Irrational Fears

William Browning Spencer wrote Resume With Monsters, which I have but have not read. Irrational Fears was touted as a mythos book in Glynn Barrass' chapbook from Rainfall Books. I was able to get a rather inexpensve used copy of the hardcover edition from White Wolf, published in 1998.

I'll keep my comments brief. The book centers around Jack Lowry, an alcoholic in detox. He meets up with a motley crew of other alcoholics and they end up going to rural Virginia to a rehab center. There they start butting heads with a radical group called The Clear, who say that alcoholism is actually demonic possession. What follows is a lot of surreal events and weird behavior on the part of everyone, as some members of the rehab group vanish or are show more kidnapped, zand Jack and his strange crew work out how to get them back.

At first I thought it was actually going to be a mythos title. The Clear has a pamphlet that says alcoholics are the heirs of the K'n-Yan who had previously worshiped Tsathoggua and were cast into an asynchronous reality where their hungers were focused on drugs and alcohol. In one of the AA meetings, some woman says something like "Thank Azathoth I'm better now." There certainly is a weird episode where some otherwordly betentacled creature engulfs a surroung crowd of mindless naked worshipers. However, it turns out that the founder of The Clear, Dorian Greenway, had been through a period where he had read Lovecraft and sort of incorporated Lovecraft's fictional beasties into his group's message, including discussing the Pnakotic Pentagram. All the strange happenings may be paranormal (caused by Greenway tapping into someone else's psychic powers), but not mythos paranormal, and in fact they may just be drug induced hallucination. There are no ancient entities. no ancient tomes, no inimical reality beyond reality. None of the missing characters actually die, they just show up again a bit befuddled.

I honestly don't know why it was included in a list of mythos books, unless whoever compiled it only gave it a cursory skimming. Is Ghoul by Slade a mythos book, if its main bad guys were influenced by Lovecraft's fiction and used some mythos names? What about Needful Things by King, where there is a scrap of graffitti "Yog Sothoth Rules?"

Spencer is a talented writer, who has obviously made a study of Lovecraft. His mythos story in Lovecraft Unbound is great. His characters came alive, acted convincingly in context, had good dialogue and made you care about them. Throughout the prose sparkled. Irrational Fears was an energetic read with some off beat humor and a good forward moving plot. The detail bespeaks an intimate knowledge of Alcoholics Anonymous, addiction and recovery, which immeasurably added to the depth of the book. I dashed through it in a few days. But I sure won't be recommending it to someone looking for A) a mythos book or B) a book with a great Lovecraftian feel. I rate it as very good on its own merits but not really for mythos fans. I'll give Resume With Monsters a try, for Spencer's prose and becase people tell me it's definitely a mythos book.....we'll see. show less