Peter Lancett

The Iron Maiden was written by Peter Lancett and published by the small press, Bloodbinds Press, in London in Great Britain in 2005. I never saw the Minerva edition from 2000. I think it was just a trade paperback, with no hardcover edition. In the US it's pretty obscure and you have to search assiduously for a used copy. Once again, I never would have heard of it if it weren't for Glynn Barrass' chapbook listing Cthulhu mythos books from Rainfall Books. Mine ran about $20 with shipping, a trifle expensive for a 343 page book. The cover illustration by Karen Aitken is pretty good. A young woman wearing a short black skirt and impenetrable shades stands in front of a brick wall while a clawed hand rips through it from an alternate reality. This was the first time I ever remember reading anything by the author. It might be the last.

At first I wasn't terribly sure that it was going to really be a mythos book, although it was more obvious later. Briefly, in fabled Ur millennia ago a high ranking official is forced by the king to sacrifice his daughter in a religious ritual. He casts some spell/spells invoking the power of Cthulhu to allow him to wreak vengeance on the descendants of his king. His daughter achieves a sort of immortality as a murderous avenger, chasing down the last members of the king's family tree. The title of the book is shown to be very appropriate considering her modus operandi. Fast forward to the present day, and we meet a Kevin, living on the ragged edge of poverty and homelessness. He happens to rescue Jenny Marsten, oldest daughter of the fabulously wealthy Gordon Marsten. He is hired as her minder, as it were, falling in with the whole weird family. In the meantime Lee-An (guess who she is) has revived again, as she does so periodically and begins to seek out the Marsten's. Also in the meantime, it turns out Gordon is trying to answer the call of Cthulhu.

There were so many problems with this book it would be too laborious to list them all, so I'll hit the highlights. First, there were a jillion typos, in the first half more averaging more than one per page. These included misspellings, letter substitutions, missed capitalizations and word deletions. It made HP Lovecraft Institute look well edited. Second, Lancett used a plot device I find unbearably tedious, namely that Lovecraft was telling the truth and his fiction is really fact. Except it all depends on your state of mind. Arkham is a city, but not that you can find it on any map or highway, unless you are some how aware or transcending reality. He also tried melding in some Celtic elements, particularly the witch Rhiannon, as well as Native American mysticism. None of it gelled particularly well. Another thing I found egregious was that the cultists greeted each other "Cthulhu R'lyeh." Huh? Anyone can write whatever they want, but "Cthulhu fhtagn" would have made more sense. Overshadowing all of this was the arduous writing. It started off OK and ended up painful to read. The plotting was all over the map, with the characters neither memorable nor sympathetic. The gory bits weren't shocking, the sex bits weren't sexy, the dialogue had no snap. I found the final battle more silly than anything else. When I turned the last page it was with some relief. Only the compulsive mythos completist should seek out a copy of The Iron Maiden.… (altro)