The protagonists spend their days scouring the stacks at Miskatonic University for clues while dealing with overt discrimination in the face of their differences. Once the inhuman are rendered human there is very little left to write about.
Emrys characters rub shoulders with the fantastic denizens of Lovecraft’s stories and consistently walk away sanity intact as the cosmic void is rendered toothless since its denizens are not evil but simply misunderstood. Undoubtedly, ghouls are simply the victims of an unsavory eating disorder. Deep One ancestors swim out from Devil’s Reef to complain about the blood libel (seriously!) that resulted in the destruction of Innsmouth. The nuances of their culture are explored and they are presented as just another branch of humans, with a tendency towards scaly skin and a disposition for salty water and seafood. The deep ones are presented as just another ethnic group that has been horribly mistreated by White America. Reviewers are correct to praise the radical viewpoint this work presents and how this turns the standard idea of a Lovecraftian protagonist on its head but fail to note that once you get past this unique idea there is very little worth remembering about this novel. Emrys deserves full credit for creating an amazing hook for this novel.
(Apr.I genuinely disliked this novel and feel distinctly cheated that it is so overhyped in every review I read online.The idea behind this novel is a genuine breakthrough for a genre that has many detractors pointing to the wild racism of Lovecraft and asking if he deserves to be remembered fondly for his literary contributions. Emrys’s characters are more openly comfortable with the supernatural than Lovecraft’s horror-struck mortals, and her sensitive comparisons of Aphra’s experience to those of other confined and displaced peoples make the novel historically relevant and resonant. Emrys elevates her story above traditional tales of Cold War paranoia by making Aphra’s reacquaintance with Innsmouth culture her introduction to a personal heritage that she had been blocked from accessing. Spector hopes to determine whether prying Russian agents may have learned the secret of magically forcing their minds into the bodies of American politicians and scientists. It’s 1948, and Aphra and Caleb Marsh, descendents of the amphibious Innsmouth folk imprisoned in the aftermath of Lovecraft’s “The Shadow Over Innsmouth,” are tapped by FBI agent Ron Spector to study Innsmouth artifacts now stored at the Miskatonic University library in Arkham, Mass. Lovecraft, this inventive dark fantasy crossbreeds the cosmic horrors of the Cthulhu mythos with the espionage escapades of a Cold War thriller. Marbled with references to the fiction of H.P.
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