The Book

By H. P. Lovecraft

H. P. Lovecraft was one of the greatest horror writers of all time. His seminal work appeared in the pages of legendary Weird Tales and has influenced countless writer of the macabre. This is one of those stories.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Start Publishing LLC
• Release date: Feb 10, 2014
• ISBN: 9781609772994

H. P. Lovecraft

Renowned as one of the great horror-writers of all time, H.P. Lovecraft was born in 1890 and lived most of his life in Providence, Rhode Island. Among his many classic horror stories, many of which were published in book form only after his death in 1937, are ‘At the Mountains of Madness and Other Novels of Terror’ (1964), ‘Dagon and Other Macabre Tales’ (1965), and ‘The Horror in the Museum and Other Revisions’ (1970).

Reviews for The Book

[aneris-3 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An unnamed narrator, who appears quite mad since he is not certain of various aspects of his life ('I think I had a family then—though the details are very uncertain—and I know there were many servants.'), finds an ancient book not realizing its true nature. 'It was a key—a guide—to certain gateways and transitions of which mystics have dreamed and whispered since the race was young, and which lead to freedoms and discoveries beyond the three dimensions and realms of life and matter that we know.' The fact that the old man who gave it to him didn't want any payment wasn't a warning enough that something is seriously wrong with the book. It turned out that by opening the strange book and using its incantations and formulae, the narrator got a chance to see beyond this world. It was followed by something he didn't like, of course. 'For he who passes the gateways always wins a shadow, and never again can he be alone.' That was not all though. Each journey to wherever those gateways led opened his eyes to a new layer of his own reality, so he ended up hiding his knowledge in order not to appear mad. There was also the fact that he often couldn't distinguish between those layers. To add to the horror, each new journey through a gateway brought him closer to losing himself in 'unknown abysses whence [he] could never return.'