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Titus Crow #4-6
Brian Lumley's Mythos Omnibus, Vol 2
From the creator of Necroscope - three landmark novels of the Cthulhu THE SAGA OF TITUS CROW! SPAWN OD THE In which a party of gifted human psychics seeks Ithaqua, Lord of the Winds, in the frozen north - only to find themselves abducted to Borea, an alien ice-world where the Wind-Walker is the undisputed Lord and Master! IN THE MOONS OF Hank Silberhutte, Henri-Laurent de Marigny and friends join battle with cavern-dwelling Ice-Priests, last members of an evil sect from the dawn of time. Sworn to serve the Wind-Walker, his alien minions will do anything to appease their dark master - to the point of sacrificing his own daughter to the Thing that Walks on the Wind!
688 pages, Paperback
First published June 30, 1997
3 people are currently reading
212 people want to read
About the author
Brian Lumley
444 books1,359 followersBrian 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.
He was awarded the World Fantasy Life Achievement Award in 2010.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
September 11, 2015
Fantastic concluding trilogy. I'd really recommend it to fans of the Cthulhu mythos. The fact that Titus Crow doesn't show up much in any of the 3 books is kind of annoying though.
October 28, 2021
If you liked Lumley's short stories based on the Cthulhu mythos, don't get the Mythos Omnibus novels. They are NOTHING like the short stories, and instead replace horror with adventure and deeds of derring-do. Gone is the horror, the suspense, the mystery, the nail-biting atmosphere of doom. What you get instead is Cthulhu creatures disposed of with nuclear weapons, magical spears, and flying grandfather clocks with laser cannons. Even when things get dire there is no feeling of despair... the characters just gird their loins and pull through by the power of plot armour.
The overall style of narration is similar to what you'll find in Lumley's "Dreamlands" books, with constant repetition in descriptions, flat characters, and wooden dialogues. I was looking forward to finally learning more of Titus Crow because the short stories painted him as such an interesting character with cool background, but I was very quickly disappointed. Crow's 'white wizard' roots and abilities are never explored except for a few protective spells in "The Burrowers Beneath". After that Crow becomes a traveller in time and space, much like H.G. Wells's protagonist in "The Time Machine" and gets relegated to becoming a background character to give space to Henri-Laurent de Marigny and Hank Silberhutte, who are both boring, zero-personality dummies who get the girl just because they were destined to, just like Titus Crow does, and the said girls are all beautiful, drop dead gorgeous, perfect representatives of femalekind. Except they are all boring in their perfection: Tiania is a girl-goddess, daughter of the benevolent Elder Gods, Armandra is the human daughter of a malevolent Great Old One, and Moreen is a Disney princess - she can speak to animals and make flowers grow by smiling (I'm exaggerating, but you get the point). And with the small exception of Armandra they bring absolutely nothing to the story.
I have no idea how someone with such great command of different styles of writing can produce such lazy, uninspired, and derivative drivel. I had to force myself to actually finish reading it all.
The overall style of narration is similar to what you'll find in Lumley's "Dreamlands" books, with constant repetition in descriptions, flat characters, and wooden dialogues. I was looking forward to finally learning more of Titus Crow because the short stories painted him as such an interesting character with cool background, but I was very quickly disappointed. Crow's 'white wizard' roots and abilities are never explored except for a few protective spells in "The Burrowers Beneath". After that Crow becomes a traveller in time and space, much like H.G. Wells's protagonist in "The Time Machine" and gets relegated to becoming a background character to give space to Henri-Laurent de Marigny and Hank Silberhutte, who are both boring, zero-personality dummies who get the girl just because they were destined to, just like Titus Crow does, and the said girls are all beautiful, drop dead gorgeous, perfect representatives of femalekind. Except they are all boring in their perfection: Tiania is a girl-goddess, daughter of the benevolent Elder Gods, Armandra is the human daughter of a malevolent Great Old One, and Moreen is a Disney princess - she can speak to animals and make flowers grow by smiling (I'm exaggerating, but you get the point). And with the small exception of Armandra they bring absolutely nothing to the story.
