The Peaslee Papers: A Lovecraftian Chronicle

by Pete Rawlik

The Yith Are Eternal, Patient, Methodical, Monstrous, Cold Minds From Beyond Time and Space... They were there when the Saurians were cast aside, and the ancestors of men were little more than pets for the things that once walked the Earth. They witnessed the wrathful judgment of gods and the terrible punishment inflicted on those who defy them.   They are there when Rome begins to crumble, manipulating the long course of Human thought, Human evolution, and Human history. They have tampered with things that should not have been, creating monsters of men. They play the Long Game, the purpose of which is hidden, perhaps even from themselves.   They shall be as saviors, manipulating forces we do not and cannot understand. We shall succumb to their benevolent rule, and they shall fall to the monsters we become to resist them, sacrificing Humanity itself, embracing our destiny to become so much more. But even this is only part of the Long Game, a game in which the universe itself is the prize. The Yith Have Always Been With Us... and So Have the Peaslees. Twenty-two tales of cosmic horror detailing the further exploits of H.P. Lovecraft’s Peaslee family, their ancestors, and descendants. *** "Rawlik’s THE PEASLEE PAPERS transcends mere Lovecraftian homage into an area all its own, spanning time and space, slipstreaming historical characters into the mix while diving deep into occult conspiracies that linger on the mind long after the last page is turned." -- Bob Pastorella, This Is Horror "Pete Rawlik, more than any other working with the Mythos today, brings a gleeful joy to his work. THE PEASLEE PAPERS sees Rawlik turning his fiendishly clever imagination towards one of the founding blocks of weird fiction as set out by Lovecraft himself. Good googly moogly it is fun. I want to have cocktails with this cat." -- Acep Hale, book reviewer

Genres: Horror, Lovecraftian, Science Fiction, Cthulhu Mythos

303 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 15, 2017

About the author

Pete Rawlik is a frequent contributor to the Lovecraft ezine and the New York Review of Science Fiction

Reviews

[David Hollen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very entertaining

An excellent collection of Lovecraft inspired fiction centered around a single family that spans eons. Very creative use of all the Lovecraftian cmponents woven into an engaging whole. Needless to say, I loved it!

[Matthew Davenport · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is going to sound counter to literally everything I am, but bear with me: I don’t normally enjoy to completion anthologies that are hardcore mythos.

The reason behind that is that when I read something, I fall hard for it, even the crap stuff, and I demand more. If you give me Reanimator, then hook me up to an IV of the green stuff and keep her coming. We’re reading about Yog-Sothoth today? Then blow my mind up! Unfortunately, large anthologies that tend to be a deep dive into the mythos tend to bounce around the universe and rarely touch back on whatever subject first sparked my interest.

Peter Rawlik’s The Peaslee Papers is something else entirely. It’s similar in effect to what I’ve been trying to be a part of in the group anthologies I’ve joined. Almost like a TV show, in that each story in this anthology acts more as a chapter, telling an enclosed story that actually lends itself toward the larger and all-encompassing plot of the book.

The Peaslee Papers is a biography of the Peaslee family, starting with the famed Nathanial Wingate Peaslee and following his descendants throughout the history of the world. They encounter the Mythos in differing ways (it touches on almost everything) and in ways that I don’t ever see enough of (had some good King in Yellow stuff going on) and are always tied back to the main part of Peaslee’s story: Quantum Leaping with the Yith.

It goes beyond that, though, in that we get to see a hint at the Yith’s very alien, and in many ways, all too human, agenda. He adds to the Mythos at regular intervals without feeling like it was shoehorned in. It wasn’t, it’s been there the entire time, we just didn’t know about it until Rawlik told us.

I’ve been a huge fan of Rawlik’s Reanimators series of connected stories, with my favorite being Weird Company, but this gave me a new dimension. Instead of the more visceral look at at flesh-craft and the psychology behind reanimating the dead, we got a philosophical look at manipulating the universe.

This book is an easy 5 out of 5 for me. I’m about to start his Legacy of the Reanimator anthology, with co-authors, and am looking forward to just as entertaining of a deep dive into the history of Herbert West as we received with Professor Peaslee.

[Jonathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good Lovecraftian fun

There's a lot of interesting ways to play with the mythos that Lovecraft started defining. In this case, it gives a full chronicle from the perspective of a family through time. It's an interesting approach that grounds the Mythos in both the fiction and some real world events.