As far as horror writers go, there’s one that raises far
above all others: H.P. Lovecraft. In his day he wrote bizarre landscapes and
horrifying monsters from the depths of time and space. Nowadays, the British
author Brian Lumley draws his influences from Lovecraft and creates many a
bizarre landscape of horror himself: The
House of Doors being just one of many.
The House of Doors’
main plot revolves around the Thone–a highly evolved species of aliens that are
looking to terra-form new planets to their own ends. The Thone have found Earth
and have planted a monstrous device on our planet's surface. The device is a
test to see if humanity has evolved past the point where the Thone will have to
leave them be, but the Thone named Sith running this test has become corrupted
and will do anything to stop the group of people trapped inside the House of
Doors from winning.
The author of The
House of Doors, as I stated above, is the famous English horror writer
Brian Lumley. Lumley has, over the years, made his name synonymous with the
horror genre. He’s added to H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos, written the huge
series of books Necroscope that has
many spin-off titles come from it, and, in 2010 he was awarded the Lifetime
Achievement Award of the Horror Writers Association and the World Fantasy
Award. All in all, the man knows his way around a horror novel!
The characters of the piece are a rag-tag group of people
thrown together into the nightmare world that is the House of Doors by nothing
more coincidence. There’s Spencer, the hero of the piece, who is able to
empathetically connect with machines. Turnbull, an ex-secret agent. Varre, a
claustrophobic Frenchman who is only out for himself. Anderson, an arrogant
politician who is also only out for himself. Claybourne, an overly-religious,
fanatical occult zealot. Haggie, a brash, back-stabbing, two-bit criminal, and
Angela, a woman running from an abusive drunkard and is mostly defined by her
sexuality (Lumley never misses an opportunity to describe how most of her
clothes have ripped off or put her in a situation that might end with rape).
All these characters are varied and vivid but after a while, they stop adding
to the storyline and just start bogging it down. It’s the same with the
locations which are often expunged under the gravity of all the conflicting
personalities and neurosis’s when they should be the highlight of the piece.
Speaking of locations, the setting of this novel is that of
an alien machine nicknamed The Castle (only later being called the House of
Doors by the group trapped inside) that mysteriously appeared on a hilltop in Scotland.
Within the strange alien machine there are doors upon doors upon doors that
each lead to a different place be it a lush forest filled with horrible
monsters or a desert crawling with werewolves and Hell fire. Depending on who
goes through the doors first depends upon what’s waiting for them–each door and
world within that door is a construct of the person’s worst fears and
anxieties. That being said the worlds are always very human in their construct:
there are no strange alien atmospheres or fantastical magic landscapes, just
things that humans are scared of and all in all, that’s a little bland after a
while (although I will say that Spencer’s world is pretty creepy when you
really think about it).
The House of Doors
is not a horror story–at least not by the standards that Lumley has set with
his other works. It’s a science-fiction thriller about alien invasion and the
old stand by that comes with invasion: triumph against all odds. It’s an
interesting look at the characters’ psyches and some of the worlds that they
find themselves in are creepy and imaginative, but it falls short of the horror
mark as the humans trapped within the alien machine–the predictable human
element–are put through things that humans are scared of but aren’t necessarily
all that scary to read about–the worlds that Varre and Anderson create, for
example, are just plain boring!
My final thoughts on The
House of Doors is that it’s alright. If you’re looking for horror along the
lines of Lumley’s Necroscope series
or his writings on in the Cthulhu mythos, you’re looking in the wrong place but
The House of Doors is still an
interesting read if you’re a science-fiction/thriller fan, a Brian Lumley fan,
or are just looking for a break from the usual things you read.
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