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The Book of Eibon
The Book of Eibon, the creation of Clark Ashton Smith, ranks behind Lovecraft's Necronomicon as a shunned repository of mystical horrors surviving blasphemously from elder eons. Not content with his own and Lovecraft's citations of the Book, Smith actually wrote two chapters of it, his famous stories "The Door to Saturn" and "The Coming of the White Worm." Lin Carter knew a good thing when he saw it and decided it would be fun to write and to read the remaining Eibonic chapters. So he took in hand to write a number of them, intending to finish the book one day. This he did not live to do, but others took up the fallen banner, supplying more of the droll yet frightening episodes, as well as various liturgical and magical arcana the Book of Eibon was said to contain. The result is truly impressive, much more so than any previous attempt to compose such a Mythos grimoire, a work of horror, humor, and genuine poetic power. Many will be seriously tempted to use this volume as a working occult resource.
432 pages, Paperback
First published June 14, 2006
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
June 11, 2014
Not strictly "Lovecraftian" per-se, far closer to Robert Howards sword & sorcery style of writing, but with tinges of outre horror here and there.
One of the most solid offerings I've yet read from Chaosium's "Cycle" series, both in terms of story quality as well as consistency between stories.
NOTE Robert Price's story prefaces should be avoided at all costs, not only because of spoilers for the story YOU'RE JUST ABOUT TO READ, but also due to his increasingly shoddy attempts to try to tie everything Lovecraftian back into some reflection on/of Christian mythology.
One of the most solid offerings I've yet read from Chaosium's "Cycle" series, both in terms of story quality as well as consistency between stories.
NOTE Robert Price's story prefaces should be avoided at all costs, not only because of spoilers for the story YOU'RE JUST ABOUT TO READ, but also due to his increasingly shoddy attempts to try to tie everything Lovecraftian back into some reflection on/of Christian mythology.
January 21, 2023
The Book of Eibon is ostensibly based on two of Clark Ashton Smith's Hyperborean cycle stories, "The Coming of the White Worm" and "The Door to Saturn," both of which are brilliant pieces of eldritch art and are included in this volume and feature the wizard Eibon, a supposed towering figure of Hyperborean history.
Secondary to these two stories are a lot of notes from Smith on further stories that never appeared until Lin Carter got his hands on them. Carter may have done a great deal to ensure the survival of Smith's writing, but his ability to transcend anything but a clunky, ham-fisted attempt at pastiching Smith never manifests in most of these stories. So many of these stories follow a theme of a magician seeking knowledge which is usually imparted to the reader as being very important and horribly horrible without any substantiation or demonstration thereof, leading the magician to a short exodus and often to their demise. Over and over and over again from author to author. The stories are filled with multisyllabic and vowel-free, arcane names that seem to get longer as you read, and you really never get the impression that Carter had the imagination to stretch out past the limitations of the Smith stories until maybe his last story in the appendix of the book. Other writers fare a little better, mostly Robert M. Price himself and Laurence Cornford who both at least don't lean as hard on trying to ape Smith. Price, of course, is quite concerned with incorporating his considerable learning on the Bible into the proceedings, while Cornford is perhaps the author most interested in actually telling stories, although none really stretch much farther than Carter's work.
After all of this exceedingly pastichey material, you are introduced to three poets who do a fine job with weird prose (Richard L. Tierney and Ann Schwader are always pretty good at these), but then what starts to tank an average book is the Eibon-style rituals penned by Stephen Semmitt and Joseph S. Pulver. I can imagine the average reader who had just read past the poetry might still enjoy these meta creations, but Semmitt's work is so Aleister Crowley pastiche and Pulver's so strewn with repetitive gibberish never explained that I was continually thrown out of the spell they were trying to weave. It's as if the versimilitude of using actual magic literature to give Hyperborean rituals some sort of thump manages to contradict and conflict with Smith's inspiration. Mind you I am quite on board with some pastichey material (and there's a lot of Lovecraftian stuff strewn in as there was in the original Hyperborean cycle), but outside of the amateur presses, a lot of this is the nadir of the style. It is much more fun in concept than it was to read.
Secondary to these two stories are a lot of notes from Smith on further stories that never appeared until Lin Carter got his hands on them. Carter may have done a great deal to ensure the survival of Smith's writing, but his ability to transcend anything but a clunky, ham-fisted attempt at pastiching Smith never manifests in most of these stories. So many of these stories follow a theme of a magician seeking knowledge which is usually imparted to the reader as being very important and horribly horrible without any substantiation or demonstration thereof, leading the magician to a short exodus and often to their demise. Over and over and over again from author to author. The stories are filled with multisyllabic and vowel-free, arcane names that seem to get longer as you read, and you really never get the impression that Carter had the imagination to stretch out past the limitations of the Smith stories until maybe his last story in the appendix of the book. Other writers fare a little better, mostly Robert M. Price himself and Laurence Cornford who both at least don't lean as hard on trying to ape Smith. Price, of course, is quite concerned with incorporating his considerable learning on the Bible into the proceedings, while Cornford is perhaps the author most interested in actually telling stories, although none really stretch much farther than Carter's work.
After all of this exceedingly pastichey material, you are introduced to three poets who do a fine job with weird prose (Richard L. Tierney and Ann Schwader are always pretty good at these), but then what starts to tank an average book is the Eibon-style rituals penned by Stephen Semmitt and Joseph S. Pulver. I can imagine the average reader who had just read past the poetry might still enjoy these meta creations, but Semmitt's work is so Aleister Crowley pastiche and Pulver's so strewn with repetitive gibberish never explained that I was continually thrown out of the spell they were trying to weave. It's as if the versimilitude of using actual magic literature to give Hyperborean rituals some sort of thump manages to contradict and conflict with Smith's inspiration. Mind you I am quite on board with some pastichey material (and there's a lot of Lovecraftian stuff strewn in as there was in the original Hyperborean cycle), but outside of the amateur presses, a lot of this is the nadir of the style. It is much more fun in concept than it was to read.
February 29, 2020
An anthology of mostly Weird Tales stories by Clark Ashton Smith and Lin Carter edited and with commentary by Robert M. Price.
This covers a period in the distant past of the Cthulhu Mythos world around the time of the destruction of the Serpent-Men of Valusia and the advent of humanity. These events take place around the same era as the adventures of Conan chronicled by Robert E. Howard and L Sprague De Camp.
Mostly, this is great stuff that has been out of print forever. There were a few additions intended to make it feel more like a grimoire or a book of scripture that I skipped over, but still a lot of good content here.
Price is extremely well-educated and brings a wealth of knowledge about the Cthulhu Mythos and myths and legends in general to his commentary, but I found his constant little digs against Christianity annoying.
This covers a period in the distant past of the Cthulhu Mythos world around the time of the destruction of the Serpent-Men of Valusia and the advent of humanity. These events take place around the same era as the adventures of Conan chronicled by Robert E. Howard and L Sprague De Camp.
Mostly, this is great stuff that has been out of print forever. There were a few additions intended to make it feel more like a grimoire or a book of scripture that I skipped over, but still a lot of good content here.
Price is extremely well-educated and brings a wealth of knowledge about the Cthulhu Mythos and myths and legends in general to his commentary, but I found his constant little digs against Christianity annoying.
February 12, 2016
A collection of stories based on the writings of H.P. Lovecraft. These are, to me, only slightly better than the original Lovecraft stories. Just not a fan of his writings. Not recommended
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews