous purple adjectives.

Not least being a laughable pool party with alien dragons - one of whom is our protagonist's temporary companion who speaks perfect English with a lisp - which reads like the fever dream of a ten year old jacked up on red cordial who got really freaking excited about Ann McCaffrey.

It's very silly indeed and a moderately amusing diversion, but far from essential mythos fiction.

[Graham · Rating 3 out of 5]

As much as I love Lumley, this book wasn't what I was expecting at all. Gone is the Cthulhu horror of THE BURROWERS BENEATH, replaced by light fantasy in the DR WHO mould. I do enjoy Lumley's turn of phrase and vocabulary, I find his style very easy and readable, but the content here is severely lacking. The first half just seems to go over old ground a little repetitively, and then we're in pure fantasy territory. There's an interlude in which Crow gets turned into a robot which just seems to have been included so he doesn't have to breathe oxygen anymore - an inconvenience! Later we get a lisping dragon, some sappy romance, and a rushed on-Earth climax in just three pages. That climax is really good and I wish this book had been about that instead.

[Jason M · Rating 2 out of 5]

'Little girl, I will take you over my knee!' Paraphrasing Titus talking to a grown woman. Seriously, Lumley, wtf?

The book starts with a bunch of dry exposition to cover the 10 years between the previous book and the current point in the story. Then Titus narrates his adventures in the TARDIS Time-Clock where he becomes super human. Quite imaginative, but it's all told in a 'and then I went here, and then here, and ....' fashion. And there are a few cringe worthy lines like the one above.

Burrowers Beneath was enjoyable. This, not so much.

[Jonathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Started and built a good story, only to turn into a combination of A Princess of Mars and Peets Dragon.

Went from an adult extension of previously built storyline into childish drivel.

A mysterious unseen woman, who is unmet is madly in love with our hero from afar...If only I had a flying, talking dragon to take me to her.

There better be a turn around in the next book or I am done with Lumley...which is sad, because he was on to a good thing here.

[Carlsagansghost · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book tailor made for me. An otherworldly, phantasmagorical, and psychedelic trip through time and space. Lumley injects the Cthulhu mythos with a dose of hope and humanity. The 2nd half of this book is one amazing moment after another as Titus Crowe travels to the land of the Elder Gods and the finale is emotionally moving as his friend Henri makes the choice to join him in Elysia. A truly wonderful work of dreamland fantasy. One for the ages.

[Carlos Joaquín · Rating 2 out of 5]

With the most powerful, and most evil, of the elder Gods, Cthulhu, roused from slumber and preparing to destroy all of mankind with a single blow, Titus Crow and Henri-Laurent De Marigny are hopelessly outmatched. But they are not hopeless- They have been joined by heroes from other times, other worlds, other planes of reality. In a marvellous climax, heroes from other Brian Lumley series gather for the dramatic final battle.

[Autumn · Rating 2 out of 5]

Lumley’s take on Lovecraft‘s Dreamlands. I found most of it pretty dull as it lacks the action of The Burrowers Beneath. It’s not an action story at all. I still enjoy Titus Crow, but this won’t be high on the repeated reading list. Good for the completionist, but the average reader may want to pass.

[Trace · Rating 5 out of 5]

A more fantastical story than the first. One which falls more in line with Lovecraft's Dunsanian side than his cosmic horror side; filled with all the fantasy and mystique of his Dreamlands stories, though still very much drenched in the mire of antediluvian horror that is his mythos, and topped with a dash of weird sci-fi.

[Shane · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was really just one long romp through space and time. Unfortunately there was really only one character through most of it so almost no dialogue or characterization. Some cool ideas and scenes, but really not my favorite kind of story.

[Bill · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF at 40%. It’s like the author ran out of ideas at the end of The Burrowers Beneath (the prequel to this one) and believes audiences will enjoy learning every trivial detail about one of the characters, who strikes me as arrogant. Blah. Very disappointing.

[Gevera Piedmont · Rating 2 out of 5]

What a disjointed, disappointing mess. Not up to Lumley's usual standards at all.