I have no idea how someone with such great command of different styles of writing can produce such lazy, uninspired, and derivative drivel. I had to force myself to actually finish reading it all.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 8, 2025
★★★★★ — 4.75/5
In a literary world where shadows loom long and old gods whisper in the dark, Brian Lumley’s Titus Crow series stands like a torch lit in obsidian halls — both homage and invention, both monster-tale and heroic adventure. I grew up on the salted currents of Cthulhu, on Lovecraft’s cosmic dread, and on my own teenage scribbles of dark gods and hidden realms. Titus Crow feels like that same electric pulse from my childhood revived by a writer from Hell (or at least someone who’s walked its corridors, taken its lessons, and come out writing with fire).
Lumley is one of the few authors who can channel the raw terror of Lovecraft, the weirdness, the monstrous, and still give you heroes who fight back. Not merely victims of forces so vast they shatter human minds, but people with grit, with weird powers, with companionship, with voices. In Titus Crow, that means Crow himself, Henri-Laurent de Marigny, Tiania, the Elder Gods of Elysia, and the subterranean spawn of Cthulhu’s minions. These are monsters and vast mythic powers, but they don’t paralyze the story — they fuel it.
The Titus Crow novels (and associated stories) are part horror, part adventure-fantasy, rooted deeply in the Cthulhu Mythos but with Lumley’s twist. The Burrowers Beneath pits Crow and de Marigny against subterranean, telepathic horrors: the Chthonians (spawn of Cthulhu), nesting beneath the Earth, creeping upward in malign conspiracy. Lumley gives us shocking horrors, underground nests, weird science, telepathy, hidden cults — the works. The Transition of Titus Crow takes the impedance further: there’s time travel, cosmic journeys, meetings with Elder Gods in Elysia (the realm beyond), and Crow is even turned into a synthetic human, allowing Lumley to stretch the boundaries of what a hero in this mythos can be. Later volumes — The Clock of Dreams, Spawn of the Winds, In the Moons of Borea, Elysia: The Coming of Cthulhu — raise the stakes higher. Dreamworlds, trapped souls, existential threats, time clocks, cosmic prison dreams. Crow and his allies are not merely running for their lives — they’re trying to wrest the initiative from things unimaginable. Crow himself is not Lovecraft’s passive observer. He investigates, questions, acts. De Marigny is faithful side-kick, often providing critical knowledge, resourcefulness, support. Tiania, Kthanid, the Elder Gods — these figures add depth to the mythic side, turning Lovecraftian shadows into engines of narrative, with relationships, betrayals, mysteries.
If I imagine Lovecraft peering through some dream-mirror, watching this series, I think he’d nod. Maybe shake his head at some liberties, but also marvel. Because Lumley doesn’t just mimic the dread: he builds upon it. Lovecraft’s great power was in the unimaginable — what is beyond human. Lumley takes that, shows us glimpses, then says: what if humans had a chance? What if they built machines of time, synthetic bodies, made bargains, fought back? In The Burrowers Beneath, the subterranean creatures become more than backdrop. Their fears (radiation, water) become weapons. Crow and de Marigny don’t merely flee; they strategize, resist. Lovecraft’s horror was often about the suffocation of human significance. Lumley acknowledges that, but he also gives us heroes with stubborn wills. That would give Lovecraft something to chew on. Additionally, Lumley’s imagination for world-building — Elysia, the Elder Gods, the Dreamlands, the Time-Clock, android Crow — these are mythic expansions. Lovecraft sometimes posited these elements; Lumley runs with them. If this were fan fiction, it’s fan fiction of grand ambition — but written by someone whose own voice is combusted in the fire of weird fiction, not imitation.
The strengths here are clear. Adventure and cosmic dread mix in a way that makes the books both terrifying and exhilarating. Pulp set pieces — tunnels, traps, cults, time machines — are paired with existential horror. The pacing is relentless: subterranean explorations, dreamworlds, Eldritch cults, cosmic machinery, androids, Elder Gods. The boldness of letting Crow be more than a victim — traveling through time, intervening, surviving transformations — shakes the mythos awake. Lumley’s imaginative expansions, like Tiania, the synthetic Crow, the Elder Gods as allies, show he’s not just reverent of Lovecraft, but restless with possibility. The hazards? Sometimes it’s pulpy to the point of camp. The prose can get purple, the horror over-explained. Android Crow, deus ex machina rescues, exposition dumps — all can take some of the cosmic dread away. Lovecraft’s power was in what you never see; Lumley often lets you see too much. But if the price of vision is losing a little mystery, I’ll pay it.
