Titus Crow: The Burrowers Beneath / The Transition of Titus Crow

Titus Crow #1-2

by Brian Lumley

The Titus Crow novels are adventure horror, full of acts of nobility and heroism, featuring travel to exotic locations and alternate planes of existence as Titus Crow and his faithful companion and record-keeper fight the gathering forces of darkness wherever they arise. The menaces are the infamous and deadly Elder Gods of the work of H.P. Lovecraft. Chthulu and his dark minions are bent on ruling the earth--or destroying it. A few puny humans cannot possibly stand against these otherworldly evil gods, yet time after time, Titus Crow defeats the monsters and drives them back into the dark from whence they came. Volume One contains two full novels, The Burrowers Beneath and The Transition of Titus Crow.

Genres: Horror, Fiction, Fantasy, Cthulhu Mythos, Lovecraftian, Weird Fiction, Science Fiction

352 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

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

[K.T. Katzmann · Rating 4 out of 5]

A pitiful investigator of eldritch horror returns for a sequel in which he gains a TARDIS, fights pterosaurs, is rebuilt as a cyborg, lasers a god, befriends dragons, and . . .



My Burrows Beneath review is here. I'll discuss the insanity of Transition for this review.

I once played in a Call of Cthulhu game at a local gaming store. We had three players and the Schmuck. We wanted to get rid of the Schmuck so badly, we hatched an insane plan. Knowing that the Schmuck was a Lovecraftian purist, we went crazy for one game. By the end of it, we were feeding a magic wand (given to us by Sailor Moon) Twinkies to make it turn into a Star Wars ship to escape the outer god Azathoth. The Schmuck left during the argument over whether a Y-Wing or an X-Wing has a better hyperdrive. We promptly restarted the game the moment he left the store and pretended that never happened .

This book is what would've happened if we continued that game up to eleven.

Titus Crow was a poor, poor protagonist. In The Burrowers Beneath, he mostly eats chicken lunches and is begged by monsters to leave them alone. In this book, we learn how his subsequent adventures becomes the stuff of crazed middle school fanfic.

If you want to watch someone take the ever-loving piss out of the Cthulhu Mythos, go ahead. I had a spectacular time. Then again, I love bizarre bad movies, having owned 80 DVDs off of badmovies.org. I love media that is, to quote Roger Ebert, "cheerfully berserk."

Seriously, look at that first sentence up there. By the end of that statement, you should know if you want to read this or not.

There's two sequels. I can't wait.

[Ross Lockhart · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fritz Leiber, creator or the best-known pair of adventurers in all of fantasy literature (and no stranger to the Lovecraftean pastiche) was no great fan of Brian Lumley’s The Burrowers Beneath, the first of the two novels collected in Titus Crow, Volume 1. “This is not just science fiction,” wrote Leiber in an essay published in Fantastic, June 1975 (and reprinted in Fritz Leiber and H. P. Lovecraft: Writers of the Dark). “It is science fiction of the cosmic-war-of-the-gods sort which Lovecraft most detested.” And while Leiber certainly makes his point, he misses what The Burrowers Beneath actually aspires to be, a Haggardian adventure, completely over the top, utilizing the tropes and inventions of Lovecraft’s cosmic horror as if they were the animatronic ghouls and goblins hopping up and down in the path of a careening ghost train. Told primarily in an epistolary style, The Burrowers Beneath is the tale of Titus Crow, an occult adventurer comprised of equal parts Abraham Van Helsing, Sherlock Holmes, and Dr. Who, and his Watson, frequent narrator (through journal entries) Henri-Laurent de Marigny, as they take on the Elder Gods (known here as the CCD, or “Cthulhu Cycle Deities”) in mano-a-mano combat, the stakes being the universe itself. It’s silly, sure, but a good enough ride that one is inclined to forgive the sort of arch-silliness that comes when Crow’s home, Blowne House, is literally blown apart by wind elementals at the conclusion of The Burrowers Beneath. References to Lovecraft’s locales, stories, and characters abound, as do evil, squid-headed (and no-headed) alien monsters intent on unleashing cosmic destruction. Leiber may have been more entertained by the second half of Titus Crow, Volume 1, the novel The Transition of Titus Crow, which derives as much from Lovecraft’s Dunsany-inspired dream fantasies as The Burrowers Beneath did his pullulating pantheon. With The Transition of Titus Crow, Titus is elevated to a sort of fantasy superman: he flies through space and time in a coffin-shaped clock, fights dinosaurs, is reassembled by robots, rides dragons, and makes love to a beautiful goddess. It is a kitchen sink approach to fantasy, one that works almost in spite of itself. While nowhere near as engaging as The Burrowers Beneath, The Transition of Titus Crow effectively raises the stakes, introducing a pantheon of good deities to balance Cthulhu’s evil, and bridging the first novel with the four which follow.

