Quick Review: A surprisingly fascinating and gripping read, deftly uniting the worlds of Holmes and Lovecraft well worth a look for Holmes fans. While I wouldn’t put Lovegrove on the Mount Rushmore of crossover fiction authors I can honestly say that this was a fun pastiche and I look forward to the sequels.Read this book for: Holmes and Watson, supernatural elements, action, alternate POV, US and UK locations, Victorian mystery It’s also a rather fast-paced book, it weaves familiar characters and nods to both the Holmes canon and the Cthulhu Mythos as well as can be expected without seeming clunky or inauthentic. It’s a good mix between cold clinical detective work and supernatural horror and he articulates Lovecraft’s existential dread rather well. The Sherlock Holmes/Hellraiser crossover.). Non-canon Holmes stories often seem like they can only be dry, tedious and dull or silly, non-sensical, and absurd (Looking at you Sherlock Holmes and the Servents Of Hell. He’s nailed the tropes, characters, and literary style. And while neither of the previously mentioned books are in any danger of being replaced by Lovegrove’s Holmes/Cthulhu monster-mash, I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t fun. Theodora Goss’s Athena Club Series (good), Neil Gaiman’s A Study in Emerald (better), and Kim Newman’s Anno Dracula Series and Professor Moriarty: The Hound of the D’urbervilles (best) still remain the holy trinity of the genre in my humble opinion. It’s because of this admiration for Newman’s work that I have an insatiable appetite for any stories even remotely like it. It’s because of him that I even know what “crossover fiction” or “character mash-ups” are.

It’s not Kim Newman or Neil Gaiman.but it is undeniably fun.Īnyone who’s ever read my reviews in the past knows that when it comes to crossover fiction I think Kim Newman is the gold standard.

The narrator isn't that good either, hit and miss when it comes to capturing the characters mood and personality. The story is rushed, Sherlock and Watson have just met yet they act like they are old friends, this storty would have benefited from not twisting the original stories and throwing them aside, instead a independent story should have been written, taking place in the gaps of the original stories, perhaps related to the happenings in them or after, playing of small details of the otiginal stories - perhaps there was a real demon hound in the baskerville case? perhaps it wans't the KKK but instead the Cthulhu cult? As it stands I think better things could come from a Sherlock/Lovecraft mix. The auothor of this tries to write in Doyls style but fails. Watson is made to look like a dimwitted brute in this and Sherlock is significantly dumber and slower than in the original stories. This is nothing but a bad attemt at imitatating the style of the original Sherlock Holmes storys, and mixing them badly with Lovecraftian lore.

Cthulhu casebooks