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L'ultima rivelazione di Gla'aki
“La rarità vittoriana più famosa potrà pure essere un francobollo – il Penny Black –, ma è decisamente comune rispetto al libro più raro dell'epoca. È probabile che in tutto il mondo non sia rimasta neppure una copia de Le Rivelazioni di Gla'aki. […] Da allora nessuna copia è venuta alla luce, e la copia in possesso della Brichester University si trovò tra i volumi distrutti da uno studente alla fine del secolo scorso. Il libro più malefico, o una perdita per la letteratura sull'occultismo? Come il contenuto della biblioteca di Alessandria, Le Rivelazioni di Gla'aki potrebbe essere ormai leggenda.”
172 pages, Kindle Edition
First published July 1, 2013
7 people are currently reading
302 people want to read
About the author
Ramsey Campbell
859 books1,599 followersRamsey Campbell is a British writer considered by a number of critics to be one of the great masters of horror fiction. T. E. D. Klein has written that "Campbell reigns supreme in the field today," while S. T. Joshi has said that "future generations will regard him as the leading horror writer of our generation, every bit the equal of Lovecraft or Blackwood."
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Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews
February 15, 2016
this novella is the most adorable thing. it may be set within the Cthulhu mythos - which is mainly concerned with terrifying god-monsters that have been barred from our plane of existence because all they want to do is devour souls and they don't even care what you think - but it is undeniably cute. like so:
our hero is an English archivist who has been notified by residents of the coastal town of Gulshaw (town motto: "There's so much more to see!") that the 9 volumes of the arcane set of books known as "The Last Revelation of Gla'aki" are available for the taking; all he has to do is come on by and pick them up. it turns out that - shocker - Gulshaw is a very strange town. its residents are all quite pale (beneath the spray-on tans that some of them sport) and are either undernourished or oddly flabby. they have weirdly misshapen limbs and heads. they seem to have some sort of group-think thing going on and they find it surprisingly hard to even talk. they put on the most eccentric stage shows that involve what I suppose you would call "folk dancing" and the singing of disturbing songs and eerie acrobatics and a stand-up comedy routine that basically consists of falling down over and over again. as far as the children of Gulshaw go, those who aren't busy practicing how to walk properly are prone to crawling/dragging themselves slowly towards you to do who knows what. the adorable lil' tykes probably have something pretty cute in mind!
the Gulshaw residents put our hero through a bit of a process before he receives his books: he must visit 9 people, each who will give him one of the 9 volumes. and so he takes an extended tour of the picturesque village. there's the schoolroom, the senior center, the zoo, and many other discomfiting places. wherever he goes, people are quite polite and even cheery towards him. they clearly appreciate his interest and, perhaps less clearly, see that his future is a bright one and that he is destined to serve rather an important function for the town.
Ramsey Campbell is a modern master of horror who is known for his challenging prose and his intense, often off-putting characterization. he puts most of that idiosyncrasy to the side in service of a novella that instead means to deliver ambiguous and possibly cosmic horror in the quaintest of ways. although I missed that distinctly off quality present in past displays of Campbell-style weirdness, it was still a pleasure to be in the hands of such a capable author. he's so completely at ease with the various tropes of Cthulhu Mythos fiction that he can play around a bit: his menacing scenes are full of weird repetitions, strained banter and amusing wordplay, and always a strong dose of mordant irony. the tale is unnerving and creepy - and often delightfully funny. this is not a purely comic tale by any means, but there's a tongue planted firmly in cheek somewhere in the telling. I didn't realize Campbell had it in him to make a village of cultists appear so threatening yet also so endearing.
our hero is an English archivist who has been notified by residents of the coastal town of Gulshaw (town motto: "There's so much more to see!") that the 9 volumes of the arcane set of books known as "The Last Revelation of Gla'aki" are available for the taking; all he has to do is come on by and pick them up. it turns out that - shocker - Gulshaw is a very strange town. its residents are all quite pale (beneath the spray-on tans that some of them sport) and are either undernourished or oddly flabby. they have weirdly misshapen limbs and heads. they seem to have some sort of group-think thing going on and they find it surprisingly hard to even talk. they put on the most eccentric stage shows that involve what I suppose you would call "folk dancing" and the singing of disturbing songs and eerie acrobatics and a stand-up comedy routine that basically consists of falling down over and over again. as far as the children of Gulshaw go, those who aren't busy practicing how to walk properly are prone to crawling/dragging themselves slowly towards you to do who knows what. the adorable lil' tykes probably have something pretty cute in mind!
the Gulshaw residents put our hero through a bit of a process before he receives his books: he must visit 9 people, each who will give him one of the 9 volumes. and so he takes an extended tour of the picturesque village. there's the schoolroom, the senior center, the zoo, and many other discomfiting places. wherever he goes, people are quite polite and even cheery towards him. they clearly appreciate his interest and, perhaps less clearly, see that his future is a bright one and that he is destined to serve rather an important function for the town.
Ramsey Campbell is a modern master of horror who is known for his challenging prose and his intense, often off-putting characterization. he puts most of that idiosyncrasy to the side in service of a novella that instead means to deliver ambiguous and possibly cosmic horror in the quaintest of ways. although I missed that distinctly off quality present in past displays of Campbell-style weirdness, it was still a pleasure to be in the hands of such a capable author. he's so completely at ease with the various tropes of Cthulhu Mythos fiction that he can play around a bit: his menacing scenes are full of weird repetitions, strained banter and amusing wordplay, and always a strong dose of mordant irony. the tale is unnerving and creepy - and often delightfully funny. this is not a purely comic tale by any means, but there's a tongue planted firmly in cheek somewhere in the telling. I didn't realize Campbell had it in him to make a village of cultists appear so threatening yet also so endearing.
