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A review by frodolives
The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath by H.P. Lovecraft
adventurous
dark
mysterious
2.0
The title of this novella basically says it all plot-wise. It’s one of Lovecraft’s dream stories and it’s written like an episodic adventure about one of his recurring characters, Randolph Carter, trying to get to a place called Kadath. As add as the comparison is, this sort of reminded me of a lamer and more pessimistic version of Alice in Wonderland. Overall, I didn’t like this one very much and found myself listening to the audiobook on 2x speed just to get it over with as part of my own quest to read all of Lovecraft (I don’t know if I’m regretting this or not).
I find stories about dreams are very hard to pull off. When they’re done well, they’re incredible. But, more often than not, they’re just self-indulgent and I think this story falls in that category. Lovecraft has way too many references to his own lore that it’s needlessly confusing and Carter feels like Lovecraft’s self-insert, which is as dreadful as it sounds. He’s very pompous and judgemental with a lot of racist assumptions about who the good guys and bad guys are based on what they look like, and Carter’s judgements are always conveniently proven right in this dream-universe. It becomes very apparent how much Lovecraft overuses the words “hideous” or “terrible” to describe every type of thing/person he doesn’t like when you’re subjected to a long story like this. He really should have kept this as a short story because damn does this drag with redundancy. Lovecraft has written better structured and more compact dream stories that do a better job at conveying the major themes regarding the dangers of escapism so I didn’t feel like this one has anything new to say.
There are some aspects I like enough to save this from a 1-star rating. The warrior cats were kind of wholesome. And I liked the ending when it finally turns into a proper cosmic horror story. It felt like the writing improved and the aim of the story became clear. There’s enough creativity and surrealism throughout for it to be somewhat enjoyable.
I find stories about dreams are very hard to pull off. When they’re done well, they’re incredible. But, more often than not, they’re just self-indulgent and I think this story falls in that category. Lovecraft has way too many references to his own lore that it’s needlessly confusing and Carter feels like Lovecraft’s self-insert, which is as dreadful as it sounds. He’s very pompous and judgemental with a lot of racist assumptions about who the good guys and bad guys are based on what they look like, and Carter’s judgements are always conveniently proven right in this dream-universe. It becomes very apparent how much Lovecraft overuses the words “hideous” or “terrible” to describe every type of thing/person he doesn’t like when you’re subjected to a long story like this. He really should have kept this as a short story because damn does this drag with redundancy. Lovecraft has written better structured and more compact dream stories that do a better job at conveying the major themes regarding the dangers of escapism so I didn’t feel like this one has anything new to say.
There are some aspects I like enough to save this from a 1-star rating. The warrior cats were kind of wholesome. And I liked the ending when it finally turns into a proper cosmic horror story. It felt like the writing improved and the aim of the story became clear. There’s enough creativity and surrealism throughout for it to be somewhat enjoyable.