[Keith · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mr. Lumley, I read the first half of your book -- that is, the first novel within -- and never went back. I wanted to. Your covers rule and your main character has the dopest name ever. Neither fact saves this book from being terrible, embarrassing fan-fiction. You might deserve another chance, but I deserve to take care of myself and your writing makes me dumber. I'm sorry. Goodbye.

[Jordan West · Rating 1 out of 5]

Incredible; Lumley manages to out-Derleth Derleth.

[Nick · Rating 3 out of 5]

After reading some of HP Lovecraft works, I wanted to get into more of the Cthulhu Mythos. I love this author from the Necroscope Series and I wanted to see what he did with the mythos and how he added to it and spun his own creativity into it.

This book is actually the first 2 novels in the Titus Crow series which is a series in the ever growing Cthulhu mythos that was started by HPL.

Titus Crow and his Sidekick ( Henri-Laurent De Marigny) are like a version of Holmes and Watson. Titus is an expert in the Cthulhu mythos and this is set in the universe of all the Lovecraft stories. there is a Necronomicon, there is an Arkham, an Innsmouth, a Miskatonic University etc etc. There are artifacts discovered with religions and cults that worship these Great Old Ones and the benevolent Elder gods ( i believe Lumley created the Elder Gods so balance out the good and evil. I dont think they are from Lovecraft but I could be wrong).

Anyway- I liked the First book, The Burrowers Beneath, more than the second, The Transition of Titus Crow.
A lot more happened in TBB. The characters uncover a plot of the Chthonians ( think Large Scale Tremors) and they link up with with Wimarth Foundation ( who are a group of CCD hunters) and they work together to try to stop and kill as many of these Chthonians as they can.

We also meet more CCD ( Chtulhu Cycle Deities) in this book and as a whole I thought it was great world building, much like the author accomplishes in Necrosope.

The second book was a lot of Sci Fi and was 95% Titus Crow and his adventure getting back to earth and his own time period because of the ending of the first book. We meet the Elder gods , their human chosen ones, some other Vampire Bat CCDs that hunt prey in space and time and that is about it.

Overall this is 3.5 stars ( 4 Stars for the first book and 3 for the second) .

[Joseph · Rating 4 out of 5]

Your mileage on this depends very much on how much you like Lovecraft, and how much of a purist you are.

The Burrowers Beneath is a Lovecraftian pastiche, with a scientific veneer. An epistolary novel, I find it disjointed and stilted at first, but a couple chapters in I am rolling with it, and quite enjoying things.

These are not toward the Horror end of the spectrum, there is much pseudo-science, and both novels are more adventure novels, the second leaning heavily toward a Dreamlands style.

The Transition of Titus Crow is bat-shit crazy, and a lot of fun, I found.

I like Lumley, and you can see the seeds of a lot of his later work here, and he does get much, much better when he creates his own worlds. But he's fun here. He loves the stuff, I love the stuff, presumably you love the stuff if you're reading this...if so, you might get a kick out of this. You might not, as well, depending on what it is specifically you like about the Cthulhu Mythos. Me, I like many different flavours, and this volume is a hot gumbo of different Mythos styles, and I read it for the most part gleefully.

[Donovan · Rating 4 out of 5]

How do I describe the Titus Crow Series??? Only as a combination of Dr Who meets Cthulhu.
It is quite dates having been written in the 1970's but a lot of fun regardless. Elements of the series remind me of H.P. Lovecraft (for obvious reasons) and Michael Moorcock (for his fantastic imaginings). The series consists of:
The Burrowers Beneath
The Transition of Titus Crow
The Clock of Dreams
Spawn of the Winds
In the Moons of Borea
Elysia

Brief
The Titus Crow novels are adventure horror, full of acts of nobility and heroism, featuring travel to exotic locations and alternate planes of existence as Titus Crow and his faithful companion and record-keeper fight the gathering forces of darkness wherever they arise. The menaces are the infamous and deadly Elder Gods of the work of H.P. Lovecraft. Chthulu and his dark minions are bent on ruling the earth--or destroying it. A few puny humans cannot possibly stand against these otherworldly evil gods, yet time after time, Titus Crow defeats the monsters and drives them back into the dark from whence they came

[Quentin Wallace · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have heard it said before that Lumley's short stories are much better than his novels, and I agree. I read the collection of Titus Crow short stories and loved them, but this one, not so much.

