At the Mountains of Madness and Other Tales of Terror

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At the Mountains of Madness and Other Tales of Terror (Άπαντα του H.P. Lovecraft #1)

4.24 of 5 stars 4.24 · rating details · 11,619 ratings · 341 reviews

A complete short novel, AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS is a tale of terror unilke any other. The Barren, windswept interior of the Antarctic plateau was lifeless--or so the expedition from Miskatonic University thought. Then they found the strange fossils of unheard-of creatures...and the carved stones tens of millions of years old...and, finally, the mind-blasting terror of...more

Paperback, 192 pages

Published September 13th 1991 by Del Rey (first published 1939)

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Aug 12, 2010 Architeuthis rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 1900-1949, fiction-that-speculates

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. To save you time, I shall summarize this novelette for you. If the subject comes up at a cocktail party, (1) pretend you've really read it, (2) find cooler cocktail parties. But, really, this has some INTENSE spoilers.

AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS (Now with additions to satisfy the whiners)

Okay, so, there's like TEN scientists, and it doesn't matter what their names are, because none of them have personalities. For the purposes of making this more exciting, lets say their names are Michael, Eh!,...more

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Apr 20, 2011 Mike (the Paladin) rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fantasy, horror, classic-horror

I've read several collections of Lovecraft. Often I've read the same story as he was mortal and had to stop writing at his death...though if anyone might have continued on it would probably have been H. P. Lovecraft or Poe.

Oddly (I suppose) I'm not a "died in the wool" horror fan, but something about Lovecraft and his original twist on "it" (which has been copied often since) caught my interest. I've since looked up books Lovecraft himself listed as influences and read many of his "pulp era" pe...more

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Jul 03, 2011 Lou rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: horror, may-read

Lovecraft is a writer highly skilled in imagination, intelligence and words. This is not for me a scary story but how can I describe it but a cerebal adventure of unknown worlds and creation. I find when I read his work I always have to take note of words to look up in a dictionary. The story explains about an area that has been discovered and this is the account of the discovery and findings.
Excerpt.
"Here sprawled a palaeogean megalopolis compared with which the fabled Atlantis and Lemuria, Com...more

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Aug 21, 2007 Cat rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: horror

Can't get enough of those non-Euclidean horrors. At the Mountain of Madness is about Arctic explorers discovering a huge abandoned alien city. The descriptions of the Elder Ones makes me think I could create an realistic illustration, by drawing on starfish, anemones, urchins and clams for body parts. Anyhoo, a great story of majestic terror.
The Shunned House is basically about a vampiric house, although I must give it props for the good sense to include a flame thrower, even though it didn't wo...more

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Jul 11, 2011 Lauren rated it 5 of 5 stars

H.P. Lovecraft's Achilles heel is dialogue, no doubt. However, At The Mountains of Madness has none, and therefore is simply page after page of what Lovecraft does best: narrate. At the Mountains of Madness is easily one of the most terrifying books I've ever read... and that's saying a lot.

It starts out rather sluggish, with Dyer's descriptions of what technology is being taken on their expedition and what the weather is like and at what longitudes and lattitudes they're stopping bogging down a...more

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Jul 06, 2012 Oscar rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: literatura-fantástica, míos, terror, 5-estrellas, clásicos, weird-fiction, favorites

Hace unos veinte años que leí 'En las montañas de la locura' por primera vez y la verdad es que mis recuerdos eran bastante vagos al respecto, por no decir casi nulos. Mi memoria no es demasiado mala, pero con los libros y del tema del que tratan, olvido muy rápido, algo que no sé si es bueno o malo en este caso. Y es que si tuviese que hacer memoria sobre un libro en concreto ahora mismo, dudo que pudiese dar apenas un mínimo retazo sobre argumento y personajes. Y es que son tantos los libros y...more

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Jan 12, 2008 Michael rated it 2 of 5 stars

I just don't know what to say about Lovecraft. It's all good spooky fun, but... he really isn't a good writer. He's very repetitive, and tends to fall back on the trick of "this is the memoir of stuffy and stilted layman, so that's why it's badly written." Also there's way too much "ZOMG! It was so terrifying to behold that words cannot describe it!" "It was like that indescribable utterly terrifying thing that you are utterly terrified of but can't describe because it's so utterly terrifying!"