December 30, 2014
A superbly imaginative and lyrical short novel in the Lovecraftian tradition. Bleak humour throughout and some delightful weirdness. My favourite period of Campbell's superb fiction actually starts after Darkest Part of the Woods, and each new book is a source of excitement.
July 21, 2013
THE LAST REVELATION OF GLA’AKI by Ramsey Campbell
Review by Gary Fry
There’s no delight the equal of dread, Clive Barker once suggested, and he’s not far wrong. But I’d like to offer a rival for this distinction: the prose of Ramsey Campbell’s more recent work.
I read this novella in three sittings but sorely wish it could have been just one (the usual necessities of life got in the way: work, sleep, errands, etc). It strikes me that the novella is the perfect form for horror fiction, allowing authors space in which to develop their ideas while not losing readers’ attention between too many reading periods. I think this point is especially relevant to Campbell’s work, which relies on a steady, oblique accumulation of hints and suggestions that build up in the mind, so that you almost feel as if it’s you putting the pieces together and not the author at all. That makes his fiction quite unique; it’s a hugely collaborative effort and presumably different for each reader.
It’s surprisingly, then, that Gla’aki is only Campbell’s second novella (following the masterful Needing Ghosts, back when we were all hale and hearty). As much as I’ve enjoyed his latest novels, which rely upon a similar sustained development of effects and imagery, a stacking up of allusive and elusive material, I think it works most potently here. Gla’aki involves a guy – Fairman – visiting a seaside town to acquire a number of occult books for the university library for which he works. And that’s all you need to know about the plot, because the rest of the book chronicles him going about collecting all nine volumes, one by one, from eminent members of the community.
Now, this is quite a trick to pull off. The potential for contrivances and strained motivation is vast. But Campbell manages to make it all convincing by two artful methods: eccentric comedy, and a feeling that the visit is decidedly dreamlike, as if the town is a strange new place occupied by not-quite-real denizens. The events depicted are both highly stylised and psychologically real. Campbell describes his latter-day stuff as “the comedy of paranoia”, and by that, I take him to mean that the fundamentally ambiguous nature of everyday experience is sharpened, heightened, rendered edgy and threatening. So a character commonly perceives what seems most alarming, even though post-instinctive interpretations of such events often generate perfectly sensible explanations. Campbell’s characters constantly practice self-deception, and there’s always a Jamesian complicity between author and reader that undercuts the poor buggers’ desperately edited realities.
Campbell has been playing around with this kind of material of years, particularly in terms of visual phenomena, where things seen in dark doorways or at a hazy distance are dismissed as nothing like the worse thing imaginable for a character. This demonstrates a keen understanding of the vagaries of the subconscious mind, which is over-layered by a rational consciousness that does much interpretive work to ensure survival without terror. Such an approach creates a dreamlike atmosphere, with reality a tenuous mask concealing things that squirm and wriggle, that make little logical sense (unless it’s psychological, of course).
More recently, I’ve detected a more rigorous trend in Campbell, and this relates to misheard speech, the ambiguity of language, the lack of firm meaning inherent in what we all say to each other. Jokes thrive on this process, do they not? On misheard words and ensuing misunderstandings? A punch-line shatters tension arising from these difficulties, allowing the audience to perceive what was truly going on. And what is suggestive horror fiction – at least Campbell’s variety, with all its teasing bait and sinuous coquettishness – but a lengthy joke? It builds and builds tension until the final reveal, in this case a remarkable episode where all of Fairman’s misperceived and rationalised elements are brought together in a scene that confirms every collaborative nudge-nudge-wink-wink between author and reader. So it goes with a clever comedian and his / her unwitting yet highly engaged audience.
Of course such an inherently uncertain rootedness in the world – overly rationalised versions of truly threatening reality – is symptomatic of people rather less than “mentally healthy”, and I believe few authors are better at conveying this experience – this sense of occupying a fundamentally unstable world – than Campbell.
This default position, this authorial base-note, gives Campbell’s work a new dimension in terms of cosmic fiction, whose inviolable premise is basically that our world is profoundly vulnerable in a profoundly indifferent universe. Well, add to that characters who are profoundly vulnerable in a profoundly vulnerable world in a profoundly indifferent universe, and what do you have? An additional layer of alienation that, I believe, the “characterless” work of Lovecraft lacks.
Now, don’t get me wrong – I’m not about to give Lovecraft a kick-in here; I’m hardly qualified to do so. But I’d argue that with a complex psychological component, honed during years of writing non-cosmic fiction (and even crime), Campbell brings something to the cosmic tale of terror that may be lacking in the old master. It is true that Lovecraft’s work may benefit from its ostensible indifference to conventional character development – that is, that this approach enhances the dehumanised aspects of the worldview. But Campbell doesn’t come at it this way: his characters are stylised and yet realist, as “on the edge” as the events he depicts.
In Gla’aki, we have a loner, a chosen one, a childless guy driven by his passion for solitary pursuits and arcane interests. He’s slightly “under the thumb” and ever mindful of his absent girlfriend’s attitudes to daily life. He won’t even use the bathroom without making a noise to overrule the sounds of his private ablutions. He’s basically a man removed from reality, slightly obsessive (who else would go through the rigmarole of acquiring each book, each book, each book?), dogmatic in his purpose, and sensitive enough to dream about the material he doggedly consumes as a matter of intellectual – and maybe even spiritual – curiosity.
Hence the power of the imagery, the surreal episodes and the many slapstick engagements with the villagers. It’s as much character-based as it is decreed-by-event (as might be the case in Lovecraft’s ultra-serious, investigative narratives, which certainly possess a fundamentally different power). By introducing this level of personal interaction, Campbell achieves something very different from the master to whom he owes allegiance. In this sense, it seems pointless to compare him to Lovecraft; that’d be like comparing Tchaikovsky to Puccini. All I personally claim is that such a different approach achieves something more-than Lovecraft in one sense, and less-than him in another. (He’s not alone here; the tales of TED Klein spring immediately to mind.)
