{"id":12674,"date":"2013-04-25T15:16:51","date_gmt":"2013-04-25T20:16:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/?p=12674"},"modified":"2013-04-25T15:16:51","modified_gmt":"2013-04-25T20:16:51","slug":"book-report-the-mall-of-cthulhu-by-seamus-cooper-2009","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2013\/04\/25\/book-report-the-mall-of-cthulhu-by-seamus-cooper-2009\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Report: The Mall of Cthulhu<\/i> by Seamus Cooper (2009)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Book<\/a>I was wandering around the library, minding my own business, when I caught sight of this book<\/a>. At first, I thought the title was Call of Cthulhu<\/em> something, as if Chaosium was releasing a set of new novels with based on the Cthulhu mythos and its roleplaying game. Then I saw it was not, and the title is what it is, and I thought all the better.<\/p>\n

The books is about a young man who, as a college student ten years prior, but down a sorority house of vampires and rescued a young lady. The event wrecked his psyche, and he’s been a barrista, mostly, since that period, and he clings to the woman he saved. She’s joined the FBI and is in the Boston office, looking for Whitey. Their relationship is friendship-only since she doesn’t have a lot of respect for him and because she’s a lesbian.<\/p>\n

One day in his coffeeshop, a bad customer leaves behind a MacGuffin, a computer disk, that the man pockets. While he delivers coffee to his FBI friend, the bad guys shoot up the coffeeshop looking for the disk. It contains login information for a Second-Life sort of virtual world where the guys are working together to piece together a working incantation to awaken Cthulhu, and they’re going to try it at a mall near a power center.<\/p>\n

It’s an amusing book, and I enjoyed it. It’s not a thoroughly professional job, as the pacing is just a little meandering at times where some excess is not trimmed–who am I to talk? It’s got a bit of an X-Files vibe going on and a touch of Odd Thomas in it, albeit in the third person. By that, I mean it’s conversational, and there’s really no sense of menace to it. You don’t think the characters are in real peril–who am I to talk?–and the climax, such as it is, doesn’t really seem like a climax and there’s a second subadventure climax in it. <\/p>\n

Still, I liked the book enough that after I finished reading it and returned it to the library, I ordered it in paperback<\/em> just so the author could get his buck-three-eighty.<\/p>\n

So now that that’s out of the way, it’s back to H.P. Lovecraft: The Complete Fiction<\/em>. Only 250 pages to go.<\/p>\n

Books mentioned in this review:<\/b>
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