N...more

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Sep 16, 2007 Joe rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: lovecraft fans, horror fans

Shelves: 2007

This book contains the novelette "At the Mountains of Madness", a lonely, creepy work where the Shoggoths dwell. The accompanying short stories are worthwhile as well.

I like Lovecraft's work, but "At the Mountains of Madness" was sometimes too heavy on the description of the surroundings in too much of a mathematical sense. A sketch or two would suffice occasionally.

Having said that, Lovecraft is about the slow horror and the reader's imagination, so it doesn't always lend itself to light readin...more

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Mar 09, 2009 Derrick rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: horror, 2009

At The Mountains of Madness. The book was good. It wasn't really what I would consider scary although once the book was started it did keep me flipping the pages very quickly. I found the scientific writing style was very cold and seemed distant to me. It was easy to understand and made it much more believable. It did make it difficult to be involved. Lastly, for a short story it took a long time to build up to the horror part of the story. I was nearly halfway through the book and only the last...more

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Oct 06, 2012 Tim rated it 3 of 5 stars

This collection of four macabre H.P. Lovecraft tales is dominated by the title story, a novella about a rather startling discovery in the Antarctic. Leading off the collection, "At the Mountains of Madness" concerns a group of polar explorers boring into rock and ice for scientific samples but discovering relics of the Earth's past best left alone. The narrator is not present for the amazing discovery of a group of tentacled things with starfish-y and other grotesque aspects. When he loses conta...more This collection of four macabre H.P. Lovecraft tales is dominated by the title story, a novella about a rather startling discovery in the Antarctic. Leading off the collection, "At the Mountains of Madness" concerns a group of polar explorers boring into rock and ice for scientific samples but discovering relics of the Earth's past best left alone. The narrator is not present for the amazing discovery of a group of tentacled things with starfish-y and other grotesque aspects. When he loses contact with the group that made the discovery, the subsequent investigation reveals a chaotic scene of blood, dismemberment and, most disquieting, missing thingys. A long, detailed search of the area by foot and by plane reveals a barrier mountain range far taller than the Himalayas, and a labyrinthine city of structures and rooms and tunnels on which the "Old Ones," the apparent originators of life on Earth, reveal through their wall "art" a chilling history.

Lovecraft's depiction of the search is detailed, at times to the point of exhaustion for the reader, with long descriptions of topography and findings. As others have noted, Lovecraft never tired of using the word "Cyclopean" here. As usual, Lovecraft builds creepiness nicely via intimations of a certain something, delayed in the revealing, that has driven folks to the point of madness. The story "At the Mountains of Madness" does take its own sweet time, but ultimately is rewarding in its brooding menace that's ratcheted up by Lovecraft's dramatic excesses.

Following that tale, "The Shunned House" and "Dreams in the Witch-House" are similar tales in which bold/foolish folk spend time in, respectively, an abandoned, tragedy-soaked old house and, well, an abode said to be a witch house. Both work. The latter tale, especially, shines, with creepy dreams of a witch and her familiar, a human-faced/handed rat, that bedevil a college student in the upper room of a sort of boarding house, seeming to draw him into another, dreamlike, dimension. The final tale, "The Statement of Randolph Carter," shows how skillful Lovecraft could be even in simple tales of just a few pages.
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Jul 13, 2012 Abraham rated it 5 of 5 stars

H.P. Lovecraft At the Mountains of Madness (Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading)

Plot:

A complete short novel, AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS is a tale of terror unlike any other. The Barren, windswept interior of the Antarctic plateau was lifeless--or so the expedition from Miskatonic University thought. Then they found the strange fossils of unheard-of creatures. Also 10 other tales of horror, entities, ghouls, time travel, and many other weird plots.