In truth, I found the narrative tone and effect of Gla’aki closer to Blackwood, especially his similarly hypnotic novella of an “outsider venturing into a weird village”, Ancient Sorceries. And I’d make a very favourable comparison to that tale, too. In fact, I’d claim that the intensity of Campbell’s prose, its consistently of poetic vocabulary and ruthless internal logic, is superior to Blackwood’s rhythmic, articulate, and yet occasionally staid phrasing (I often have the feeling that Blackwood wrote quickly and that Campbell writes slowly; make of that what you will).
A few final points: I particularly liked the fact that, as in the Blackwood tale (except for its “framing” passages involving John Silence), the narrative of Gla’aki had no breaks. This lent the piece a perpetual motion it was hard to break free from; it was like compound interest (the most powerful force in the universe, as Einstein said), a relentless massing of effect.
I think the cover was great and gaudy and fully in the tradition of this kind of fiction. However, as stated above, I believe the true strength of Campbell’s work lies in its suggestiveness, in how each reader must work with the author to produce their own version of the fiction. And – MINOR SPOILER HERE, FOLKS!!! – I wonder how much that brilliantly imagined thing on the front dictates visual interpretation near the end of the piece. It certainly did for me, but not in any lamentable way (you know, like going to see Psycho and someone telling you beforehand about the skeleton in the cellar).
I’m aware that Campbell was reworking strands of a number of earlier pieces of fiction here, with the repeated meal-eating conceit having played out in previously in a tale called ‘Raised by the Moon’. I’m also aware that one of the author’s greatest fears is finding himself repeating himself. But in my modest view, he should rest assured on this matter. The Last Revelation of Gla’aki is another master-class in “how to do it,” a carefully orchestrated collection of literary techniques Campbell has been developing over 50 years. I watched a recording of Campbell talking about the novella recently, and he said it’s essentially “another go” at a tale he wrote as a lad, “The Inhabitant of the Lake”. Read both pieces side by side and see how far he’s come. It’s a journey worthy of an elder God.
Review by Gary Fry
There’s no delight the equal of dread, Clive Barker once suggested, and he’s not far wrong. But I’d like to offer a rival for this distinction: the prose of Ramsey Campbell’s more recent work.
I read this novella in three sittings but sorely wish it could have been just one (the usual necessities of life got in the way: work, sleep, errands, etc). It strikes me that the novella is the perfect form for horror fiction, allowing authors space in which to develop their ideas while not losing readers’ attention between too many reading periods. I think this point is especially relevant to Campbell’s work, which relies on a steady, oblique accumulation of hints and suggestions that build up in the mind, so that you almost feel as if it’s you putting the pieces together and not the author at all. That makes his fiction quite unique; it’s a hugely collaborative effort and presumably different for each reader.
It’s surprisingly, then, that Gla’aki is only Campbell’s second novella (following the masterful Needing Ghosts, back when we were all hale and hearty). As much as I’ve enjoyed his latest novels, which rely upon a similar sustained development of effects and imagery, a stacking up of allusive and elusive material, I think it works most potently here. Gla’aki involves a guy – Fairman – visiting a seaside town to acquire a number of occult books for the university library for which he works. And that’s all you need to know about the plot, because the rest of the book chronicles him going about collecting all nine volumes, one by one, from eminent members of the community.
Now, this is quite a trick to pull off. The potential for contrivances and strained motivation is vast. But Campbell manages to make it all convincing by two artful methods: eccentric comedy, and a feeling that the visit is decidedly dreamlike, as if the town is a strange new place occupied by not-quite-real denizens. The events depicted are both highly stylised and psychologically real. Campbell describes his latter-day stuff as “the comedy of paranoia”, and by that, I take him to mean that the fundamentally ambiguous nature of everyday experience is sharpened, heightened, rendered edgy and threatening. So a character commonly perceives what seems most alarming, even though post-instinctive interpretations of such events often generate perfectly sensible explanations. Campbell’s characters constantly practice self-deception, and there’s always a Jamesian complicity between author and reader that undercuts the poor buggers’ desperately edited realities.
Campbell has been playing around with this kind of material of years, particularly in terms of visual phenomena, where things seen in dark doorways or at a hazy distance are dismissed as nothing like the worse thing imaginable for a character. This demonstrates a keen understanding of the vagaries of the subconscious mind, which is over-layered by a rational consciousness that does much interpretive work to ensure survival without terror. Such an approach creates a dreamlike atmosphere, with reality a tenuous mask concealing things that squirm and wriggle, that make little logical sense (unless it’s psychological, of course).
More recently, I’ve detected a more rigorous trend in Campbell, and this relates to misheard speech, the ambiguity of language, the lack of firm meaning inherent in what we all say to each other. Jokes thrive on this process, do they not? On misheard words and ensuing misunderstandings? A punch-line shatters tension arising from these difficulties, allowing the audience to perceive what was truly going on. And what is suggestive horror fiction – at least Campbell’s variety, with all its teasing bait and sinuous coquettishness – but a lengthy joke? It builds and builds tension until the final reveal, in this case a remarkable episode where all of Fairman’s misperceived and rationalised elements are brought together in a scene that confirms every collaborative nudge-nudge-wink-wink between author and reader. So it goes with a clever comedian and his / her unwitting yet highly engaged audience.
Of course such an inherently uncertain rootedness in the world – overly rationalised versions of truly threatening reality – is symptomatic of people rather less than “mentally healthy”, and I believe few authors are better at conveying this experience – this sense of occupying a fundamentally unstable world – than Campbell.