When I dove into Titus Crow, I felt again that fevered joy I had writing stories of monsters in notebooks, inventing names, drawing impossible beings in margins. Crow’s fights, de Marigny’s loyalties, dreamworlds where nightmares and gods intermingle — they echo those childish stories, but sharpened with craft, heat, horror. Lumley summons not just the monsters, but the longing behind them: the desire to be more than fearful, to name the nameless, to stand. I remember sketching a world where a creature lived under the Earth, half magic, half slime, half consciousness — The Burrowers Beneath gave me that, and more monsters. In Transition, when Crow becomes synthetic, when clock-time warps, when Elysia looks upon Earth, I felt that same cosmic scale I used to hope I could reach in my tales. Lumley doesn’t make Crow perfect. He makes him human (or nearly so), flawed, courageous, haunted — and through him, we readers are allowed to be those monster-makers again, daring to face what should unmake us.
If the lower planes issued certificates, Titus Crow would get “Monster-Constructor of the Year.” This series is essential for anyone who ever trembled at Lovecraft’s distant thunder and wanted to pick up a sword, a clock, or a dream-key and march toward it. It’s horror with backbone, mythos with muscle. Lovecraft might have raised an eyebrow at some light, some boldness, at Crow talking back to gods. But I believe he would’ve felt something like pride — that someone carried the torch forward. Lumley turns cosmic horror into something you can feel in your bones, something you can fight with, something you can read with a grin and a shiver. If you love cosmic dread, weirdness, monstrous gods, and heroes who don’t just faint, Titus Crow is a work of fire. It is a ride, wild and strange, that doesn’t just honor Lovecraft, it enlarges him. Brian Lumley is that writer from Hell, blazing with imagination — and Titus Crow is one of his finest lamps in the dark.
In a literary world where shadows loom long and old gods whisper in the dark, Brian Lumley’s Titus Crow series stands like a torch lit in obsidian halls — both homage and invention, both monster-tale and heroic adventure. I grew up on the salted currents of Cthulhu, on Lovecraft’s cosmic dread, and on my own teenage scribbles of dark gods and hidden realms. Titus Crow feels like that same electric pulse from my childhood revived by a writer from Hell (or at least someone who’s walked its corridors, taken its lessons, and come out writing with fire).
Lumley is one of the few authors who can channel the raw terror of Lovecraft, the weirdness, the monstrous, and still give you heroes who fight back. Not merely victims of forces so vast they shatter human minds, but people with grit, with weird powers, with companionship, with voices. In Titus Crow, that means Crow himself, Henri-Laurent de Marigny, Tiania, the Elder Gods of Elysia, and the subterranean spawn of Cthulhu’s minions. These are monsters and vast mythic powers, but they don’t paralyze the story — they fuel it.
The Titus Crow novels (and associated stories) are part horror, part adventure-fantasy, rooted deeply in the Cthulhu Mythos but with Lumley’s twist. The Burrowers Beneath pits Crow and de Marigny against subterranean, telepathic horrors: the Chthonians (spawn of Cthulhu), nesting beneath the Earth, creeping upward in malign conspiracy. Lumley gives us shocking horrors, underground nests, weird science, telepathy, hidden cults — the works. The Transition of Titus Crow takes the impedance further: there’s time travel, cosmic journeys, meetings with Elder Gods in Elysia (the realm beyond), and Crow is even turned into a synthetic human, allowing Lumley to stretch the boundaries of what a hero in this mythos can be. Later volumes — The Clock of Dreams, Spawn of the Winds, In the Moons of Borea, Elysia: The Coming of Cthulhu — raise the stakes higher. Dreamworlds, trapped souls, existential threats, time clocks, cosmic prison dreams. Crow and his allies are not merely running for their lives — they’re trying to wrest the initiative from things unimaginable. Crow himself is not Lovecraft’s passive observer. He investigates, questions, acts. De Marigny is faithful side-kick, often providing critical knowledge, resourcefulness, support. Tiania, Kthanid, the Elder Gods — these figures add depth to the mythic side, turning Lovecraftian shadows into engines of narrative, with relationships, betrayals, mysteries.