My Review and Thoughts:

This is one...more

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May 03, 2012 Erica added it

At The Mountains of Madness:
At the beginning of the story there was a lot of technical geological detail. I found it very in keeping with the characters because as scientists it is the way that they would describe what they were experiencing. As I have studied geology it did help me to picture the landscape, though I can see that for someone who had no idea what those terms meant, it would bog down the story. Once they discovered the 'city' I expected it to turn into a slasher fest, and was pl...more

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Mar 15, 2012 Graham rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: anthology, horror, favourites, cthulhu

When it comes to Lovecraft, my story’s pretty typical for the horror fan: I first started reading him in various genre anthologies. I would be entranced by the occasional story with its weird, all-by-itself kind of style. In the end, when I saw three budget-priced volumes collecting virtually all of the author’s stories, I knew I had to get them.

This first omnibus collects together the author’s longest works:

AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS: The second-longest thing Lovecraft wrote. A first-person di...more When it comes to Lovecraft, my story’s pretty typical for the horror fan: I first started reading him in various genre anthologies. I would be entranced by the occasional story with its weird, all-by-itself kind of style. In the end, when I saw three budget-priced volumes collecting virtually all of the author’s stories, I knew I had to get them.

This first omnibus collects together the author’s longest works:

AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS: The second-longest thing Lovecraft wrote. A first-person diary narrative tells of an ill-fated exploration party discovering something unpleasant under the ice at the South Pole. The pacing is extremely slow, and the horror is cumulative, a creeping fear that doesn’t really get going until the last pages.

THE CASE OF CHARLES DEXTER WARD: Ancestral evil abounds in this lengthy narrative, the author’s longest work. The themes are numerous: possession, antiquity, genetic traits, black magic, the usual elder forces. I really enjoyed the local angle of this story, the small scale contrasting neatly with the infinite horror of the Mythos. Watch out for the best “villagers on the rampage” moment I’ve encountered in fiction.

THE DREAMS IN THE WITCH-HOUSE: Another winner, about a student renting a haunted room in a run-down house (is there any other type?). I particularly loved the offbeat angle of this one – who thought that maths could be scary? Surprisingly sickening in places, this marks Lovecraft at his strongest.

THE STATEMENT OF RANDOLPH CARTER: Cemetery horrors in a brief and fascinatingly ambiguous effort. This one’s slighter than the others, and more predictable, but important in introducing a key figure who appears in subsequent stories.

THE DREAM-QUEST OF UNKNOWN KADATH: Randolph Carter returns and goes on a fantastic exploration of the universe. The first in a mini-series of linked adventures, this one’s not very polished and, dare I say it, a little boring in places. It’s also rather episodic, but things pick up as the tale progresses.

THE SILVER KEY: Now an old man, Carter returns to the adventures of his youth. The author at his most whimsical, this one reminded me of The Time Machine. It’s fun, if hardly profound.

THROUGH THE GATES OF THE SILVER KEY: A much better conclusion to the series. Adventures through time and space are dealt with to the bizarre extreme, and despite some difficult-to-grasp concepts I found evidence of true genius in the writing of this one. It’s a fitting conclusion to Carter’s story, that’s for sure.(less)

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Jan 05, 2012 Hikari Shiroki rated it 5 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Review on spanish.
Así es como me gustaría describir una ciudad en el infierno si es que algún día me veo en la necesidad. Las descripciones de Lovecraft son técnicas y sus detalles sentimentales algo tontos y exagerados en comparación, pero unidos estos dos detalles, las explicaciones no pierden sino que ganan en credibilidad.
En esta historia todavía se pueden encontrar mayores enlaces a otras historias que utilizan al Necronomicón, los Primordiales, el Cthulthu, etc. para referirse a orígenes d...more

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Aug 16, 2011 Steven Cole rated it 2 of 5 stars

This volume contains "At the Mountains of Madness" and three other stories; I've reviewed them below separately.

