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El túmulo
Novela corta El túmulo (The Mound).
102 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1930
20 people are currently reading
355 people want to read
About the author
H.P. Lovecraft
5,915 books19.2k followersHoward Phillips Lovecraft, of Providence, Rhode Island, was an American author of horror, fantasy and science fiction.
Lovecraft's major inspiration and invention was cosmic horror: life is incomprehensible to human minds and the universe is fundamentally alien. Those who genuinely reason, like his protagonists, gamble with sanity. Lovecraft has developed a cult following for his Cthulhu Mythos, a series of loosely interconnected fictions featuring a pantheon of human-nullifying entities, as well as the Necronomicon, a fictional grimoire of magical rites and forbidden lore. His works were deeply pessimistic and cynical, challenging the values of the Enlightenment, Romanticism and Christianity. Lovecraft's protagonists usually achieve the mirror-opposite of traditional gnosis and mysticism by momentarily glimpsing the horror of ultimate reality.
Although Lovecraft's readership was limited during his life, his reputation has grown over the decades. He is now commonly regarded as one of the most influential horror writers of the 20th Century, exerting widespread and indirect influence, and frequently compared to Edgar Allan Poe.
See also Howard Phillips Lovecraft.
— Wikipedia
Lovecraft's major inspiration and invention was cosmic horror: life is incomprehensible to human minds and the universe is fundamentally alien. Those who genuinely reason, like his protagonists, gamble with sanity. Lovecraft has developed a cult following for his Cthulhu Mythos, a series of loosely interconnected fictions featuring a pantheon of human-nullifying entities, as well as the Necronomicon, a fictional grimoire of magical rites and forbidden lore. His works were deeply pessimistic and cynical, challenging the values of the Enlightenment, Romanticism and Christianity. Lovecraft's protagonists usually achieve the mirror-opposite of traditional gnosis and mysticism by momentarily glimpsing the horror of ultimate reality.
Although Lovecraft's readership was limited during his life, his reputation has grown over the decades. He is now commonly regarded as one of the most influential horror writers of the 20th Century, exerting widespread and indirect influence, and frequently compared to Edgar Allan Poe.
See also Howard Phillips Lovecraft.
— Wikipedia
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 110 reviews
March 28, 2019
This is more an extended exercise in world-building framed as an "investigation" than an actual story. I liked the idea of the multiple frame narratives, but wasn't really in the mood to read pages after page of small print description. May reread the Yoth section at some point.
June 29, 2016
Written by H.P. Lovecraft at the request of Zealia Bishop
The main premise she gave him was: "There is an Indian mound near here, which is haunted by a headless ghost. Sometimes it is a woman." He expanded it in a very interesting direction. Of course he was going to connect it to his own cosmic horror. I liked the direction he took this story. It is like a Lovecraftian Journey to the Centre of the Earth.
The Mound is a story within a story. The narrator is a young and ambitious ethnologist who comes to Binger, Oklahoma to investigate a ghost story. There is a mound near Binger where a ghost of a warrior appears during the day and a headless woman during the night. He tells us all the legends he hears from the people living there and the stories of those who braved the mound and either never returned or came back insane and missing limbs.
When he goes to the mound the first time he finds a strange scroll which seems to be written in 1500s. It's in Spanish. He spends the night translating the story of Pánfilo de Zamacona y Nuñez, who managed to enter the mound and find a fascinating and horrifying world nobody knew existed. The greater part of The Mound is Zamacona's account of the world called K’nyan, its inhabitants and weird and terrible way they lived.
Zamacona describes the way they communicate, the creatures they enslaved, their religious practices and the punishment reserved for those who break the rules, especially the ones who try to leave K’nyan. All that and more.
I was never worried about our main narrator because there is a lot of foreshadowing that reveals he lived to tell this story.
October 11, 2020
If one wishes for an example of Lovecraft's purple prose and his reluctance to actually show anything of substance to the reader, then The Mound might be a good place to start. It manages to use so needlessly many words in the description of the horrors lying beneath all our feet, while simultaneously showing us almost nothing of what's actually so terrifying about them - at most hinting at it. Whether this is a good or a bad thing is up to an individual reader. For me it's worked more often than not, but here it goes a bit overboard.
