Black Mountain, Bad Angle, Laird Barron
2.0 Stars
12-25-2024

"Genius Losi" - some idiot who narrates audio-books, a complete fool

On the plus side, I am here for modernish, Call of Cthulu type adventure-mysteries as a former mob-hitter and current private detective gets drawn into brushes with the dangerous and esoteric. On the down side, it's difficult to keep a straight face when listening to much of MC's internal dialog, so you just sort of have to ignore about 15% of his patter (especially the parts relating to his Dale Gribble type mentor). It's like if the Sandman Slim novels took themselves seriously, i.e. dire. Back on the positive side, I do sincerely like the MC's laconic, alcoholic, ex-marine, side-kick who gets the best comic lines and who is more of a real and reasonable person. Also a fan of when the investigation phase is over and the MC gets in a fist-fight with some eldritch herald. As I've noted before, where Lovecraft would just pass over the ineffable and horrible with a few lines and then fade to black, Laird Barron is much more likely to describe in precise physical detail what happens when a Mi-go or whatever removes your brain and puts it into a jar. Back to the negative! The mythological references and allusions don't work, and like the MC's deep-thoughts are pretty cringy. So, eh? I feel like the author basically had one story in him, and he was good at telling that story and it did well, and so he kept at it, and now over the course of ~10 novels he's gradually branching out, developing, widening, and trying to write new narratives that are not that one initial story. I am there for him in this journey! Even if the current phase of his journey is kind of rough.