This default position, this authorial base-note, gives Campbell’s work a new dimension in terms of cosmic fiction, whose inviolable premise is basically that our world is profoundly vulnerable in a profoundly indifferent universe. Well, add to that characters who are profoundly vulnerable in a profoundly vulnerable world in a profoundly indifferent universe, and what do you have? An additional layer of alienation that, I believe, the “characterless” work of Lovecraft lacks.
Now, don’t get me wrong – I’m not about to give Lovecraft a kick-in here; I’m hardly qualified to do so. But I’d argue that with a complex psychological component, honed during years of writing non-cosmic fiction (and even crime), Campbell brings something to the cosmic tale of terror that may be lacking in the old master. It is true that Lovecraft’s work may benefit from its ostensible indifference to conventional character development – that is, that this approach enhances the dehumanised aspects of the worldview. But Campbell doesn’t come at it this way: his characters are stylised and yet realist, as “on the edge” as the events he depicts.
In Gla’aki, we have a loner, a chosen one, a childless guy driven by his passion for solitary pursuits and arcane interests. He’s slightly “under the thumb” and ever mindful of his absent girlfriend’s attitudes to daily life. He won’t even use the bathroom without making a noise to overrule the sounds of his private ablutions. He’s basically a man removed from reality, slightly obsessive (who else would go through the rigmarole of acquiring each book, each book, each book?), dogmatic in his purpose, and sensitive enough to dream about the material he doggedly consumes as a matter of intellectual – and maybe even spiritual – curiosity.
Hence the power of the imagery, the surreal episodes and the many slapstick engagements with the villagers. It’s as much character-based as it is decreed-by-event (as might be the case in Lovecraft’s ultra-serious, investigative narratives, which certainly possess a fundamentally different power). By introducing this level of personal interaction, Campbell achieves something very different from the master to whom he owes allegiance. In this sense, it seems pointless to compare him to Lovecraft; that’d be like comparing Tchaikovsky to Puccini. All I personally claim is that such a different approach achieves something more-than Lovecraft in one sense, and less-than him in another. (He’s not alone here; the tales of TED Klein spring immediately to mind.)
In truth, I found the narrative tone and effect of Gla’aki closer to Blackwood, especially his similarly hypnotic novella of an “outsider venturing into a weird village”, Ancient Sorceries. And I’d make a very favourable comparison to that tale, too. In fact, I’d claim that the intensity of Campbell’s prose, its consistently of poetic vocabulary and ruthless internal logic, is superior to Blackwood’s rhythmic, articulate, and yet occasionally staid phrasing (I often have the feeling that Blackwood wrote quickly and that Campbell writes slowly; make of that what you will).
A few final points: I particularly liked the fact that, as in the Blackwood tale (except for its “framing” passages involving John Silence), the narrative of Gla’aki had no breaks. This lent the piece a perpetual motion it was hard to break free from; it was like compound interest (the most powerful force in the universe, as Einstein said), a relentless massing of effect.
I think the cover was great and gaudy and fully in the tradition of this kind of fiction. However, as stated above, I believe the true strength of Campbell’s work lies in its suggestiveness, in how each reader must work with the author to produce their own version of the fiction. And – MINOR SPOILER HERE, FOLKS!!! – I wonder how much that brilliantly imagined thing on the front dictates visual interpretation near the end of the piece. It certainly did for me, but not in any lamentable way (you know, like going to see Psycho and someone telling you beforehand about the skeleton in the cellar).
I’m aware that Campbell was reworking strands of a number of earlier pieces of fiction here, with the repeated meal-eating conceit having played out in previously in a tale called ‘Raised by the Moon’. I’m also aware that one of the author’s greatest fears is finding himself repeating himself. But in my modest view, he should rest assured on this matter. The Last Revelation of Gla’aki is another master-class in “how to do it,” a carefully orchestrated collection of literary techniques Campbell has been developing over 50 years. I watched a recording of Campbell talking about the novella recently, and he said it’s essentially “another go” at a tale he wrote as a lad, “The Inhabitant of the Lake”. Read both pieces side by side and see how far he’s come. It’s a journey worthy of an elder God.
April 24, 2017
Una sperduta cittadina inglese, una nebbia perenne che si confonde con il mare, edifici fatiscenti, gente strana, libri misteriosi. Atmosfere lovecraftiane riviste da un Campbell ispiratissimo. La storia cattura fin dalle prime pagine, l'ambientazione è suggestiva, malsana e inquietante, sembra davvero di respirare l'aria umidiccia e fetida di Gulshaw. L'orrore di Campbell è diverso, particolare. Non si vede mai chiaramente, si "capta" in modo distorto, con la coda dell'occhio, come guardare attraverso un vetro sporco di muffa.
Consigliatissimo!
Consigliatissimo!
March 31, 2025
Un agradable pasatiempo lovecraftiano que Ramsey Campbell elabora a las mil maravillas.
Un archivista inglés se dirige al pueblo coster de Gulfshaw para obtener una serie de oscuros y antiguos libros. Los habitantes del pueblo lo reciben muy bien y van enviándolo a diferentes localizaciones para obtener los libros. El protagonista se irá dando cuenta de que algo no funciona bien en el pueblo y un oscuro culto parece estar detrás de ello.
Es una pequeña novela que no inventa la rueda y cuyo argumento es clásico del género lovecraftiano y me recordo a la mítica " La sombra sobre Insmouth". A destacar el fino humor británico de algunos pasajes.
Un archivista inglés se dirige al pueblo coster de Gulfshaw para obtener una serie de oscuros y antiguos libros. Los habitantes del pueblo lo reciben muy bien y van enviándolo a diferentes localizaciones para obtener los libros. El protagonista se irá dando cuenta de que algo no funciona bien en el pueblo y un oscuro culto parece estar detrás de ello.