At the Mountains of Madness:

I had really looked forward to reading this, since I've been curious about the Cthulu mythos for a long time now, and wanted to see Lovecraft's work directly.

What an amazing disappointment.

This story was all about our protagonist telling us he was scared. What was he scared *of*??? Stuff that he's too distraught to talk about. Stuff that, if known, would sha...more

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Jan 01, 2011 Joselito Honestly and Brilliantly rated it 3 of 5 stars

A geologist and his team of scientists went to an expedition at the antarctic and found something evil and sinister there. Later, a another group is set to go there on another expedition so the geologist, concerned about their safety, decides to now fully reveal what they know about the place.

I have not read much horror novels, and those which I had read failed to horrify me. This is not an exception. I couldn't even get a single nightmare out of it. Lovecraft, however, was very good at his craf...more A geologist and his team of scientists went to an expedition at the antarctic and found something evil and sinister there. Later, a another group is set to go there on another expedition so the geologist, concerned about their safety, decides to now fully reveal what they know about the place.

I have not read much horror novels, and those which I had read failed to horrify me. This is not an exception. I couldn't even get a single nightmare out of it. Lovecraft, however, was very good at his craft--writing (not love, or lovemaking, at least not to my knowledge) and despite myself, I found the novel interesting and suspenseful (a poor substitute for being horrified, but still...). Maybe it's because the narrator (the geologist) does not go directly laying down the scene, but instead describes what he feels, or what goes inside him, so that the reader's imagination, fueled by it, creates its own horrors. And nothing could be more captivating than an imagined hellhound--

"The words reaching the reader can never even suggest the awfulness of the sight itself. It crippled our consciousness so completely that I wonder we had the residual sense to dim our torches as planned, and to strike the right tunnel toward the dead city. Instinct alone must have carried us through--perhaps better than reason could have done; though if that was what saved us, we paid a high price. Of reason we certainly had little enough left."

When Lovecraft decides to finally describe what the narrator saw, he still uses the reader's own eyes and imagination--

"What we did see--for the mists were indeed all too malignly thinned--was something altogether different, and immeasurably more hideous and detestable. It was the utter, objective embodiment of the fantastic novelist's 'thing that should not be'..."

(The outdated science was a turn-off. It was of course not Lovecraft's fault. He died in 1937, the year my father was BORN, so it wouldn't be fair to laugh at his science then as it wouldn't be fair too if people, eighty years from now, would ridicule our science today.)

Maybe it's not the technique, however. Maybe it was because, unknown to the author himself, he was then living a life of ultimate horror and unconsciously this rubbed off on his work. At the back inside cover of the book, under the heading "About the Author" is written:

"H.P. LOVECRAFT (1890-1937) lived his life in the moody New England that was the setting for his tales. His writings appeared in some of his era's most famous pulp magazines, but as no book of his work was published in his lifetime, Lovecraft died in relative poverty and obscurity. SINCE HIS DEATH he has been recognized as one of the most influential cult horror writers of the twentieth century. His influence on American horror can be detected in the work of Stephen King, Anne Rice, Clive Barker, and many others."

Imagine living a dog's life of deprivation and obscurity from day one up to your last sunrise not knowing that you're actually sitting on a gold mine and all these riches (fame, awards, recognition, money, travel, women, nice clothes, drugs and other similar comforts and luxuries) will be revealed, all fruits of your own labor, only AFTER you've died! The Apocalypse Unknown. Oh the horror, the horror of it all!