If I imagine Lovecraft peering through some dream-mirror, watching this series, I think he’d nod. Maybe shake his head at some liberties, but also marvel. Because Lumley doesn’t just mimic the dread: he builds upon it. Lovecraft’s great power was in the unimaginable — what is beyond human. Lumley takes that, shows us glimpses, then says: what if humans had a chance? What if they built machines of time, synthetic bodies, made bargains, fought back? In The Burrowers Beneath, the subterranean creatures become more than backdrop. Their fears (radiation, water) become weapons. Crow and de Marigny don’t merely flee; they strategize, resist. Lovecraft’s horror was often about the suffocation of human significance. Lumley acknowledges that, but he also gives us heroes with stubborn wills. That would give Lovecraft something to chew on. Additionally, Lumley’s imagination for world-building — Elysia, the Elder Gods, the Dreamlands, the Time-Clock, android Crow — these are mythic expansions. Lovecraft sometimes posited these elements; Lumley runs with them. If this were fan fiction, it’s fan fiction of grand ambition — but written by someone whose own voice is combusted in the fire of weird fiction, not imitation.
The strengths here are clear. Adventure and cosmic dread mix in a way that makes the books both terrifying and exhilarating. Pulp set pieces — tunnels, traps, cults, time machines — are paired with existential horror. The pacing is relentless: subterranean explorations, dreamworlds, Eldritch cults, cosmic machinery, androids, Elder Gods. The boldness of letting Crow be more than a victim — traveling through time, intervening, surviving transformations — shakes the mythos awake. Lumley’s imaginative expansions, like Tiania, the synthetic Crow, the Elder Gods as allies, show he’s not just reverent of Lovecraft, but restless with possibility. The hazards? Sometimes it’s pulpy to the point of camp. The prose can get purple, the horror over-explained. Android Crow, deus ex machina rescues, exposition dumps — all can take some of the cosmic dread away. Lovecraft’s power was in what you never see; Lumley often lets you see too much. But if the price of vision is losing a little mystery, I’ll pay it.
When I dove into Titus Crow, I felt again that fevered joy I had writing stories of monsters in notebooks, inventing names, drawing impossible beings in margins. Crow’s fights, de Marigny’s loyalties, dreamworlds where nightmares and gods intermingle — they echo those childish stories, but sharpened with craft, heat, horror. Lumley summons not just the monsters, but the longing behind them: the desire to be more than fearful, to name the nameless, to stand. I remember sketching a world where a creature lived under the Earth, half magic, half slime, half consciousness — The Burrowers Beneath gave me that, and more monsters. In Transition, when Crow becomes synthetic, when clock-time warps, when Elysia looks upon Earth, I felt that same cosmic scale I used to hope I could reach in my tales. Lumley doesn’t make Crow perfect. He makes him human (or nearly so), flawed, courageous, haunted — and through him, we readers are allowed to be those monster-makers again, daring to face what should unmake us.
If the lower planes issued certificates, Titus Crow would get “Monster-Constructor of the Year.” This series is essential for anyone who ever trembled at Lovecraft’s distant thunder and wanted to pick up a sword, a clock, or a dream-key and march toward it. It’s horror with backbone, mythos with muscle. Lovecraft might have raised an eyebrow at some light, some boldness, at Crow talking back to gods. But I believe he would’ve felt something like pride — that someone carried the torch forward. Lumley turns cosmic horror into something you can feel in your bones, something you can fight with, something you can read with a grin and a shiver. If you love cosmic dread, weirdness, monstrous gods, and heroes who don’t just faint, Titus Crow is a work of fire. It is a ride, wild and strange, that doesn’t just honor Lovecraft, it enlarges him. Brian Lumley is that writer from Hell, blazing with imagination — and Titus Crow is one of his finest lamps in the dark.
August 25, 2022
Aside from The Burrowers Beneath, which makes at least a token effort at cosmic horror, Brian Lumley's Titus Crow novels read like clumsy fan fiction, committing a range of errors more capable fanfic authors would balk at (over-perfect main character shows up in fiction setting, solves all the problems and kicks ass and gets a hot girlfriend, author doesn't respect the style or atmosphere or themes of the setting, etc.). These omnibus editions are the most cost-effective way of reading them, I suppose, but why would you ever subject yourself to that? https://fakegeekboy.wordpress.com/201...
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews