Harry Keogh: Necroscope (Tom Doherty Associates Book)
£5.39
3 New Necroscope Short Stories .. and a few others...... - This is a book of 9 short stories.Three of them concern David Hero and Eldin the Wanderer.Three involve Titus Crow.And most importantly for the Necroscope fan, there are three short stories about Harry Keogh that we haven t seen before.The three short stories for Harry Keogh are set in different periods of his life.The first two, Dead Eddy and Dinosaur Dreams are set after the Lost Years novels, but before The Source.The final story is called Resurrection, and is set DURING the last of the original Necroscope novels i.e. Deadspawn.They are good little stories, but have nothing that add to the legend of Harry Keogh in my opinion.Of the three stories my favourite is Dinosaur Dreams and concerns the murder of an archaelogist whilst pursuing a fossil hunt, that Harry decides to avenge.Dead Eddy concerns the Necroscope avenging an old slot-machine engineer who was murdered by the mob in Las Vegas.And Resurrection is about a dream Harry has about resurrecting his mother, in the same way he brought Trevor Jordan back in the final novel of the original series.Like i say, these books don t really add anything to the character of Harry. It was enjoyable to read them, don t get me wrong, but he almost feels too invincible in them , and you know that his life continues after these stories. Also, these stories seem insignificant in comparison to his higher purpose of eradicating the vampires from our world. In some ways i can t really imagine Harry doing these things - they almost seem too trivial for him to be doing them. But if you can get past this flaw then i think they are quite enjoyable. If you are a huge fan of the early Necroscope novels you will HAVE to buy these purely to wring a little more out of this great series.The Hero and Eldin short stories are a humour/ light fantasy type of story, and whilst slightly amusing this is not what Brian Lumley is best at.And finally we get to the three Titus Crow novels which i will warn you, appear in other collections (which i really recommend).This is a taster of the character, and a really good one in my view! Titus Crow is a psychic detective and he appears in many short stories of Lumley s concerning HP Lovecraft s Cthulu Mythos.These stories start with the tale of how Crow becomes gifted (a really great introduction that you could imagine being filmed).It is only a few pages long, but really enjoyable - gripping and quite clever.The second is Lord of the Worms and is just superb.It is one of the best short horror novels i have read. I recommend reading this novella if you have ever wanted to see what Titus Crow is all about. Finally, we get Name and Number and again this is to do with the dark arts and numerology, and more of the Lovecraftian mythos. It is short, well written and really enjoyable. So all in all, it is a good solid collection.The Necroscope and Titus Crow short stories are the stand-out titles within the book.The weakness is that some of the Crow novels appear elsewhere and that the Hero and Eldin books aren t my cup of tea.But i would definitely recommend reading the other Titus Crow books - they are collected in the Mythos Omnibus 1 and 2.Crow is a character that Brian Lumley should really make more of in my opinion.He has an air of a psychic Sherlock Holmes about him.
Continuation of the Harry Koegh Tradition - I received this as a gift from my wife, and it was a fantastic surprise. I have the complete Necroscope series and I am an avid fan. The 3 short stories of Harry are very good, including a section, which will only really make sense if you have read Deadspawn and understand the story.The section about Titus crow is available in other books, but it does give a good introduction.For any fan of Harry Koegh this book is an excellent extra for any collection.This book carries on the tradition of Harry Koegh proving he is friend to the living and loved by all the Dead.