Book review of Titus Crow: Volume I

Courtesy Macmillain Publishing

Titus Crow's adventures are a lot like the role-playing game exploits of player characters: they start out believable enough, but as the power creep and leveling sets in, the character's achievements and enemies seem to grow exponentially.

There are a few things that modern Cthulhu fans should be wary of when reading Lumley's foray into the Cthulhu Mythos. According to Lumley:

Mythos beings can be repelled quite handily with "star stones." These are made with tiny chips of the original soap stone elder signs. That's right, they're mass-produced "extract of Elder Sign." And they work against shoggoths.
The Tikkoun Elixir is actually holy water, which also works against the Mythos.
There is a globe-spanning organization of psychics known as the Wilmarth Foundation. This Foundation has men in every level of government and business, and marshals their resources in times of great need, like when battling the Mythos. They also keep the Mythos hidden to prevent worldwide panic.

All of this is told to the reader after the fact in The Burrowers Beneath. In the tradition of Lovecraft, the stories are all from journals and letters of those who were there, shifting from character to character to build a story around giant psychic killer worms known as Chthonians. Mind you, they're just minions of the larger Cthulhu Cycle Deities (who are, irritatingly, referred to as the CCD).

Lumley seems intent on explaining everything in Lovecraft's fiction and providing a logical framework behind it all. This is great for a role-playing game but makes for boring reading. But when Lumley writes an action scene, such as when DeMarginy (the Watson to Crow's Holmes) is attacked directly by a Chthonian, it's absorbing. Unfortunately, there's so little action that the rest of the tale becomes a dry retelling, sometimes bordering on parody.

Did you know that there are dinosaurs swimming in Loch Ness? Lumley drops that and other nuggets matter-of-factly throughout the narrative – and it has absolutely nothing to do with anything other than to perhaps explain that the Wilmarth Foundation, with its uber-psychics, knows everything there is to know about the world.

By the time we get to the second part of the book, The Transition of Titus Crow, Lumley just gives up. Crow experiences every pulp trope, from the love of a green-haired "girl-goddess" to riding a lisping dragon, to replacing his shattered body with cybernetics manufactured by robots, to time traveling in an extradimensional clock. Crow, it turns out, is both the descendant of the Elder Gods and a cyborg. It's like a Rifts game in prose.

But the most unforgivable of all is that Transition is told in fragments. A terrible attack on the Wilmarth Foundation means its records have been lost, so we are left with a story that has been pieced together. Where the pieces are missing, Lumley uses ellipses. A lot. Reading the book becomes painful… whenever Lumley doesn’t feel like filling in the blanks…he uses ellipses…until you get just fragments like…ENERGY RAY…INTERDIMENSIONAL TRAVEL…OH MY GOD...MY EYES...ARE...BLEEDING…

There's a particular standout scene where Crow, confused and lost in a prehistoric era, engages in a battle of survival with a pterosaur and a giant crab. It's good stuff, but doesn't make up for the sheer insanity of what can only be described as lazy writing. We get it: the fragments of what happened to Crow are hard to piece together. But since this is, ya know, a WORK OF FICTION, it would be nice if the narrator made a token effort to craft a full story for the reader rather than transcribe the bits and pieces literally. And for that only Lumley can be held accountable.

In terms of characterization, Crow is a bit of a cipher. De Marigny has most of the personality, and even he tends to bluster through the book with very British exclamations of surprise and horror. The characters are rarely in actual danger and their stiff upper lip attitude becomes so overbearing that they begin to feel invincible even in the face of the mind-blasting insanity that is the *cough* CCD.

Worth reading to provide a foundation for Titus Crow and as a template for a role-playing game universe where the player characters actually have a chance against a Lovecraftian menace. If you can stick with it, the next book in the series gets much better.

VACH-VIRAJ INCANTATION
Abjuration [Good]
Level:     Arcane 2
Components:     V, S,
Casting Time:     1 standard action
Range:     Touch
Area:     10-ft.-radius emanation from touched creature
Duration:     10 min./level
Saving Throw:     Will negates (harmless)
Spell Resistance:     No; see text

All creatures within the area gain the effects of a protection from evil spell, and no nongood summoned creatures can enter the area either. You must overcome a creature’s spell resistance in order to keep it at bay (as in the third function of protection from evil), but the deflection and resistance bonuses and the protection from mental control apply regardless of enemies’ spell resistance. This spell is not cumulative with protection from evil and vice versa.

Arcane Material Component: The caster chants, "Yan a kadishtu nilgh'ri stell-bsna Nyogtha, K'yarnak phlegethor l'ebumma syha'h n'ghft, Ya hai kadishtu ep r'luh-eeh Nyogtha eeh, S'uhn-ngth athg li-hee orr'e syha'h."

TIKKOUN ELIXIR
Tikkoun elixir damages undead creatures and evil outsiders almost as if it were acid. A flask of tikkoun elixir can be thrown as a splash weapon. Treat this attack as a ranged touch attack with a range increment of 10 feet. A flask breaks if thrown against the body of a corporeal creature, but to use it against an incorporeal creature, you must open the flask and pour the tikkoun elixir out onto the target. Thus, you can douse an incorporeal creature with tikkoun elixir only if you are adjacent to it. Doing so is a ranged touch attack that does not provoke attacks of opportunity A direct hit by a flask of tikkoun elixir deals 2d4 points of damage to an undead creature or an evil outsider. Each such creature within 5 feet of the point where the flask hits takes 1 point of damage from the splash.

MNAR STAR-STONES
The star-stones of ancient Mnar form the perfect barrier against the minions of the Cthulhu Mythos, and to a lesser degree against the Great Old Ones themselves, but they are few and far between. This small grey (sometimes greenish) stone in the shape of a five-pointed star is a powerful protection against all minions of the Old Ones. The true potent Elder Signs are few in number and incredibly ancient, having been made by the elder gods. As long as an elder sign is carried, it grants the carrier a +5 resistance bonus on all Will saving throws against effects that originate from Mythos beings. If worn, an elder sign also grants a luck bonus to Defense and on all saving throws against attacks from aberrations, as well as a luck bonus on level checks made to penetrate a Mythos being's spell resistance of +5. The Elder Signs are highly resistant to destruction -- armor class 22, broken only by magic or by incredible force. The Elder Sign was used by the elder gods to seal off those places where the Great Old Ones were imprisoned or where they had a chance of "breaking through" in force to the Prime Material Plane. An acolyte can use an Elder Sign to turn a Mythos being as if they were undead.

For more info: For more on Titus Crow, see his Wikipedia entry.