Titus Crow, Volume 1: The Burrowers Beneath; The Transition of Titus Crow

These are some of my favorite books ever. The imagination of Lumley knows no bounds. For anyone looking for the quality but not the gore that usually comes with Mr. Lumleys stories these are great. Awesome adventure. Very Dr. Who'ish but only more adult. As the caretaker of Lovecraft's legacy he has filtered out the controversial racial tones and drives everything forward with incredible story telling by expanding on the worlds he created.

The Burrowers Beneath is a perfectly respectable Lovecraftian horror story, though the setting and Lumley's Titus Crow himself give it a more British and urbane flavor. However, The Transition of Titus Crow is much less interesting and tends to flounder about in a morass of mythic superlatives and meaningless why-did-you-even-put-this-in episodes. The first is well worth the price of admission and I have read it several times; the second, frankly, I've never been able to finish.

This book has two parts: the first is "The Burrowers Beneath" and the second is "The Transition of Titus Crow." Lumley's take on Mythos fiction shares many characteristics with that of Derleth and Lin Carter, which is to say it's entertaining but rather derivative. Lumley's style can be pretty effective and when taken in small doses (as in the short story "The Night the Sea-Maid Went Down," included in this book) is almost on par with Lovecraft. At other times, Lumley is not able to maintain enough of an atmosphere to keep the narrative interesting. This is particularly true in "Transition" which becomes a bit of a slog, especially once the narrator arrives in a mythical land.