Water being a huge weakness also makes them one of the vulnerable Mythos creatures, giving humanity a fighting chance. On the other hand, with a detailed life cycle, the Cthonians stop being a cosmic horror and just an alien life form that is comprehensible. On the one hand, I have to give Lumley full props on creating a whole new Mythos element with Shudde M’ell and the Cthonians. Our heroes help them make some major victories but the book ends on a cliffhanger.īut since there are five or six more books, I am sure Crow and de Marigny are okay. That’s an organization devoted to the extermination of Myrhos stuff. Their attempts to thwart the Cthonians put them extreme danger until they meet the Wilmarth Foundation. Titus Crow, paranormal Sherlock Holmes, and his Watson Henri de Marigny figure out the existence of the burrow horrors the Cthonians and their blasphemous god Shudde M’ell. Not necessarily ‘the ghouls are stealing the wifi’ normal but the Mythos being a regular part of the world, not something that drives you insane. I also think of it as the normalization of the Mythos.

So actual Lovecraft works like The Dunwich Horror count. That is basically defined as ‘humans can win’. Lumley is allegedly controversial because he fully embraced the Lovecraft Lite style. He was writing before the Mythos went mainstream so he kept the fire going. But I have seen his short stories in different anthologies. I couldn’t find any of his books until digital publishing brought them back. I’m honestly not sure Lumley is obscure or not as far as Mythos writers are concerned.

Now, I finally have read The Burrowers Beneath by Brian Lumley. A long time back, possibly when life was still crawling out of the ocean and the Elder Things still thought Shogoths were a good alternative to bulldozers, I first saw the entry in the Call of Cthulhu RPG entry for Cthonians and Shudde M’ell.