Es una pequeña novela que no inventa la rueda y cuyo argumento es clásico del género lovecraftiano y me recordo a la mítica " La sombra sobre Insmouth". A destacar el fino humor británico de algunos pasajes.
July 31, 2013
Ramsey Campbell is one of the most esteemed horror authors working today. With over twenty-five novels and hundreds of short stories to his name, Campbell has had a steady output in his writing career.
He started out as a teenager, writing Lovecraftian pastiches. August Derleth saw his potential, and told him to create his own locales instead of setting the stories in Lovecraft's own. Thus, his first collection, The Inhabitant of the Lake and Less Welcome Tenants, was published by Arkham House in 1964. The stories have since been reprinted in Cold Print, along with more of his Lovecraftian stories, and just recently PS Publishing did a reprint of Campbell's freshman collection with the restored title of The Inhabitant of the Lake and Other Unwelcome Tenants.
The title story, The Inhabitant of the Lake, was about an artist who moves into an abandoned house by a lake. His friend narrates the tale, and a good portion of the story is told through letters from the artist. Some of the history of the mysterious lakeside property is revealed as the story unfolds, and it soon becomes apparent that an ancient, malevolent entity called Glaaki resides in the lake, assisted by undead servitors.
Now, a year shy of the 50th anniversary of his first published collection, Mr. Campbell revisits Glaaki (now called Gla'aki) with this novella from PS Publishing.
I was pretty excited when I heard the news about this book. Not long after I had discovered Lovecraft and weird fiction, I found myself diving into Campbell's Lovecraftian offerings and finding them greatly enjoyable. Now, not only were they being revisited by the author, but they were being revisited after nearly fifty years of perfecting his craft as a writer.
The plot follows Leonard Fairman, an archivist for Brichester University, as he travels to the fog-shrouded seaside town of Gulshaw to acquire a set of rare books, The Revelations of Gla'aki. What should be a simple task soon becomes more complex, as Leonard must collect the books one at a time from various residents throughout the town. Things in the town are bizarre from the beginning, and the strange events/observations Leonard experiences become ever more frequent, until he starts to take some of them for granted.
The novella is a cross between weird horror and black "comedy of paranoia". Campbell blends the two perfectly, maintaining an eerie sense of wrongness about the town and it's inhabitants, while sprinkling dark humor throughout. The protagonist is an irritable man who struggles to be patient with acquiring the books, making for some pretty hilarious interactions with the absurd townfolk.
This novella is nothing short of a success. Seeing Campbell revisit one of his earliest published stories with the maturity and skill he has acquired over the years is a total delight. The Inhabitant of the Lake was Campbell trying to imitate Lovecraft, while The Last Revelation of Gla'aki is Campbell doing Campbell. Readers who enjoyed Campbell's older Lovecraftian offerings will no doubt want to pick this up, while fans of more current Campbell will be pleased with the tone of this book. Overall, a book readers should pick up.
Review originally appeared on my blog, The Arkham Digest.
He started out as a teenager, writing Lovecraftian pastiches. August Derleth saw his potential, and told him to create his own locales instead of setting the stories in Lovecraft's own. Thus, his first collection, The Inhabitant of the Lake and Less Welcome Tenants, was published by Arkham House in 1964. The stories have since been reprinted in Cold Print, along with more of his Lovecraftian stories, and just recently PS Publishing did a reprint of Campbell's freshman collection with the restored title of The Inhabitant of the Lake and Other Unwelcome Tenants.
The title story, The Inhabitant of the Lake, was about an artist who moves into an abandoned house by a lake. His friend narrates the tale, and a good portion of the story is told through letters from the artist. Some of the history of the mysterious lakeside property is revealed as the story unfolds, and it soon becomes apparent that an ancient, malevolent entity called Glaaki resides in the lake, assisted by undead servitors.
Now, a year shy of the 50th anniversary of his first published collection, Mr. Campbell revisits Glaaki (now called Gla'aki) with this novella from PS Publishing.
I was pretty excited when I heard the news about this book. Not long after I had discovered Lovecraft and weird fiction, I found myself diving into Campbell's Lovecraftian offerings and finding them greatly enjoyable. Now, not only were they being revisited by the author, but they were being revisited after nearly fifty years of perfecting his craft as a writer.
The plot follows Leonard Fairman, an archivist for Brichester University, as he travels to the fog-shrouded seaside town of Gulshaw to acquire a set of rare books, The Revelations of Gla'aki. What should be a simple task soon becomes more complex, as Leonard must collect the books one at a time from various residents throughout the town. Things in the town are bizarre from the beginning, and the strange events/observations Leonard experiences become ever more frequent, until he starts to take some of them for granted.
The novella is a cross between weird horror and black "comedy of paranoia". Campbell blends the two perfectly, maintaining an eerie sense of wrongness about the town and it's inhabitants, while sprinkling dark humor throughout. The protagonist is an irritable man who struggles to be patient with acquiring the books, making for some pretty hilarious interactions with the absurd townfolk.
This novella is nothing short of a success. Seeing Campbell revisit one of his earliest published stories with the maturity and skill he has acquired over the years is a total delight. The Inhabitant of the Lake was Campbell trying to imitate Lovecraft, while The Last Revelation of Gla'aki is Campbell doing Campbell. Readers who enjoyed Campbell's older Lovecraftian offerings will no doubt want to pick this up, while fans of more current Campbell will be pleased with the tone of this book. Overall, a book readers should pick up.
Review originally appeared on my blog, The Arkham Digest.