(p.s., I read only "At the Mountains of Madness," the "other tales of terror" I didn't).(less)

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Apr 25, 2012 Kristel rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 1001-books, science-fiction, horror

At The Mountain of Madness is really a novella included in 1001 (1294) Books You Must Read Before You Die. It is a first person narration by the geologist Dyer who reports in scientific detail on a trip to Antarctica. The narrator feels forced to speak out about the previous scientific expedition to Antarctica to stop another expedition from going to explore Antarctica. While in Antarctica, a survey group, isolated by storm was transmitting back to the other team their unusual finds. After the s...more

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Jan 13, 2012 Sli rated it 2 of 5 stars

Priča sama po sebi nije loša, ali to i nije neki horor. Inače, ne čitam ovaj žanr, ali Lovecraftu sam morao dati šansu, budući da slovi kao klasičar horor priče.
Strah se nastoji pobuditi najavama, odnosno u ovom slučaju iščekivanjem opisa viđenih horora, a manje je uspješan sam opis događaja.
Ono što je zanimljivo je svojevrsna mješavina istinitog i opsjene, onoga što jest i zamišljenoga.
Planine ludila su odličan naslov ukoliko se zna ponešto o autorovom životu - Lovecraft se borio s depresijom (...more

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Oct 08, 2012 Jennifer rated it 2 of 5 stars

At the mountains of Madness
This did not work for me because in the first half, I felt as if I was reading a book about geology. And in the second one about architecture. Sadly the style made it impossible for me to come up with a film (which I usually see behind my eyes while reading) and I failed to come up with a probable image for the old ones...to me they took on the shape of grey potatoes with wings and stars on their heads and butts. I'm attempting the short stories next.

The Shunned House
W...more

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Dec 21, 2011 Andrea Blythe rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, fic-horror, fic-fantasy

I was not thrilled with "At the Mountains of Madness." The story of an Antarctic expedition that discovers a madness-inducing mountain with horrifying creatures was overwrought. I mean, how many pages do you really need to describe the strange (and again with the madness-inducing) architecture. The story could have done with some serious cutting of redundant paragraphs. But it wasn't entirely without merit and had some moments, where the action moved at enough of a pace to keep me reading.

The s...more

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Apr 04, 2011 Eric Phetteplace rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: prose

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Lovecraft's writing is as strong as ever here, evoking strange images and much mental discomfort. The most amazing aspect of the story is how the tension builds: every time a revelation happens, you think that you've reached the peak and that things will start to wind down from there on out, but then he ups the ante and continues revealing crazy stuff. It makes the story constantly suspenseful and hard to put down. The whole background story of alien civilizations was very interesting and the we...more

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Mar 17, 2011 Chad rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: horror, short-story-collections

Having read Arthur Machen and Stephen King and Mike Mignola's 'Hellboy' and 'B.P.R.D.' sagas, I feel like I know plenty about the cthonic mythology created by H.P. Lovecraft. But its worth noting that I've never actually read any actual Lovecraft. This slim collection, which contains the well-known title story, proves to be a serviceable, if not thorough, introduction to the horror author.

I think if there were a primary complaint about this work, it is the stories that were chosen for this slim...more Having read Arthur Machen and Stephen King and Mike Mignola's 'Hellboy' and 'B.P.R.D.' sagas, I feel like I know plenty about the cthonic mythology created by H.P. Lovecraft. But its worth noting that I've never actually read any actual Lovecraft. This slim collection, which contains the well-known title story, proves to be a serviceable, if not thorough, introduction to the horror author.

I think if there were a primary complaint about this work, it is the stories that were chosen for this slim volume. There are four in all, two of which are inspired works that keep most of the horror off-screen and are loads creepier because of it; and two are slight little tales that seem more like Lovecraft knock-offs than stories actually written by him. While reading this, I came across several other anthologies in various bookstores that were a bit more comprehensive in their selections, and I kind of wished I'd been reading them instead. As it was, I settled for my waifish little book and got two Lovecraft hits, and two misses.

The misses missed mostly due to their abbreviated length, their predictable plots, their tired repetitions of stock Lovecraft tropes, and their juxtaposition against the other two far superior stories.