The Burrowers Beneath: This wasn't bad. We had Chtulhu type monsters and we have a group of humans who are dedicated to fighting said monsters. In this case, giant burrowing worms. I didn't like how this one veered almost into hard sci-fi, attempting to explain the entire Chtulhu mythos in terms of science. Now granted, I suppose that is the basis of it all, but I prefer the more murky supernatural origins of the creatures rather than having it all explained in clinical terms. Still, this was close to what I expected.

The Transition of Titus Crow: This one went off the rails. There's really very little Lovecraftian horror here and it's more like 70% fantasy, 20% sci fi with maybe 10% horror. It just felt weird to me to have the unknown horror mixed in with time and space travel and meeting "aliens" out of pure fantasy or sci fi fiction. There's even sentient robots running around, dinosaurs, and what happens to Titus Crow is just silly for this type of character. He's taken apart entirely and put back together by a robot, and has some upgrades made.

I will continue with the series and hope it gets back to its horror roots, but after the excellent short stories I have to say I was a little disappointed here.

[Brendan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm done.

I read the first novella or whatever ("The Burrowers Beneath"), which starts out promising by setting the mood well, but Lumley doesn't quite have the grasp on the affected language that he seems to think he does. His incessant use of exclamation points erodes any sense of wonder he might have achieved (a professor of mine once said "'Suddenly' is the least-sudden word in the English language", and I find this to be perfectly applicable to Lumley's work here), and the narrator's constant digressions and caveats quickly become tedious, though I'm fairly sure they were intended to set the tone.

Further, while I understand the notion of presenting Cthulu and the other Old Ones as unseen horrors, there is a difference between 1) painting a scene filled with dread without showing the monster and 2) simply describing not the scene itself, but how the narrator feels recalling that scene. It's the difference between reading a great description of a fall (let's use Milton as an example, for right now), where the terror feels genuine and the sense of vertigo is almost palpable, and reviewing a textbook's analysis of acceleration caused by gravity.

The last third of the story feels rushed without urgency. There is no horror working unseen: the thing is being seen by the narrator, yet he simply does not describe anything in detail. By trying to build a sense of immediacy without adequately describing the horrors witnessed, this reads more like a cop-out than someone unable to relive the traumas he's endured.

So I'm done and glad of it. I just got China Miéville's newest book delivered today, anyway.

[Kory Callaway · Rating 1 out of 5]

After reading this I came to two conclusions. 1: I don't HAVE to finish every book I start. 2: Brian Lumley is a horrible fucking writer. At times I've wondered if I was just too stupid to discriminate between good (or at least decent) writing and complete crap. This book showed me I indeed can.

[Mik Cope · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well, this is an oddly compelling mix of plagiarism and nonsense. The first book, "The Burrowers Beneath", draws a lot on Lovecraft (and Derleth's 'good vs evil' version of the Mythos) to deliver a typical pastiche one might expect from a Lovecraft fan just beginning his writing career, and is entertaining enough in a pulpy, hack sort of way. "The Transition of Titus Crow" is a weird, esoteric, 'timey-wimey' bunch of nonsense which reminded me somewhat of the works of James Branch Cabell. The story is all over the place and full of sentimentality and hyperbole. Overall, then, some good ideas mixed in with a lot of stolen material by a writer who, at least at this point in his career, just wasn't very good. But, as I said, oddly compelling.

[Nikki · Rating 2 out of 5]

It has all the misogyny and racism of the original Lovecraft stories, which I found wildly disappointing. Scary in parts, and with some interesting ideas, but overall I wasn't a huge fan of the writing (kind of dull).

[KungFu Drafter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fantastically eerie. Titus Crow is the Sherlock Holmes/Van Helsing of the dark side. This book is classic Lumley. I recommend it to anyone that enjoys fantasy/horror or Lovecraft's Cthulu mythology.

[Lorrie]

stopped reading this book around page 100. Very cumbersome. He spends way too much time talking about names of gods instead of writing about the story.

[Kurt Springs · Rating 4 out of 5]

This review was first published on Kurt's Frontier.

