Beyond the Mountains of Madness

Stableford’s latest (after The Revelations of Time and Space) takes readers to post-WWI Britain for a tale of curiosity and dread. Tom “Linny” Andersley, a botanist and WWI vet, is reacquainted with his Eton friend Lawrence “Titus” Oates after Titus’s seven-year disappearance on the Antarctic Ross Shelf. Most presumed Titus dead, but now he’s back bearing wild stories of the strange beings he encountered in the Antarctic as well as a parcel of “vampire seeds” they’ve given him, which need blood to grow. He’s come to Linny for help cultivating these seeds—setting both men down a dangerous path. Stableford clearly owes a debt to H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Mountains of Madness” and John W. Campbell Jr.’s “Who Goes There?” and he does a good job evoking the tone of 19th- and early 20th-century horror. Indeed, the failures are few: there’s some excessive exposition and the relationship between Tom and his wife, Helen, is treated with a melodramatic lens that does not glance on the rest of the plot. Despite these minor flaws, the novel reveals itself in clever fashion to be a story of possession. Horror readers are sure to be impressed. (Mar.)