Still, it has its high points and manages a pretty chilling ending.
Still, it has its high points and manages a pretty chilling ending.
May 28, 2025
I don’t write reviews.
“From this point onward, I ask no credence for what I tell, for what I think I saw. It is too utterly unnatural, too utterly monstrous and incredible, to be a part of sane human experience or objective reality.”
Lovecraft did dystopia and displayed a techno-feudalist nightmare realm that is altogether too close to reality. Immortal citizens on UBI, in a hyper-scientific society, ritualistically culled and segregated from the world, so full of boredom and ennui that they engage in hyper-sadism played out on those who were genetically engineered or fell out of favour with the ruling class. Many wish to become pure energy forms. But to die? Oh no, not many wish for that. Cannibalism and mutilation? A-ok! I’m sure many won’t see how many parallels there are to our own society, but it was clearly social satire on HP’s part. He isn’t in favour of this way of life.
The Mound was actually ghostwritten by Lovecraft, based on the idea that an Indian mound is haunted by a headless, sometimes female, ghost. Zealia Bishop came up with the idea and was said to have been impressed with the resulting story. It’s really one of Lovecraft’s best.
“From this point onward, I ask no credence for what I tell, for what I think I saw. It is too utterly unnatural, too utterly monstrous and incredible, to be a part of sane human experience or objective reality.”
Lovecraft did dystopia and displayed a techno-feudalist nightmare realm that is altogether too close to reality. Immortal citizens on UBI, in a hyper-scientific society, ritualistically culled and segregated from the world, so full of boredom and ennui that they engage in hyper-sadism played out on those who were genetically engineered or fell out of favour with the ruling class. Many wish to become pure energy forms. But to die? Oh no, not many wish for that. Cannibalism and mutilation? A-ok! I’m sure many won’t see how many parallels there are to our own society, but it was clearly social satire on HP’s part. He isn’t in favour of this way of life.
The Mound was actually ghostwritten by Lovecraft, based on the idea that an Indian mound is haunted by a headless, sometimes female, ghost. Zealia Bishop came up with the idea and was said to have been impressed with the resulting story. It’s really one of Lovecraft’s best.
November 28, 2014
The Mound is probably the least acclaimed and least known novella by H.P. Lovecraft, written in collaboration with Zealia Bishop, and published only posthumously in 1940. It's a strange mixture of ghost story and lost world adventure, with the first part focused on a pretty basic local Native American legend, and the second part seemingly influenced by the works of Jules Verne or Edgar Rice Burroughs.
The novella is about an archeologist who investigates a mysterious haunted mound somewhere in Oklahoma, and discovers it's actually one of the hidden entrances into a forgotten subterranean realm ruled by an advanced alien race that was brought to Earth aeons ago by The Old Ones, and still worships Cthulhu and Yig. It includes an ambitious description of the alien society, their cities, technology, religion and history, including some sociological satire, with additional intriguing mentions of other, even deeper and more hellish underground realms. While the background story offers another interesting take on Lovecraft's cosmic gods and their activities in the past, the main narration suffers from poor pacing and predictable ending. There were some rather unexpected elements of body mutilation which felt almost Barkerish, but overall the novella was not very exciting, and felt like a pulpy and less dramatic recycled version of other Lovercraft's works.
The novella is about an archeologist who investigates a mysterious haunted mound somewhere in Oklahoma, and discovers it's actually one of the hidden entrances into a forgotten subterranean realm ruled by an advanced alien race that was brought to Earth aeons ago by The Old Ones, and still worships Cthulhu and Yig. It includes an ambitious description of the alien society, their cities, technology, religion and history, including some sociological satire, with additional intriguing mentions of other, even deeper and more hellish underground realms. While the background story offers another interesting take on Lovecraft's cosmic gods and their activities in the past, the main narration suffers from poor pacing and predictable ending. There were some rather unexpected elements of body mutilation which felt almost Barkerish, but overall the novella was not very exciting, and felt like a pulpy and less dramatic recycled version of other Lovercraft's works.
