‘Strange Eons’ – Robert Bloch (Valancourt Books)

 

Page Count: 190 Pages

Most people go through phases of reading books by a particular author. Because I have to be different, I go through phases of ‘buying books by a particular author, leaving them on a shelf until I’ve forgotten I have them, and then reading them… eventually’. I wish I was like other people… ;o)

Anyway… I was looking for some books to keep me company, while looking after the cats, and came across ‘Strange Eons’, doing a great job of being the ‘forgotten book at the bottom of a pile of slightly less forgotten books’. I’m always up for seeing what other writers make of Lovecraft’s Mythos, and I’ve enjoyed a large chunk of what I’ve read of Bloch, so it felt like just the right time to pick up ‘Strange Eons’ and finally give it a go, especially with Halloween right around the corner.

And…

When Albert Keith comes across a dusty old painting of a hideous, red-eyed, sharp-clawed creature in a dingy junk shop, he falls in love with it at first sight and buys it at a bargain price. But it isn't until he shows it to his friend Simon Waverly that he understands the painting's true significance: it appears to be one of the portraits described by H.P. Lovecraft in his horror story "Pickman's Model." Keith and Waverly slowly begin to realize that Lovecraft's fiction may not be works of the imagination at all-instead they contain a message to mankind, a terrible warning about Cthulhu and his minions, the Great Old Ones. Keith sets off in search of the horrible truth, but can anything stop the Great Old Ones, or is mankind already doomed?

What if Lovecraft wasn’t just making it all up…? And that being the case, what if there were people, out there, who didn’t want HPL’s readers to find this out…? It’s a fairly straightforward concept and you’d be forgiven for wondering how much mileage there is in it, especially when you look at the word count here. Don’t worry, Robert Bloch not only finds plenty of places to take his plot, when you take into account his connection to HPL, it opens up a rabbit hole to dive into that will have you idly wondering all sorts of stuff. Like, what if it isn’t HPL trying to warn humanity, what if it’s Bloch himself…? Okay, that was where my head went but that is the beauty of ‘Strange Eons’, it will get you thinking…

‘Strange Eons’ can trip up over itself at times though, especially in the early stages, of each characters story, where Bloch seems to feel that he has to highlight every instance where an event links back to a Lovecraft tale. Now, ‘Strange Eons’ was written in 1978 and while my knowledge is (very) limited, it may well be that Lovecraft simply wasn’t that well known and as such, these moments needed to be pointed out a little more forcefully. I can understand that, and get behind it, but at the same time, these moments do get in the way of the story being told. Maybe we don’t need to be told quite so much? Everyone will have a different view here and to be fair, this approach did point out some Lovecraft tales that I haven’t read yet.

Having said all that though, when the plot is allowed to come to the fore, ‘Strange Eons’ ends up being a great example of how the Mythos can tell a gripping detective/adventure story in a plot that takes place over two generations and shows us all too clearly what we are sharing our planet with. The ‘cosmic horror’ is dialled back at bit, concentrating more on the machinations of human cultists, but it’s definitely there and adds just the right flavour to the proceedings. There were moments that I skimmed but that’s on me; try as I might, I cannot stay focused when someone is trapped in underground tunnels and is trying to get out. For the most part, ‘Strange Eons’ is a book that I was fully engaged with. Bloch may have had an unfair advantage over most but when the upshot is a book that really captures the ‘pulp adventure’ side of Lovecrafts Mythos… Well, I’m not going to complain.

One of the things that I love about the Mythos, as explored by more recent authors, is that while Lovecraft only hinted at the darkness the Old Ones would bring to our world, others are prepared to really go into what that actually looks like. Bloch may not quite take it all the way there but makes it really clear not only what has begun but that there is no way of stopping it. And yep, I worked out the link but I didn’t know what it meant, not until…

I won’t spoil it.

‘Strange Eons’ now has its very own spot on my list of ‘Books I should have read much sooner, at least I finally did’. It can overindulge but at the same time, knows exactly what it’s there to do, and does that very well.