Synopsis:

The Burrowers Beneath

Humanity has moved about the Earth for thousands of years, little knowing what horrors lie buried or imprisoned beneath the Earth’s crust or under the Earth’s oceans. Once again, the Great Old Ones and their inhuman minions are on the move. And still “In his house at R’lyeh, dead Cthulhu lies dreaming.”

Yet some humans have prepared for this. Among them are Titus Crow and his friend, Henri de Marigny. As Cthulhian horrors move to free their kind from the prisons of the Elder Gods, Titus, Henri, and their friends from Miskatonic University are on the move. They are destroying imprisoned Cthulhians and trying to trap the others. Battle lines are drawn, and the Great Old Ones have realized their peril. Titus and Henri must fight for their lives and every living thing they hold dear.

The Transition of Titus Crow

The Great Old One, Ithiqua (The Wind-Walker), has sent elementals to attack Titus Crow and Henri de Marigny. An ancient artifact of Titus’s is there only escape. It is a curious clock that can travel in other dimensions. Henri returns home ten years later, then locates and rescues Titus with the help of a friend of Titus’s who is a medium. What follows is Titus’s account of his adventures in space and time. “Stranger things under Heaven and Earth” doesn’t begin to cover it.

Review:

It is no secret that I’ve been fascinated by Howard Phillips Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythology. Brian Lumley has set a series of adventures in the worlds Lovecraft’s cosmic horror. Only in Lumley’s world, humanity isn’t quite helpless. Titus Crow is part of a cadre of people who have dedicated their lives to stopping the Great Old Ones, long imprisoned by the Elder Gods. The Burrowers Beneath follows Titus and Henri de Marigny’s efforts to stop a group of Cthulhian horrors known as the Burrowers. The Transition of Titus Crow is an account of Titus’s adventures as he meets the Elder Gods themselves.

This one was hard to rate. The one thing Brian Lumley, unfortunately, emulated from Lovecraft’s writing style is his love for long exposition. (And there is a lot of it.) At the same time, it changes the flavor of the cosmic horror in an unfeeling universe. Humanity, while the underdog, isn’t helpless, and out in the universe, there are forces as powerful as the Great Old Ones who are sympathetic. So how do I rate it? Well, I’m eager to read Clock of Dreams (Titus Crow #3), in spite of the exposition.

[Harris · Rating 2 out of 5]

“Titus Crow? More like tedious Crow, amiright?”

This one was probably the first Cthulhu Mythos pastiche I read fifteen years or so ago after being introduced to the work of H.P. Lovecraft and I recall being none too impressed by it. So, why did I return to Lumley’s pulpy, over the top action horror tales all these years later? Well, I guess I didn’t remember much about how wacky they really are, and wanted to see if my negative impressions were right. They were. There is almost something that could be entertaining here, a 1970s British action horror romp complete with, yes, a Tardis and Cthulhu’s noble and benevolent brother Kthanid, but it all comes to be just too much and we end up not giving a toss about Crow and his surprisingly boring escapes through time and space.

This novel is actually made up of two smaller novellas featuring occult investigator turned cyborg godling Titus Crow and his sidekick, Henri Laurent de Marigne. For the most part, both take the traditional Lovecraft pastiche route of telling their stories through correspondence, personal accounts, and transcripts, to mixed success, dropping in references to myriad of Lovecraft’s stories as well as creating his own. On the other hand, Brian Lumley takes more in plot and style from August Derleth, creating more a rip roaring adventure tale than one of horror, complete with a secret society devoted to combating the forces of the “CCD” (or Cthulhu Cycle Deities, conveniently abbreviated). Lumley even brings a few interesting ideas to the table, improving on Derleth’s good versus evil plots.

The first of them, The Burrowers Beneath, is a standard Cthulhu Mythos pastiche that was occasionally interesting, introducing the sentient worm like alien “Cthonians,” told through a series an investigation of strange earth rumblings across the UK, including the sinking of a deep sea oil rig in the North Sea. By the second novella, The Transition of Titus Crow, though, all of this began to wear a bit thin as the passive voice of the tale and the lack of any discernible personality from any of the characters mentioned began to drag things down, just as things ought to have become interesting with Titus Crow going on a “wibbley wobbley, timey wimey” jaunt through time and space in his Tardi-, er, I mean, Clock. Crow tells his stories of battling pteranodons in the Cretaceous, getting fitted out with a perfect robo body, and hanging out with dragons with all the verve of a boring relative’s holiday update letter. It all begins to feel inconsequential and anticlimactic.

