Reminiscent of a Jules Verne story, this is the story of an expedition to the Antarctic in 1930. With references to the Line-crossing ceremony, Nicholas Roerich's art, the Erebrus (active) volcano, Breeches bouy, Lord Dunsany.
Written at the time when people rumoured about the "ghost mountains of Antarctica" that were still yet to be discovered, Lovecraft describes the temperatures, gales, geology, Mesozoic, Placodermi, fossils, and Einstein. Clark Ashton Smith is mentioned as an artist whose paintings are based on the Necronomicon; and there are references to the mirages described and drawn by Scoresby on his Arctic voyages. I loved the descriptions pf the snow-cylinders (rollers) rolling in the wind (reference from Roald Amundsen's 1913 account), and Lovecraft's own fictional mythology of the place, Leng. ( )

How differently can people judge a book? It shows once again that every reader reads with a different expectation and a different view of things than the other.
Gothic horror...? No idea. I don't mind that much. But the writing of H.P. Lovecraft is pure art, like a goldsmith who patiently puts together a piece of jewelry.
Where current "literature" must be full of blood, curses and sex, Lovecraft here spins a finely woven web of tension where, without immediately seeing horrors passing by on the pages, you get the feeling that you are together with the survivors of the expedition. to tiptoe through the encampment and see with your own eyes what has taken place. Added to this is the powerful, sometimes somewhat technical, description of everything that can be seen, and it gives off an icy cold that makes your cold hands cling to the book. The final discovery..... comes as expected as it is unexpected. And I think it certainly laid a foundation for similar literature in the centuries that followed. Even authors (not my favorite!) such as Stephen King indicate that they have been inspired by Lovecraft. And that means something! It is not a genre that I will want to read much further, but that is more because I prefer books where the obvious is not always displayed in color on the pages. (Detectives, thrillers). A language artist like Lovecraft doesn't need that. And I greet his work "At the mountains of madness" with respect and place it with the other classics on the shelf. Who knows, maybe I'll pick it up again someday and reread it. ( )

Honestly, this is probably Lovecraft's best story. It proves that he could, in fact, write quality cosmic horror when he didn't fall back on bigotry. I love love love the Antarctic setting and the scientific tone of the piece, and how we basically get a tour or tasting menu of the whole weird world. I would pretty much recommend this to anyone unqualified, which I can't say about basically any other of his work. ( )

Narrative style looking back over the events of a party exploring a remote area of Antartica. Clever writing building up the suspense but ends a bit flat when compared to modern stories. ( )

One of the most complete feeling Lovecraft stories, but still falls into the trap of being a post-event narration which although a common contemporary format to Lovecraft, serves to diffuse most of the tension of the story itself. The cosmic horror is supposed to come from the revelations of powerful forces beyond our comprehension hiding beneath a thin veil of ignorance, ready to reclaim the earth and level mankind's petty accomplishments. Unfortunately for the horror, the eldritch horror at the core of this story is sympathetic, and even the narrator points this out. ( )