I have to admit that I never heard of this story before so this adaptation was my first-read of it.

Entire story is told through dreams. Our intrepid hero tries to find the unknown magnificent city and in order to find it he tries to contact mysterious and dangerous creatures who are keepers of the distant frontiers.

Story itself aged well and even today resonates very well. While watching our protagonist discussing the events with his friend about their quests and adventures one can draw parallels with the modern day computer game players, people finding more sense and enjoyment in distant worlds where they become whomever they want and do whatever they want. They might not dream in the true sense of the word but they are definitely living in their own worlds. If you ask me this story is cyberpunk to the core, only element missing are techno-gadgets.

Art is great and truly manages to depict the otherworldliness of dreams and dream-like experiences.

Truly great adaptation. It begs the question do we dream of things or is our very existence (and our dreams) just echo of another dreamer. So Inception-like...

Highly recommended. ( )

Another good adaptation of Lovecraft by Culbard. Because he uses images he does not include all of the text, which has its advantages and disadvantages, so the reader should be familiar with the Lovecraft novella before looking at this. It would definitely have lost some understandability without prior knowledge. But this is the audience Culbard is aiming for anyway. If you want all the words, look to [a:Jason Bradley Thompson|5782653|Jason Bradley Thompson|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png]'s graphic novel [b:The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath & Other Stories|13558064|The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath & Other Stories|H.P. Lovecraft|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1332535244s/13558064.jpg|25692215] which has the disadvantage of not having color.

Culbard, like Thompson, has the positive of being a faithful adaptation without any additions or embellishments (or any "updating") to the Lovecraft story. Those graphic novelists that have tried to out-Lovecraft Lovecraft have usually failed. Better your own original or at least original Lovecraftian story. ( )

Artist I.N.J. Culbard has adapted another H.P. Lovecraft story after winning an award for ‘At The Mountains Of Madness’. ‘The Dream-Quest Of Unknown Kadath’, a quirky work even by Lovecraft’s standards, was not published in his lifetime. Posthumously, of course, every word he ever penned in now available in one form or another. This story brings together several elements from other tales in Lovecraft’s so-called ‘Dream Cycle’. These include ‘The Cat’s Of Ulthar’, ‘The Doom That Came To Sarnath’, ‘Celephais’ and ‘Nyarlathotep’, amongst others. A few of them were written very early in his career for his own pleasure. In fact, Lovecraft always wrote to please himself and the fact that someone actually wanted to print the stuff was a bonus. He never wrote with the market in mind, which is why he’s so original and deservedly has gained a literary reputation.

In this story, Randolph Carter, Lovecraft’s alter ego, has dreamed three times of a marvellous city named Celephais, ‘in the valley of Ooth-Nargai beyond the Tanarian hills’. He wants to go and live there in the dreamworlds, leaving the real one behind. So he prays to the hidden gods of dream and goes on a quest, which takes him across several different landscapes, where he encounters a variety of strange creatures. Nasty zoogs and gugs are out to get him but the cats of Ulthar are his friends.

It’s weird fantasy set in imaginative realms with almost no connection to the mundane world. Quests are not my favourite type of yarn as they can easily become a mere parade of ‘wonders’ that become boring after a while. Happily, this one doesn’t go on long enough for that to happen as the original work was a novella, not the three thick volumes of modern fantasy. The ending, I should add, is excellent and quite unexpected.

Lovecraft’s writing is an acquired taste but one I have acquired. The art of I.N.J. Culbard is also an acquired taste and one I’m working on, not always successfully. The first issue of ‘Brass Sun’ was pretty good but the pictures were not so great thereafter. At his best, he has a gift for good storytelling with panels and a very simple linear design technique that can be pleasing. At his worst, the page looks like it was drawn by a child. This adaptation does not contain his best all the way through but there are some good panels, particularly a double page spread near the end. I recommend sneaking a peek at the pages before you buy to see if the pictures appeal for, in my view, a graphic novel is not worth having if you actively dislike the art. At the moment, I’m ambivalent about Culbard. I will say that he seems to have converted much of the prose into pictures as the work is not heavy on captions. Art and dialogue carry the story along and it’s a quick, easy read. Lovecraft isn’t. Ever! But he’s worth the effort.

It’s a nice edition physically, on good quality paper and with plenty of pages for your pounds. It’s a moot point whether Lovecraft should be adapted to visual form as all those indescribable horrors may be best left to the readers’ imagination. Culbard is trying though and he deserves an ‘A’ for effort.

Eamonn Murphy
This review first appeared at https://www.sfcrowsnest.info/
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It's a good adaptation. Art's simple but effective, and the story's been updated, incorporating relevant bits of other HPL stories to make it hold together, and strengthen the theme of nostalgia. On the whole, yes. ( )