January 15, 2022
Very enjoyable Mythos-inspired novella from the great Ramsey Campbell. Book collector Fairman goes off to a run-down, English seaside town, whose village motto seems to be the repetitive "There's so much more to see." He's on a quest to collect ten volumes of cultish books on Gla'aki for the uni where he works as an antiquarian. The ensuing hunt for the ten volumes amongst the local townspeople, whom he has to meet in a particular order, and the humid, gelatinous descriptions of the townspeople and their environs, was quite enjoyable. Fairman can't help but make excuses for the oddly shaped townsfolk, the strange fishy smells, the strange waking dreams he has as he reads the volumes. It all shapes up with prophetic revelation at the local church, which is nicely depicted on the cover of the hardback. Reading this story made me want to delve more into Ramsey Campbell's bibliography - very soon!
July 30, 2013
Campbell looks back at Lovecraft's universe and his own youthful tales in a new short novel, which begins with an archetypical Mythosian premise: a nerdy intellectual sort of fellow going to a strange town to find a rare copy of a sinister book. Far from being another Cthulhu retread, though, "Last Revelation of Gla'aki" evokes the numinous eeriness of Algernon Blackwood, M.R.James, and E.F. Benson. Where it comes close to Lovecraft, it does so in the spirit of "The Rats in the Walls", "The Colour out of Space", "The Picture in the House" - stories prior to HPL's artificial mythology. Never fear, though, Gla'aki is definitely back, having grown an apostrophe in the years since Campbell introduced it in 1964's "The Inhabitant of the Lake". The paranoiac atmosphere Campbell evokes creates a real sense of expectant dread; every mundane conversation becomes a minefield of veiled danger, every glimpse of the beach or the bus stop may conceal otherworldly horror. That's genius, and nary an "IA! YOG-SOTHOTH! CTHULHU FHTAGN!" to be found. Not that you'll miss it.
July 29, 2013
A quick-reading short novel with lots of fun references to some of Campbell's earlier, more Lovecraftian inspired short stories (such as his collections "Cold Print" and "The Inhabitant of the Lake").
February 1, 2024
2.7 ☆
October 27, 2021
Ramsey Campbell’s early work leaned into both Lovecraft’s style and supernatural conceptions. Fortunately for the genre, editor August Derleth, who had decades earlier been one of HPL’s friends, encouraged Campbell to shake off some of that influence, dig into his own unique terrors, and relocate his stories to England. Years later, having firmly established his own darkly subtle vision of horror, Campbell has returned to play in Lovecraft-adjacent territory in a few pieces. In this short novel, Leonard Fairman, a repressed librarian, comes to the seaside town of Gulshaw in order to secure a complete set of The Revelations of Gla’aki, a nine-volume occult treatise that no one has seen in its entirety for decades, if not centuries. When he gets to Gulshaw, though, his visit stretches longer than he’d planned, as the townspeople prove an odd bunch who clearly want more from Fairman than meets the eye. This one is creepy, visionary, and even plays with some loving satire of the whole Lovecraftian schtick while still telling a fast story of cosmic horrors and bizarre revelations.
I reviewed this book for my list of great Lovecraftian novels and short story collections. If you’re interested in similar titles, check out some of my favorites:
https://matthewpridham.wordpress.com/...
I reviewed this book for my list of great Lovecraftian novels and short story collections. If you’re interested in similar titles, check out some of my favorites:
https://matthewpridham.wordpress.com/...
December 5, 2015
This book reminds me a bit of Campbell's excellent Ancient Images about a film editor's attempt to track down a mysterious old movie with a dark past while encountering more than a few terrifying episodes along the way. Here we find a man trying to track down the incredibly rare nine volume occult book The Revelation of Gla’aki.
This is the quintessential story of the creepy, cultist small town where the locals are always speaking in vague riddles. Leonard Fairman is a university archivist who has tracked down the rare volumes to the small seaside town of Gulshaw, he plans to retrieve the volumes, spend one night and leave the next day. But things don't go as planned, as he has to track down each of the volumes separately, and as he reads them his grip on reality seems to become increasingly hallucinogenic.
The setting is what makes this book work so well. It's a wet, foggy, soggy place full of mystery. The influence of Lovecraft's "Shadow Over Innsmouth" in particular is felt here. With Campbell it's always those vague touches of dread that hint at horrors which make everything work and keep the reader interested. The story has it's share of humor along with its increasing weirdness.
This is the quintessential story of the creepy, cultist small town where the locals are always speaking in vague riddles. Leonard Fairman is a university archivist who has tracked down the rare volumes to the small seaside town of Gulshaw, he plans to retrieve the volumes, spend one night and leave the next day. But things don't go as planned, as he has to track down each of the volumes separately, and as he reads them his grip on reality seems to become increasingly hallucinogenic.
The setting is what makes this book work so well. It's a wet, foggy, soggy place full of mystery. The influence of Lovecraft's "Shadow Over Innsmouth" in particular is felt here. With Campbell it's always those vague touches of dread that hint at horrors which make everything work and keep the reader interested. The story has it's share of humor along with its increasing weirdness.
December 5, 2013
For a book of only 137 pages, it took a long time to read.
There was no chapters, hardly any breaks in paragraphs and thick text I found myself re-reading because my eyes keep skipping.
Once I got to the end, it ended the way any good Lovecraftian mythos based book should end. But I think it could of been improved if it was broken up with chapters.
There was no chapters, hardly any breaks in paragraphs and thick text I found myself re-reading because my eyes keep skipping.
Once I got to the end, it ended the way any good Lovecraftian mythos based book should end. But I think it could of been improved if it was broken up with chapters.
December 18, 2016
I enjoyed this a lot. It was fun to learn more details about "The Revelations of Gla'kai". I knew in general where it was going, but not the particulars which is what kept it interesting for me.
So 4 our of 5 stars; I just had hoped a bit there would be so much more to see.
. . .
So 4 our of 5 stars; I just had hoped a bit there would be so much more to see.
. . .
July 19, 2013
One of Ramsey's best stories for a while; this was really great.
June 15, 2020
Una cittadina costiera e nebbiosa che nasconde qualcosa, un libro occulto diviso in 9 parti, strani personaggi "grigi e mollicci".
Un richiamo molto forte ai Miti lovecraftiani, ma non mi ha convinto fino in fondo, soprattutto i dialoghi li ho trovati spogli e con poco senso.
2,5 stelle, ma sono generoso e ho arrotondato a 3.
Un richiamo molto forte ai Miti lovecraftiani, ma non mi ha convinto fino in fondo, soprattutto i dialoghi li ho trovati spogli e con poco senso.
2,5 stelle, ma sono generoso e ho arrotondato a 3.
February 13, 2019
Forse non l’ho capito, ma non mi è piaciuto, zero tensione, zero colpi di scena, poca atmosfera(se non nulla), finale abbastanza scontato. Rimane una lettura piacevole, ma nel panorama weird c’è molto meglio.
August 28, 2022
Campbell celebrates 50 years as a horror author by revisiting some of his old haunts - or, rather, inviting an old haunter back for a visit. Full review: https://fakegeekboy.wordpress.com/201...
July 22, 2023
The trouble with an entity that makes everything grey, indiscernible and ambiguous is that you end up with a book that is grey, indiscernible and ambiguous. It's fairly enjoyable, and quite funny in parts, but I'd struggle to say what it's about. It also sent me to sleep a bunch of times.
December 5, 2021
Ramsey Campbell non si discute, e se poi crea un omaggio a H.P. Lovecraft, come questo ancor meglio, un po' onirico e un crescendo di tensione...
January 17, 2023
This narrator was such a pushover, lol
December 4, 2024
Scritto verso i sessant’anni, qui Ramsey Campbell torna a una vecchia suggestione lovecraftiana di quand’era poco più che adolescente. È commovente questo suo ritorno a Lovecraft appena cominciata la mezza età, a cui seguirà tra l’altro una trilogia di romanzi – inedita in Italia – in cui riscrive Lovecraft a modo suo. È commovente, dicevo, questo partire da Lovecraft e infine tornare a Lovecraft, con in mezzo alcuni decenni in cui ha scritto romanzi e racconti per cui è diventato il maestro dell’horror contemporaneo. Dà un senso di circolarità, di posatezza, di pace. Questo romanzo breve, poi, per me è una bomba. Da un certo punto di vista è la cosa migliore mai scritta da Campbell, almeno se consideriamo il suo interesse nel raccontare l’incontro/scontro tra la percezione umana e la realtà esterna, tra la mente e l'inconcepibile, quel razionalizzare continuo che conduce a negare ciò che si è visto se la cosa che si è vista è inaccettabile, a intravedere e non a vedere, a subito pensare “Mi sarò sbagliato! Non può essere così!”, ad allargare la visione periferica dell’occhio, ad allontanare i retrogusti delle cose, ad attutire i rumori di fondo, a cercare di espellere dalla propria coscienza tutto ciò che si è percepito ma che è impossibile aver percepito – la realtà esterna che proprio non si può lasciar penetrare dentro di sé, la realtà esterna che proprio non doveva arrivare a noi – tutto puramente lovecraftiano e puramente horror – cioè umano: esplorazione e approfondimento di alcuni lati nascosti e vergognosi dell’esperienza umana – cose che dovevano esserci ma che non ci sono – cose che non dovevano esserci ma che ci sono – ecco qui, tutto questo, Ramsey Campbell lo declina nella cornice di questo romanzo, che è un rifacimento sia della “Maschera di Innsmouth” di Lovecraft sia di “Antiche Stregonerie” di Blackwood, e – all’interno di questo fortissimo apparato di genere – ci infila le sue tematiche e la sua sensibilità e la sua ricerca di artista, di uomo e di intellettuale. E lo fa con brani che raggiungono l’apice di una tecnica narrativa tutta “sensoriale”, “percettiva” e “psichica” che solo lui poteva sviluppare in questo modo e solo lui riesce a padroneggiare così bene. Il tutto in un volume che contiene un’introduzione e una prefazione preziosissime, veri e propri saggi brevi sull’opera di Campbell, e che quindi rappresenta l’ennesimo inestimabile tesoro targato Hypnos.
December 15, 2013
Academic librarian Leonard Fairman travels to the small English coastal town of Gulshaw to collect the rarest set of books in the world -- a complete set of The Revelations of Gla'aki, a mystic narrative thought to have been lost. The curiously...puffy townspeople are fairly cheery and helpful, but they will lead Fairman on something of a tour of the town in order to retrieve each volume from a different townsperson.
The precocious Campbell's first published volume, The Inhabitant of the Lake, came out from Arkham House in 1964, when he was 18. Nearly 50 years later, he returns to Gla'aki, one of the Lovecraftian entities introduced in that book and mentioned in many of his stories and novels over the years.
While Gulshaw is a Town With A Secret, one of the most venerable of horror tropes, it's the sort of weird town that happily welcomes the outsider. Welcomes him so much that everyone he meets seems to know his name and his mission. The food must be good in Gulshaw because everyone seems to have developed a weight problem. But everything Fairman eats has an odd sort of consistency. It's not often that mouthfeel comes into a horror story.
The horror here builds gradually -- like the attentions of the town itself, to quote a Stephen King title, it grows on you. And in you. There are echoes of H.P. Lovecraft's "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" here, but as noted above, the people of Gulshaw aren't inimical to visitors. Indeed, they're very friendly to everyone who visits. There's so much more to see in Gulshaw, you see. Or sea.