The hits hit because when Lovecraft puts his back into it, he's very effective at leading your brain along just enough to draw unspoken conclusions that are far creepier than anything he could actually put to words himself. And what he does choose to describe is often so odd that trying to fit it into any frame of reference is disorienting and merely furthers the creepiness. In both "At the Mountains of Madness" and "The Dreams in the Witch-House", Lovecraft carefully establishes a grounded world that feels very real in most respects. And only after he's built this foundation does he insert such oddities as the Old Ones or the Soggoth or the bizarre little creature, Brown Jenkin.

Sometimes things border of getting a little too corny, but mostly in the same way a teenager today would think an Alfred Hitchcock movie was corny. Modern horror writers and filmmakers are so heavily influenced by the early masters, and have borrowed and built on their early works so much, its easy to lose sight of how original and creepy this stuff actually is.

Lovecraft repeatedly scoffs with shock and exasperation at trying to describe the indescribeable. He name drops Einstein and Heisenberg and the then-burgeoning discoveries in relativety and physics, then plays fast and loose with their rules, about which he obviously didn't know very much. There are moments when exposition is tossed out by characters who apparently figure things out under circumstances in which figuring things out seems monumentally unlikely. He frequently lays out the pieces of his puzzle in such a way that they can all be fit together by an experienced reader in no time flat.

But in spite of all this potential hokiness, Lovecraft knew that to scare someone, you don't show them what there is to be scared of. You hint at the things that might be there and let their imagination do all the work. He was very good at this, and because of that skill, the frozen wastes of Antarctica and the occasional odd-angled boarding house rooms become much scarier places.(less)

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Aug 12, 2012 Anna rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012, fiction, horror, short-stories, science-fiction

This was my first time reading anything by Lovecraft. One of the most interesting things about the experience is the realization of the influence of his work - from tiny things like Arkham Asylum taking its name from Lovecraft's fictional city of Arkham, to the omnipresence of Lovecraft's character Cthulu as a cultural reference.
I chose this book because I was curious about the title story, which Guillermo del Toro was at one point planning to adapt into a movie. And now having read it, I'd lik...more

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Oct 16, 2009 Sam rated it 3 of 5 stars

I was told that this was Lovecraft's seminal work; the best introduction to his horrible mythos. I haven't read enough of the author to argue this point, but even if it's true it doesn't excuse the annoying lagging that permeates the story, or the failure to fulfill on the promise of soul-numbing terror.

The novella was interesting at best, academic at worst, but most shamefully it just wasn't very scary.

Lovecraft does have a gift for prose, and some of his passages are beautiful manipulations of...more

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Aug 25, 2011 Shannon rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: book-reports

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. H.P Lovecraft is an author that shall forever live on in horror history as the codifier of the Cosmic Horror genre. This anthology collects some of his finest works in one book. For simplicity’s sake I shall largely focus this review on novella At the Mountains of Madness, the tale of an Antarctic expedition gone horribly wrong. I would certainly recommend it to anyone with a fascination with this form of darkness- the novella is highly atmospheric.
The novel opens with the protagonist, an ind...more H.P Lovecraft is an author that shall forever live on in horror history as the codifier of the Cosmic Horror genre. This anthology collects some of his finest works in one book. For simplicity’s sake I shall largely focus this review on novella At the Mountains of Madness, the tale of an Antarctic expedition gone horribly wrong. I would certainly recommend it to anyone with a fascination with this form of darkness- the novella is highly atmospheric.
The novel opens with the protagonist, an individual who never gets much depth beyond being a geologist sent on the expedition by the Miskatonic University, though that is not problematic here, warning other men of science against future expeditions. We are given a description of the opening of base camps and other such things. Then, a cache of a wide variety of fossils is discovered, a ruin city is found, and troubles occur.
Some things the book does very well- it is atmospheric with excellent descriptions, easily painting images in your mind. The species of the ruin city are well-described, and quite unlike anything seen on Earth. The giant albino penguins that appear later also have a certain charm. The elegant description is showcased well in this quote from page 38- “Only the incredible, unhuman massiveness of these vast stone towers and ramparts had saved the frightful thing from utter annihilation in the hundreds of thousands- perhaps millions- of years it had brooded there amidst the blasts of a bleak upland.”
However, it is not without its flaws. For one, the intro is horribly tedious. All we hear is about them setting up. It takes several pages to even reach the discovery that leads to the fossil cache. Another thing is that we are quite often told to be scared. Just because the protagonists are frightened does not necessarily mean we will be.
In the end, the core message is the one common to Lovecraft’s works, and in my opinion one that humanity still needs to hear- that the universe really does not care about the existence of humanity or any other species. Once again, I would recommend it highly.
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Apr 21, 2013 David rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: horror, fantasy