February 12, 2021
Nearly as good as At the Mountains of Madness. Borrows from More's Utopia and Butler's Erewhon and adds some new twists.
July 27, 2018
This started off as a promising tale, but at some point it divulged into two hours of rambling about utopias and ancient civilizations. Normally, I wouldn’t have a problem with this in a Lovecraft story, but in this tale there was no sense of threat or danger.
It just felt like a scholar reading a history book for a couple of hours and honestly, I felt myself to be pretty bored through most of it.
Still had some decent moments, but probably my least favorite novella from Lovecraft.
It just felt like a scholar reading a history book for a couple of hours and honestly, I felt myself to be pretty bored through most of it.
Still had some decent moments, but probably my least favorite novella from Lovecraft.
January 17, 2016
The audiobook is so relaxing. It sounds like a historian wrote some LOL fanfic, aggravated by the insistent use of 'Tulu versus Cthulhu. I liked it better on paper. Memo to self: no need to ever read again. :)
August 7, 2024
Similar to Shadow Out Of Time, but more horrifying. Many of the descriptions of the decaying civilization seem prophetic at times.
5 somewhat disturbed stars
5 somewhat disturbed stars
May 19, 2021
Not one of my favorite Lovecraft tales. It could have been subtitled "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, But Underground". Too much describing the stuff there. Onward.
August 10, 2023
"just remember that to imagine such a horror is one thing, but to see it is another thing."
July 31, 2015
Es un relato anterior a "En las montañas de la locura" y ya se forjaban las primeras descripciones detalladas sobre civilizaciones (sean terrestres o extraterrestres) que habitaron en la Tierra eones atrás. Y cómo no, el final es apabullante, con ese toque trágico bebido de William Shakespeare y, a su vez, de los autores de las Antigua Grecia. <3
March 15, 2016
The story begins very strongly, with a plot that's full of true terror. Then, suddenly, it turns into a bizarre version of 'Journey to the Center of Earth', and the horror gets washed away by the sci-fi elements altogether.
November 11, 2025
The thing with Lovecraft's work, is that he has some utterly disturbing, horrific stories in his head. However, the execution dulls is so significantly. The framework og the story would work so well, if the inner story was written less like a Wikipedia page. We read all the horrific things in a monotone and dry voice that is so detached from us, that it loses all it's impact. Moreover, plenty of details are skipped, we know that there was some interesting entertainment going on in the mound, however it is not mentioned why or how the entertainers are created. Especially as the big scare at the end is quite build up by the lore in the inner story, that the scare kinda falls flat as it is now in the hands on the reader. It would have been much more eerie if the reader would know a couple more details on the process or how the entertainment was enacted. All in all, great lore, horrible execution
February 3, 2018
This is a sprawling rambling mess of Native American mythology, folkloric exploration, ghost stories, proto-Cthulhu Mythos concepts and sci-fi type meanderings of alien races living beneath America.
Apparently this is an edited version by August Derleth so I can only imagine what a vast confusing mass the original text must have been.
Definitely not Lovecraft’s best moment, this.
Apparently this is an edited version by August Derleth so I can only imagine what a vast confusing mass the original text must have been.
Definitely not Lovecraft’s best moment, this.
March 28, 2024
I get the atmosphere, the roundabout way of evoking primal chills in "me" the reader, but for the love of Cthulhu, do get to the "actual" point aka the horror being drowned with adjectives since the start.
My Rating - 2/5
My Rating - 2/5
June 25, 2025
My first time reading Lovecraft, I think I will read more.
April 13, 2021
Busqué y es que la tal Zealia ésta usó a Lovecraft de negro o algo así. Lo cual explica muchas cosas xD
Es la descripción de una sociedad prehumana mejor hecha por Lovecraft para mi gusto, y con menos detalles.
Es la descripción de una sociedad prehumana mejor hecha por Lovecraft para mi gusto, y con menos detalles.
