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This book is part of an expanding collection of Cthulhu Mythos horror fiction and related topics. Call of Cthulhu fiction focuses on single entities, concepts, or authors significant to readers and fans of H.P. Lovecraft.

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Marvelous Machen

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Subtle but penetrating, Arthur Machen's sinuous prose slips over the reader like a chill London fog. The path he traces in the novella and three short stories that comprise this book veers from the mundane course of daily life into searing glimpses of what haunts the periphery of the known. A momentary vision of that horror splinters the mind of the seer and cracks open a doorway to the world in "The Great God Pan." Cryptic markings and the disappearance of a girl in the hills of the countryside lead to a shattering revelation in "The Shining Pyramid." Take the journey with Machen, and by the end you'll agree with one of his characters in "The Three Impostors" ..... "that matter is as really awful and unknown as spirit, that science itself but dallies on the threshold, scarcely gaining more than a glimpse of the wonders of the inner place."

Excellent fantasy horror

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I bought this book thinking it would make for good reading around Halloween and I could not be more pleased. Arthur Machen's tales spin together cult science, mysticism, and Victorian horror to create very atmospheric stories that touch on the darkest human fears. An innocent investigator often narrates these tales after being drawn into a deeper investigation of a news headline that has thrilled the public - getting pulled into the dark secrets that underlie the headline and have been overlooked or ignored by the officials.

Short and sweet!!

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Is it "imposter" or "impostor"--that's the question that nagged me while I read The Three Imposters. Which spelling is correct, and which is the imposter/or? The lexicographers need to come down hard on this issue! That aside, The Three Imposters is a black diamond of a little dark fantasy, told in hypnotic descriptive prose. The book is structured as a series of stories within a frame story, much like the Decameron or Canterbury Tales, only the frame story has its own plot and is the most interesting of all in The Three Imposters. The sub-stories range from the strange to the macabre, to the frankly paranormal, each entertaining in its own right, besides what it contributes to the whole. Moreover, Machen's style glitters with curious flights of thought and characterizations, wellnigh as entertaining as the story itself. What struck me most of all about The Three Imposters is how panoramically influencial this short book is, as if it were the whole nine muses of twentieth century literature! The Maltese Falcon owes an obvious debt to the Gold Tiberius. I think that the Novel of the Dark Valley is a clear precursor to the Trial, and obviously, Lovecraft derived his entire schtick from the Adventure of the Lost Brother. Machen himself must have been influenced by Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, published about 10 years earlier, but Machen amplifies the original, rather than narrowing it. Altogether, The Three Imposters is well worth the 150 pages or so of reading time. Dyson and Phillipps are my new literary heroes! I would recommend this Chaosium edition, which includes these several other quality Machen works and sells for nearly the same price as other editions.

A great addition to any weird library, from this Welsh seer of the hidden

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First of all, a warning; do NOT read the introduction to Machen by S. T. Joshi strangely placed in the front of the book before you read the stories. The otherwise excellent introduction contains spoilers to all the stories, something I thankfully noticed at an early time. Being part of my effort to "branch out" beyond H. P. Lovecraft, I purchased all the three books by Arthur Machen that has been published by Chaosium. The tales within turned out to be excellent, and I quickly saw why HPL praised Machen so highly. Even though parts of the tales no longer appear as "shocking" as they once did, with their horror being centred on "sex and pagans", they still have a mild discomfort to offer, and the final tale of the book is, as we shall see, quite the masterpiece. The first tale is "The Great God Pan", a very good tale, but as I've said; time has not been kind to this. A naked God in the forest don't exactly scare or shock people these days, at least not in the way that Machen intended. Although, it should be noted that I'm not the type of "conventional Christian" that Machen had in mind as his audience when he wrote it. The tale details an experiment gone "wrong", where a young girl sees and interacts with the ancient heathen god Pan. The result pops out nine months later, and several horrific incidents spawn from this. A fine tale, but a bit dated. The second tale is much more to my taste, "The Inmost Light" (and for fans of the marvellous English musical group Current 93, I assume this is where Tibet got his title), also a taste centred around an experiment, where an occultist attempt to capture the essence of the body, "The Inmost Light", in a gem. A wonderful tale with an eerie feeling throughout. The third tale is "The Shining Pyramid", a tale about the well-known "Little people", and one of the two best tales in the book. It unfolds somewhat like a detective novel, where two men find strange clues to uncanny activities in connection to the disappearance of a young woman in the Welsh countryside. The protagonists suspect the hands of the pre-Aryan inhabitants of Europe, and the tale is an effective weird tale, with Machen's wonderful prose really showing its best side. The final tale, or I should say "tales", is the title story, "The Three Impostors", which is a strange creation of interlocking tales many in number. The tale is about a young man in London, a wannabe writer, who through random encounters with a few people hears several tales that all contain a few common elements; "a young man with large spectacles" and some weird and horrific incidents involving this young man. But alas all is not as it appears to be, and we are brought to several places in the search for this man, and what it all means is not revealed before the final phrases, where the real evil is revealed. This tale is among the best work I've read in the genre, and it really gives you the creeps at various parts, some of it being simply excellent. Highly recommended!

More chilling than gore

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This review is only about the title story, or rather, short novel. It is a circular story, as it ends where it begins. Characters have multiple identities and strange coincidences abound. It is a macabre joke, a foundational book of the cosmic horror a la Lovecraft and his Ctulhu mysteries. It is also a peak of the late Victorian era and much more. What makes it more than a genre story is the poetic quality of its literature. There are paragraphs that would make little perfect prose poems. Along several months, or years, Dyson and Phillips meet different persons, who have in common the search for a shy and nervous young man with a little black moustache and big spectacles. Each one of these persons tells his or her story in inserted chilling tales, full of the imagery that would later become cliche. This is no cheap horror: it has a great sense of humor, it is not about axe-grinding nor about phantoms and exorcisms. It is pure cosmic horror, the horror of hidden forces and obscure memories of a remote past. It is a horror of strange gatherings and incognoscible conspiracies. The inserted stories are often compiled independently of their contextual frame: "The novel of the Dark Valley" is an adventure in the loneliness of the Rocky Mountains, with a pre-Kafkian touch that makes you go pale. "The novel of the Black Seal" happens in the Welsh wilderness, with a mad scientist and beings from the past. "The novel of the Iron Maiden" includes a collectionist of instruments of torture. "The novel of the White Powder" is about a substance that transforms humans into something indefinible and horrific. Finally, ""The story of the Spectacled Young Man" closes the circle and "explains" everything. Like a good Englishman, Machen is a master of the understatement. More than showing, he insinuates to let the readers feel for themselves all the weight of the horror of the world, the mysteries that haunt us, and the strangeness of this life. Little surprise, then, that this was one of Jorge Luis Borges's favorite books, since much of his beloved subjects are here: ancient and undecipherable languages; stories lost in time; mirror games; equivocal identities; implacable gods; and somber mansions. Much recommended.