The precocious Campbell's first published volume, The Inhabitant of the Lake, came out from Arkham House in 1964, when he was 18. Nearly 50 years later, he returns to Gla'aki, one of the Lovecraftian entities introduced in that book and mentioned in many of his stories and novels over the years.
While Gulshaw is a Town With A Secret, one of the most venerable of horror tropes, it's the sort of weird town that happily welcomes the outsider. Welcomes him so much that everyone he meets seems to know his name and his mission. The food must be good in Gulshaw because everyone seems to have developed a weight problem. But everything Fairman eats has an odd sort of consistency. It's not often that mouthfeel comes into a horror story.
The horror here builds gradually -- like the attentions of the town itself, to quote a Stephen King title, it grows on you. And in you. There are echoes of H.P. Lovecraft's "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" here, but as noted above, the people of Gulshaw aren't inimical to visitors. Indeed, they're very friendly to everyone who visits. There's so much more to see in Gulshaw, you see. Or sea.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 21, 2013
There's so much more to see...
This is vintage Lovecraftian Campbell. His protagonist, the academic librarian Leonard Fairman, travels to the seaside town of Gulshaw in search of the nine volumes of the Revelations of Gla'aki. He expects to pick them up in one bundle, from his contact, but ends up following a merry dance across the town, picking up a single volume from each of the welcoming - but subtly bizarre - townspeople.
The story could have been repetitive, as the outcome is never in doubt, but the plot meanders nicely around the strange spectacles of the town, which include a local obsession with the beach and strange creatures in the local zoo and on the dinnerplate. The characters are well-described and memorable, and we can understand why the repressed and obsessive Fairman is drawn into their embrace as the story unfolds without break or pause. There's just enough flash of ankle with the Revelations as well - we get a taste of their mysteries but not too much to dispel the magic of the unknown.
A satisfying and engrossing book, a worthy heir - or companion - to Lovecraft's The Shadow Over Innsmouth and Campbell's own short story, The Inhabitant Of The Lake, written many years ago.
This is vintage Lovecraftian Campbell. His protagonist, the academic librarian Leonard Fairman, travels to the seaside town of Gulshaw in search of the nine volumes of the Revelations of Gla'aki. He expects to pick them up in one bundle, from his contact, but ends up following a merry dance across the town, picking up a single volume from each of the welcoming - but subtly bizarre - townspeople.
The story could have been repetitive, as the outcome is never in doubt, but the plot meanders nicely around the strange spectacles of the town, which include a local obsession with the beach and strange creatures in the local zoo and on the dinnerplate. The characters are well-described and memorable, and we can understand why the repressed and obsessive Fairman is drawn into their embrace as the story unfolds without break or pause. There's just enough flash of ankle with the Revelations as well - we get a taste of their mysteries but not too much to dispel the magic of the unknown.
A satisfying and engrossing book, a worthy heir - or companion - to Lovecraft's The Shadow Over Innsmouth and Campbell's own short story, The Inhabitant Of The Lake, written many years ago.
March 20, 2016
"I haven’t blogged about any of his books recently, but I have said many times before on this blog that Ramsey Campbell is my favorite horror author of all time. As I noted in a recent post, his novella Needing Ghosts is perhaps the only work of fiction that I’ve ever read that made me doubt my own sanity.
What makes his work so powerful? Campbell is a master of subtle, creeping horror. His monsters do not typically jump out at the reader, but rather lurk in the shadows, skittering in one’s peripheral vision. The cumulative effect is to leave the reader increasingly unsettled, struggling to understand the nature of the threat. On top of this, Campbell is simply a masterful, beautiful writer. It was once aptly said of him that in his writing, it is “the words that count.” (Which he turned into a 1975 story of the same name.)
This past week, I read one of his more recent works the 2013 novella The Last Revelation of Gla’aki."
Read the whole review.
What makes his work so powerful? Campbell is a master of subtle, creeping horror. His monsters do not typically jump out at the reader, but rather lurk in the shadows, skittering in one’s peripheral vision. The cumulative effect is to leave the reader increasingly unsettled, struggling to understand the nature of the threat. On top of this, Campbell is simply a masterful, beautiful writer. It was once aptly said of him that in his writing, it is “the words that count.” (Which he turned into a 1975 story of the same name.)
This past week, I read one of his more recent works the 2013 novella The Last Revelation of Gla’aki."
Read the whole review.
September 2, 2014
Had this recommended to me by the author.
Nicely done Lovecraftian horror from a master. revisits the cult of Gla'aki from "The Inhabitant of the Lake" 50 years later, and does an excellent job.
Very dreamlike- Campbell's mastery of prose draws you in to hypnotic like state, much like the Protagonist. Odd behaviors events are shrugged off, while rational thought is considered odd. You begin to notice odd things, then they become commonplace and even stranger things are noticed, which become commonplace in turn, until you're led to a really devastating end.
Nicely done Lovecraftian horror from a master. revisits the cult of Gla'aki from "The Inhabitant of the Lake" 50 years later, and does an excellent job.
Very dreamlike- Campbell's mastery of prose draws you in to hypnotic like state, much like the Protagonist. Odd behaviors events are shrugged off, while rational thought is considered odd. You begin to notice odd things, then they become commonplace and even stranger things are noticed, which become commonplace in turn, until you're led to a really devastating end.
October 24, 2014
Ha! Absolutely adored this novella. Probably the best thing I've read by Ramsey Campbell. How to describe it in a clamshell? Think of H.P. Lovecraft's 'Shadow Over Innsmouth' with a bit of Wickerman, The League of Gentleman and just a hint of Faulty Towers. Has Campbell invented a new genre? Cosmic horror-farce?! Anyway, this good had me chuckling all the way through it. I think its unlikely to really scare or disturb many, so maybe it fails as a straight horror novel, but it for those prepared to embrace the Word of Gla'aki, there's so much more to read.
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