September 2, 2022
"I'm not gonna get killed by the mound, I'm different"
November 11, 2020
Beginning is quite slow, but man... the other parts of the book is really good. It does an awesome job escalating the narrative. It goes from simple town legend to classic Lovecraftian monstrosities. Besides, the ending is the best part of it.
May 29, 2016
A good story though a bit weird even for Lovecraft. Confusing with lots of mentions of strange names with no real explanation tied to it.
July 28, 2018
Perhaps the best in the Lovecraft-bishop trilogy, though I have a soft-corner for "Medusa's Coil"....
"the horror that had descended from the stars when the earth was young"
"the horror that had descended from the stars when the earth was young"
March 29, 2024
This Lovecraft collaboration is mostly world building and setup that abruptly ends. It feels like it should have been a longer story, but that the second half is missing.
November 28, 2019
This one is a funky bat, a pearl in Lovecraft s opus. A tremendously well written masterpiece. After reading this you can easily become a pious worshiper of the Cthulhu mythos. Nah, just kidding, maybe if you are a lame atheist or a lost protestant.
This novella, one could even consider it a short novel, has two diegetic levels.
The first diegetic level is the autodiegetic one, the main character is the narrator in the first person. It has a journalistic-documentaristic vibe to it, the protagonist describes how he comes to a small rural hamlet in the vast plains of North America where Indian mounds lay in a ghostly way on the surface.
The second diegetic level is the metadiegetical one in which we, as readers, testify to what is happening through an omnipresent narrator who is in fact the protagonist from the first diegetical level. How? The protagonist finds an ancient manuscript and he tells it to us as an omnipresent narrator, like an old-school narrator straight outta nineteenth century.
The text inside the wider text, the manuscript, talks about a horrifically old and odd civilization that has a subterranean nature of its existence. The manuscript was written by a Spaniard in the sixteenth century who visited that wicked civilization.
You stumble upon firstly the hollow Earth topos, then the omnipresent topos in Lovecraft; the Old Ones.
The ancient subterranean civilization developed telepathic communication because as the novella mentions; "... speech having been found crude and needless."
They had zombies which Lovecraft calls "automatons", resurrected dead who were their workforce.
They were shapeshifters who could go through stones and walls.
All that is a product of their everlasting and ancient civilization which was an accumulation of knowledge that students from Berkeley can only dream about.
The topos of the counter-initiation is well alive in this superb novella. When the Spaniard entered their realm of reality the civilization was in decay, technologically, morally, ideologically. Sounds familiar?
The odd civilization was affraid of the surface, even so it was far much developed than the people above. It did not have a wish for conquer, Swedistan anybody?
It was dying.
If you have read Plotinus or Duns Scot, or Plato for that matter, you would know that as the world becomes more and more old, it is farer and farer from God. God is the source, the Creator of all being, beings who are further from the source are less good in any way. Duns Scot in that way defines devil as a being which is most farer from God, the newest, and thus the worst, form of being and creation.
That is traditionalism. Evola and Guenon based their critique of this modernistic bullshit on the old school notions about Being and the Creator. That is why there is a hierarchy of beings, God is above all, animals and the devil are down. An animal s life can not be equal to a human s life. Only Satan comes and turns up everything because he is the one who brings chaos. I do not go to church but, as you can see, I think I will soon. I have my own critiques to these concepts but when I look Hollywood, MTV, the LGBT scam or Swedistan I think that the thousands years of Tradition are not outdated.
The topos of the "aurea aetas" or the hinduist Satya Yuga are even older manifestations of these concepts.
Men who think they are women and women who think they are men, together with ill Greta Thunberg, are trying to tell us that all those civilizations in the past were wrong... Come on liberals, you can do better!
That is the reason why evolution is also satanic in its nature. Evolution turns around everything telling slaves of the 1789. that as time passes by every form of being gets better.
The scariest thing is that it is the matter of time when pedophilia will be consider a sexual orientation.
They are telling kids that being male or female is a matter of choice. We really need to push liberals and feminists, not just them. Satan is at the end behind transhumanism which is even more degenerated than feminism.