This book is made up of one novella and three short stories. As such, I'm going to write four mini-reviews.

At the Mountains of Madness:
This novella is 110 pages long and is one of Lovecraft's longest works. Lovecraft had long been interested in Antarctic expeditions, and wanted to use the unknown nature of the continent and fill it in with imagination. He is said to have looked at a map of the time (the 1930s) and populate the blank spots with the Mountains of Madness. The novella follows a sci...more

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Jan 06, 2009 Leslee rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: classics

I could not get into this book. Maybe I didn't read enough before I put it down but there was way too much science stuff at the beginning.

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Dec 08, 2008 Darrell rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: reviewed

I didn't find H. P. Lovecraft's stories frightening, although I can see how someone might. His use of quantum physics to inject new life into the horror genre back in the 1930's is admirable, and I did find many of his ideas interesting. He's definitely a fan of Edgar Allen Poe, and invokes his name often. I especially liked the passages in which he tells us the horrors of aliens and extra-dimensional beings is beyond all human comprehension or ability to describe. Nothing is more frightening, a...more

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May 30, 2011 Sarah rated it 3 of 5 stars

This book was sooooo insanely boring for the first few chapters. It was hard to stand it. But I kept at it because its so short. After Lake moves into his expedition, it got a little better. I’ll admit, I was intrigued by the concept of the book, but I was also overwhelmed by all the technical stuff that got in the way. It seemed this story could have been told with a lot less words. (What can I say, I’m a blunt and efficient person…) Once the story got going, I liked it, but at the point where...more

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May 02, 2013 Kruunch rated it 3 of 5 stars

H.P. Lovecraft is a study in function over form. His writing style is fairly rudimentary and crude but his visions and imagination are unique to this day.

At the Mountains of Madness is written in the first person narrative and evinces a horror theme that touches on both science fiction and fantasy. The story unfolds in the vastly unexplored (at the time) Antarctic producing an isolated tension, as the protagonists discover things better left undiscovered.

While similar stories have since been wri...more

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The Verge Book Club: At the Mountains of Madness part 2 discussion	1	13	Mar 17, 2013 09:44am
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The Verge Book Club: At the Mountains of Madness reading schedule	1	19	Mar 05, 2013 06:43am

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About H.P. Lovecraft

Howard Phillips Lovecraft, of Providence, Rhode Island, was an American author of horror, fantasy and science fiction.

Lovecraft's major inspiration and invention was cosmic horror: life is incomprehensible to human minds and the universe is fundamentally alien. Those who genuinely reason, like his protagonists, gamble with sanity. Lovecraft has developed a cult following for his Cthulhu Mythos, a...more

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Books by H.P. Lovecraft

The Best of H.P. Lovecraft: Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre

The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories

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“I could not help feeling that they were evil things -- mountains of madness whose farther slopes looked out over some accursed ultimate abyss.
” — 21 people liked it

“It is absolutely necessary, for the peace and safety of mankind, that some of earth's dark, dead corners and unplumbed depths be left alone; lest sleeping abnormalities wake to resurgent life, and blasphemously surviving nightmares squirm and splash out of their black lairs to newer and wider conquests.” — 6 people liked it

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At the Mountains of Madness and Other Tales of Terror (Άπαντα του H.P. Lovecraft #1)

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