This is, apparently, only the first two installments of Titus Crow’s epic, continuing adventures and I’m not sure where it could go from here, only that I’m not really interested.

[Andrew Ferguson · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have only half read this book, so my rating can be altered by your own view. I never give spoilers in my reviews so it it hard to explain why I stopped reading this book and have given it a poor rating.

This book is a sequel to "The Burrowers Beneath" featuring Titus and Henry.

I stopped reading as, even though it is a fantasy book, I could not get past the obvious (to me) errors about the earths Geological past eras and the lifeforms that once existed.

Titus is a self proclaimed "expert" on the cretacious period - but (for example) trilobites were extinct long before this age. There were other errors, including geological processes, that made the book impossible for me to continue.

Yes I know this is a fantasy book, but I want to be immersed in the story. If this had been set in an alien world inhabited by alien species then it would have been OK. But setting the book in the earth's past has inherent restrictions which, for me, need to be either adhered to or reasonably deviated from in a believable way.

This is a problem for me, and I accept it would be OK for most readers who are not as informed about the evolution of the earth both geo- and bio-logically.

[Nick Belhomme · Rating 2 out of 5]

Brian Lumley is one of my all time favorite authors.
Yet I didn't finish this. I really do not like a journal format.

The book is a collection of chronological journals. The thing I find flawed with journals is you do not get real immersion with characters nor do you feel suspense.
I never felt suspense when reading tragedies in a newspaper, well I also do not get it in books. Even if they are more personal in nature.

in the end DNF...

PS. This was my second try on this book. The first time I DNF after 40 pages, this time I stopped at 120. It shows how I really did want to read it...

Why the 2 stars? Because BL really knows the mythologies around Cthulhu. You really feel he has done his homework and references a lot of literature in this book and how the creatures are depicted .

[Kevin · Rating 3 out of 5]

A tale of two stories.

One is a decently creepy C'Thulhu mythos story.

The other is a bad Dr. Who story.

I really liked "The Burrowers Beneath", although I can see why some people are not crazy about some of the redefinition of the mythos that Lumley does in the story.

On the other hand, I did not like "The Transformation of Titus Crow" at all. It read too much like a bad sci-fi novel. I want horror in my mythos stories.

[Tonya Breck · Rating 2 out of 5]

While I enjoyed the first story for the most part, despite my lack of love for the “letter/journal” method of storytelling, the second half came across as a fanfic that wanted to take the air out of the sails of cosmic horror. Not to mention it seemed to be a weird fusion of Lovecraft, Dr. Who, and John Carter.

I’ll give the next volume a try only because I have it (bought years ago and never read). Otherwise, I wouldn’t bother.

[Timothy Pitkin · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was okay and probably the reason I did not like it is mostly because it probably was not meant for me. As there is just way to much talking and while I do like that most of the main characters are already aware of the Mythos as they throw around their names like crazy but I do not know it just seem kind of boring to me.

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

At times it reads like fan fiction. The Cthulhu Mythos is extensive and there are many forks in many roads. This takes one of those forks and then throws in a time traveling coffin shaped clock [TARDIS] which sort of derailed it for me. The knowledge of the genre by this author is on display at every turn of the page.

[Kerrydan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Second time reading this (these?) books. I was 16 years old the first time I read them. Oddly enough, I found the black and white "Cthulhu = bad, Elder Gods = good. Let's exterminate all the bad" motivation for the characters a little harder to swallow now, 32 years later.

[Colin Tyson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brian Lumley has been one of my favorite authors for years.
The Titus Crow Volumes are some of my go to reads when I've got a few days to decide on what to read next.

[Charlotte R.S. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rather light on the horror and plot, heavy on the textbook mythology infodump.

[Ryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read the first novel contained in this omnibus collection, “The Burrower’s Beneath.” Pretty fun, not earth shaking (pun intended).

[Matt Adlard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Too much the main character being so over powered and clever and too little humanism. Otherwise good read.

[Tim Baruffi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Is it still considered a "masterpiece" if the term applies to nearly everything Lumley has written?

[Steven Porras · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very different take on the Cthulhu mythos, but loved it nonetheless!

[Michal Neckař · Rating 3 out of 5]

Burrowers Beneath are awesome, Transition of Titus Crow aint.