How to win the corpses of 1789. Just read. Read! Read! And think!
Lovecraft is so deep, and tells such profound metaphors that it is crazy.
I will be a little bit naughty and I will throw this link.
I am not advocating violence, I am not Julius Malema or some feminist, but when I see how they are trying to implement the transgender agenda on kids I really get angry. We need to defend children.
1984. is knocking at our doors. It is not in a form of a soldier with a gun, not directly, it has a shape of a transgender person who is so easily controllable that the person does not know who is he, she, it?
This song that I am going to throw soon only shows how today the right is the only counterculture, alternative right is actually situationist right.
This song is the Sex Pistols of our age, and watch it as a situationist act, not a real message.
But also as a warning! Warning to all those who think that is normal to play with kids in sick ways.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WWuV...
This novella, one could even consider it a short novel, has two diegetic levels.
The first diegetic level is the autodiegetic one, the main character is the narrator in the first person. It has a journalistic-documentaristic vibe to it, the protagonist describes how he comes to a small rural hamlet in the vast plains of North America where Indian mounds lay in a ghostly way on the surface.
The second diegetic level is the metadiegetical one in which we, as readers, testify to what is happening through an omnipresent narrator who is in fact the protagonist from the first diegetical level. How? The protagonist finds an ancient manuscript and he tells it to us as an omnipresent narrator, like an old-school narrator straight outta nineteenth century.
The text inside the wider text, the manuscript, talks about a horrifically old and odd civilization that has a subterranean nature of its existence. The manuscript was written by a Spaniard in the sixteenth century who visited that wicked civilization.
You stumble upon firstly the hollow Earth topos, then the omnipresent topos in Lovecraft; the Old Ones.
The ancient subterranean civilization developed telepathic communication because as the novella mentions; "... speech having been found crude and needless."
They had zombies which Lovecraft calls "automatons", resurrected dead who were their workforce.
They were shapeshifters who could go through stones and walls.
All that is a product of their everlasting and ancient civilization which was an accumulation of knowledge that students from Berkeley can only dream about.
The topos of the counter-initiation is well alive in this superb novella. When the Spaniard entered their realm of reality the civilization was in decay, technologically, morally, ideologically. Sounds familiar?
The odd civilization was affraid of the surface, even so it was far much developed than the people above. It did not have a wish for conquer, Swedistan anybody?
It was dying.
If you have read Plotinus or Duns Scot, or Plato for that matter, you would know that as the world becomes more and more old, it is farer and farer from God. God is the source, the Creator of all being, beings who are further from the source are less good in any way. Duns Scot in that way defines devil as a being which is most farer from God, the newest, and thus the worst, form of being and creation.
That is traditionalism. Evola and Guenon based their critique of this modernistic bullshit on the old school notions about Being and the Creator. That is why there is a hierarchy of beings, God is above all, animals and the devil are down. An animal s life can not be equal to a human s life. Only Satan comes and turns up everything because he is the one who brings chaos. I do not go to church but, as you can see, I think I will soon. I have my own critiques to these concepts but when I look Hollywood, MTV, the LGBT scam or Swedistan I think that the thousands years of Tradition are not outdated.
The topos of the "aurea aetas" or the hinduist Satya Yuga are even older manifestations of these concepts.
Men who think they are women and women who think they are men, together with ill Greta Thunberg, are trying to tell us that all those civilizations in the past were wrong... Come on liberals, you can do better!
That is the reason why evolution is also satanic in its nature. Evolution turns around everything telling slaves of the 1789. that as time passes by every form of being gets better.
The scariest thing is that it is the matter of time when pedophilia will be consider a sexual orientation.
They are telling kids that being male or female is a matter of choice. We really need to push liberals and feminists, not just them. Satan is at the end behind transhumanism which is even more degenerated than feminism.
How to win the corpses of 1789. Just read. Read! Read! And think!
Lovecraft is so deep, and tells such profound metaphors that it is crazy.
I will be a little bit naughty and I will throw this link.
I am not advocating violence, I am not Julius Malema or some feminist, but when I see how they are trying to implement the transgender agenda on kids I really get angry. We need to defend children.
1984. is knocking at our doors. It is not in a form of a soldier with a gun, not directly, it has a shape of a transgender person who is so easily controllable that the person does not know who is he, she, it?
This song that I am going to throw soon only shows how today the right is the only counterculture, alternative right is actually situationist right.
This song is the Sex Pistols of our age, and watch it as a situationist act, not a real message.
But also as a warning! Warning to all those who think that is normal to play with kids in sick ways.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WWuV...
May 29, 2019
Головна мета людства, на мою думку, - це пізнання світу. Попри всю її значущість, дещо ми забуваємо, дещо втрачається у віках. Подекуди навіть під тонким шаром ґрунту ховаються таємниці, загублені тисячоліття тому. Як завжди, питання Лавкрафта - чи зможемо ми з ними впоратися?
В 1928 році молодий етнограф, збираючи місцеві байки, потрапляє в містечко Бінґер в серці Оклахоми. Недалеко височіє нібито індіанський курган, на якому завжди чатують привиди. Розповіді переляканих місцевих про поодинокі зникнення або божевілля тих, хто намагався викопати легендарний скарб на тому проклятому місці, тільки розбурхують цікавість етнографа. І навіть вождь місцевого племені не може переконати його полишити думки про курган, а тільки дає йому таємничий талісман.
Я вважаю це оповідання одним з найкращих у Лавкрафта, які він написав у співавторстві (хоча побутує переконання, що пані Бішоп запропонувала йому написати про курган з вартовими-привидами, а все інші - справа його уяви і пера). Що ж визначає моє ставлення до цього тексту? - Його певна унікальність. Затяті читачі Лавкрафта добре знають, що він полюбляв страшні речі, які відбуваються ледь поза полем нашого зору. А тут ціле містечко щодня і щоночі спостерігає за привидами, страшне співіснує з повсякденним. Я можу назвати лише декілька подібних прикладів, перш за все "Жах Ред Гука".
Звісно, інша паралель між творами - таємний світ прихований під звичайним, цього разу більш буквально, хоча "Жах Ред Гука" теж не обійшовся без підземних печер.
Спускання в безодню в "Кургані" вигідно відрізняється від спускання у сон в "Сновидних пошуках незвіданого Кадата" тим, що акцент тут робиться не на дивовижних історіях, а на описі, в якому Лавкрафт став неперевершеним майстром. Ну, і, ясна річ, це вже не казочки, а дещо ближче до звичної приреченості автора.
В 1928 році молодий етнограф, збираючи місцеві байки, потрапляє в містечко Бінґер в серці Оклахоми. Недалеко височіє нібито індіанський курган, на якому завжди чатують привиди. Розповіді переляканих місцевих про поодинокі зникнення або божевілля тих, хто намагався викопати легендарний скарб на тому проклятому місці, тільки розбурхують цікавість етнографа. І навіть вождь місцевого племені не може переконати його полишити думки про курган, а тільки дає йому таємничий талісман.
Я вважаю це оповідання одним з найкращих у Лавкрафта, які він написав у співавторстві (хоча побутує переконання, що пані Бішоп запропонувала йому написати про курган з вартовими-привидами, а все інші - справа його уяви і пера). Що ж визначає моє ставлення до цього тексту? - Його певна унікальність. Затяті читачі Лавкрафта добре знають, що він полюбляв страшні речі, які відбуваються ледь поза полем нашого зору. А тут ціле містечко щодня і щоночі спостерігає за привидами, страшне співіснує з повсякденним. Я можу назвати лише декілька подібних прикладів, перш за все "Жах Ред Гука".
Звісно, інша паралель між творами - таємний світ прихований під звичайним, цього разу більш буквально, хоча "Жах Ред Гука" теж не обійшовся без підземних печер.
Спускання в безодню в "Кургані" вигідно відрізняється від спускання у сон в "Сновидних пошуках незвіданого Кадата" тим, що акцент тут робиться не на дивовижних історіях, а на описі, в якому Лавкрафт став неперевершеним майстром. Ну, і, ясна річ, це вже не казочки, а дещо ближче до звичної приреченості автора.
June 10, 2024
The 'Lovecraft Revisions' are always interesting. In some ways they FEEL so much like a Lovecraft tale, heavily edited as they were by him (to the point where many of the original authors spiritually forfeited ownership of the tale, ceding them instead as Lovecraft's creations). Yet, in other ways they have a... shall we say 'livelier' tone to them at times than a classic Lovecraft story. HPL was not a man taken to emotions (besides the emotion of 'fear'), and his stories are almost always very clinical. They tend not to involve conversational exchanges of dialogue, or other personable qualities that make them about the characters or the people beyond how they interact with and explore the eldritch concept being presented.
So it is that in the revisions - stories written by other authors, by HEAVILY edited by Lovecraft - there is a TOUCH of something more... ...human in them. They lack some of the verbosity of a classic Lovecraft, and instead feel just a touch more relatable.
...Or at least, in some cases. 'The Mound' does not, I think, have some of Lovecraft's favorite phraseologies and words, but it does follow a very classic Lovecraft formula: Intellectual type person discovers some sort of legend/piece of folklore, goes to explore it, and then generates by some means a chapter that entirely explains everything that's going on, before some final horrible revelation is made where the skeptical protagonist ceases to be skeptical.
On the whole the mound was INTERESTING. One could, more even than during the time of its writing, find the 'social commentary' within this story now today, of a society given over entirely to pleasurable past-times that, indulgent as they are, still leave them bored, though thank goodness we have not yet degenerated so far as to have colisseum-style blood sports as the K'n'yan folk do. I might have liked a slightly snappier ending of some kind with something REALLY horrifying, but overall, it was pretty neat.
So it is that in the revisions - stories written by other authors, by HEAVILY edited by Lovecraft - there is a TOUCH of something more... ...human in them. They lack some of the verbosity of a classic Lovecraft, and instead feel just a touch more relatable.
...Or at least, in some cases. 'The Mound' does not, I think, have some of Lovecraft's favorite phraseologies and words, but it does follow a very classic Lovecraft formula: Intellectual type person discovers some sort of legend/piece of folklore, goes to explore it, and then generates by some means a chapter that entirely explains everything that's going on, before some final horrible revelation is made where the skeptical protagonist ceases to be skeptical.
On the whole the mound was INTERESTING. One could, more even than during the time of its writing, find the 'social commentary' within this story now today, of a society given over entirely to pleasurable past-times that, indulgent as they are, still leave them bored, though thank goodness we have not yet degenerated so far as to have colisseum-style blood sports as the K'n'yan folk do. I might have liked a slightly snappier ending of some kind with something REALLY horrifying, but overall, it was pretty neat.
April 28, 2020
Let's be real, this is not Lovecraft's best.
This is the second time I've read the piece, first time I've listened to this particular recording, and as a revisit to my first Lovecraft experience; I'm frankly let down by my own memory.
Sort of a side not before I start; It's funny that I see parallels of the problems I find with this book to my current reading (Eye of the World, WoT #1).
This is a piece I like to think of as a roadmap, there's a lot of world there for something with a relatively short story in reality.
The character(s) besides the 'witnesses' are about as deep as you'd expect a side character for a novella to be.
The descriptions will beautifully terrifying, are for the most part literal descriptions and not visually 'present', so it feels far too safe.
The ideas however, are what prevent this from being a 1 star, because my lord the man's brain comes up with nightmares that not even the most prolific serial killers could have.
Worthy sidenotes;
It's got that classic Lovecraft's (the guy himself) beliefs in it. Take that with every connotation implied - it's not the worst, but it brings a small cringe out.
I honestly didn't know it was a novella published posthumously, I legit thought it was a collection of monthly works that were strung together.
This is the second time I've read the piece, first time I've listened to this particular recording, and as a revisit to my first Lovecraft experience; I'm frankly let down by my own memory.
Sort of a side not before I start; It's funny that I see parallels of the problems I find with this book to my current reading (Eye of the World, WoT #1).
This is a piece I like to think of as a roadmap, there's a lot of world there for something with a relatively short story in reality.
The character(s) besides the 'witnesses' are about as deep as you'd expect a side character for a novella to be.
The descriptions will beautifully terrifying, are for the most part literal descriptions and not visually 'present', so it feels far too safe.
The ideas however, are what prevent this from being a 1 star, because my lord the man's brain comes up with nightmares that not even the most prolific serial killers could have.
Worthy sidenotes;
It's got that classic Lovecraft's (the guy himself) beliefs in it. Take that with every connotation implied - it's not the worst, but it brings a small cringe out.
I honestly didn't know it was a novella published posthumously, I legit thought it was a collection of monthly works that were strung together.
February 4, 2025
Zealia Bishop: Hello Mr. Lovecraft, there is an Indian mound here, it is haunted by a ghost. Sometimes it is a woman.
Mr. Lovecraft: I am going to get my $20 anyways so I might as well indulge in yet another fantasy of a technologically advanced subterranean civilization where aliens enslaved and cannibalized a degenerated human race and cross-bred them with animals as well for transportation.
I am perfectly fine with suspending disbelief in fiction, but the thing is things should still be "realistic". In other words, the contract between me and the writer is, "I will believe in the supernatural or whatever it is for the story to work, but I will only go this far and no longer. In other words, you must not find it necessary to make your characters dumb for your story to work."
However, The Mound fails at this spectacularly. This is probably because Lovecraft is trying to do the same thing here as he does in At the Mountains of Madness, except in the latter it works because of the isolated setting, but here it doesn't since the story is set in a town/village in the US.
You really don't need to read this if you have read At the Mountains of Madness. Both stories are virtually the same but with a different coat of paint.
Mr. Lovecraft: I am going to get my $20 anyways so I might as well indulge in yet another fantasy of a technologically advanced subterranean civilization where aliens enslaved and cannibalized a degenerated human race and cross-bred them with animals as well for transportation.
I am perfectly fine with suspending disbelief in fiction, but the thing is things should still be "realistic". In other words, the contract between me and the writer is, "I will believe in the supernatural or whatever it is for the story to work, but I will only go this far and no longer. In other words, you must not find it necessary to make your characters dumb for your story to work."
However, The Mound fails at this spectacularly. This is probably because Lovecraft is trying to do the same thing here as he does in At the Mountains of Madness, except in the latter it works because of the isolated setting, but here it doesn't since the story is set in a town/village in the US.
You really don't need to read this if you have read At the Mountains of Madness. Both stories are virtually the same but with a different coat of paint.
February 24, 2019
This story appears to be the antithesis of what defines Lovecraft's fiction. Yes, it has horror elements that blend science fiction with fantasy, multiple narrators and all that, but those are surface details. It rambles, it over-explains, and it banishes the ambiguity and atmosphere that defines Lovecraftian fiction. The central conceit is at odds with the rest of his universe, moving from "there are terrible, incomprehensible forces just past the edge of reality" to "there is an entire active, advanced society of morally neutral humans under the earth that we can interact with".
But the real blunder here is by the anthologists, not the author. The story was ghost-written for Zealia Bishop, and thus there's no need for it to fit with the tone of Lovecraft's canon. Yet it's frequently included in 'Cthulhu Mythos' collections, where I believe it's not only irrelevant but actively harmful to the overarching mythos. On its own, it's mediocre lost world fiction, but as part of the collected tales, it's a baffling mess.
But the real blunder here is by the anthologists, not the author. The story was ghost-written for Zealia Bishop, and thus there's no need for it to fit with the tone of Lovecraft's canon. Yet it's frequently included in 'Cthulhu Mythos' collections, where I believe it's not only irrelevant but actively harmful to the overarching mythos. On its own, it's mediocre lost world fiction, but as part of the collected tales, it's a baffling mess.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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