The Feaster From The Stars (Blackwood & Harrington Mystery)
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LONDON, 1899
Something strange is happening on the London Underground. The ghosts which haunt the platforms and tunnels are being seen much more frequently than usual, and it seems that they are both angry and frightened. Something has appeared on the subterranean railway network of which even the dead are afraid, and the train drivers and other staff are becoming increasingly reluctant to work there. Installation of the new Atmospheric Railway has begun, and the railway companies are demanding that the mystery be solved before their investments go up in a puff of steam.
When a train driver is driven insane by something indescribable in the remote tunnel known as the Kennington Loop, Queen Victoria instructs her Bureau of Clandestine Affairs to aid the Metropolitan Templar Police in their investigation.
Enter Thomas Blackwood, Special Investigator, and Lady Sophia Harrington, Secretary of the Society for Psychical Research. Along with Detective Gerhard de Chardin and the famous occultist Simon Castaigne, Blackwood and Sophia plunge into a terrifying adventure which takes them from the dank tunnels of the London Underground to the depths of interstellar space and a dying planet known as Carcosa, where a horrific being from beyond Space and Time has set its sights on Earth.
The being is known in the annals of the occult as the King in Yellow, or the Feaster from the Stars, and unless Blackwood and Sophia can prevail, it will descend upon the Earth and consume every living thing on it!
Something strange is happening on the London Underground. The ghosts which haunt the platforms and tunnels are being seen much more frequently than usual, and it seems that they are both angry and frightened. Something has appeared on the subterranean railway network of which even the dead are afraid, and the train drivers and other staff are becoming increasingly reluctant to work there. Installation of the new Atmospheric Railway has begun, and the railway companies are demanding that the mystery be solved before their investments go up in a puff of steam.
When a train driver is driven insane by something indescribable in the remote tunnel known as the Kennington Loop, Queen Victoria instructs her Bureau of Clandestine Affairs to aid the Metropolitan Templar Police in their investigation.
Enter Thomas Blackwood, Special Investigator, and Lady Sophia Harrington, Secretary of the Society for Psychical Research. Along with Detective Gerhard de Chardin and the famous occultist Simon Castaigne, Blackwood and Sophia plunge into a terrifying adventure which takes them from the dank tunnels of the London Underground to the depths of interstellar space and a dying planet known as Carcosa, where a horrific being from beyond Space and Time has set its sights on Earth.
The being is known in the annals of the occult as the King in Yellow, or the Feaster from the Stars, and unless Blackwood and Sophia can prevail, it will descend upon the Earth and consume every living thing on it!
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
A hundred years ago, Robert W Chambers wrote his pioneering stories featuring the rumour of The King in Yellow, the subject of a play, fragments of which were enough to drive readers insane. These are chilling, disturbing stories, clear precursors to much 20th century Lovecraftian and other "weird" fiction.
In "The Feaster from the Stars", Baker takes and develops this mythology, pitting his investigators Thomas Blackwood and Sophia Harrington, inhabitants of a steampunk Victorian world replete with ghosts, faeries and Martian visitors (think HG Wells's Martians, but peaceful) against the eponymous King, which now threatens Earth. The story is told with great zest and pace and is certainly a page-turner. As a contribution to the alt-Victorian genre it is OK - better than The Affinity Bridge perhaps, maybe not quite as good as The Bookman - but I'm bothered by the use to which Chambers' disturbing vision is put. In his stories the King is only hinted at. We don't really know what he is, or where Carcosa is, or what has happened to produce such horror. However, Baker can't help but be much more specific, and that, frankly, takes away a degree of the horror. "You must not let daylight in upon magic" wrote Walter Bagehot and I think that also goes for nameless-evils-from-beyond-the stars. "In his house at R'lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming". Don't wake Him up, in case He simply looks silly.
So I'd say this is amusing enough, but perhaps diminishes its source material rather. Which is a pity, because Chambers' originals are well worth a read, true brooding classics. (If you do read them, and I'd really urge you to, do beware that he only wrote a few King in Yellow stories, and Chambers anthologies therefore tend to be padded out with other, much inferior stuff which really isn't worth bothering about.)
In "The Feaster from the Stars", Baker takes and develops this mythology, pitting his investigators Thomas Blackwood and Sophia Harrington, inhabitants of a steampunk Victorian world replete with ghosts, faeries and Martian visitors (think HG Wells's Martians, but peaceful) against the eponymous King, which now threatens Earth. The story is told with great zest and pace and is certainly a page-turner. As a contribution to the alt-Victorian genre it is OK - better than The Affinity Bridge perhaps, maybe not quite as good as The Bookman - but I'm bothered by the use to which Chambers' disturbing vision is put. In his stories the King is only hinted at. We don't really know what he is, or where Carcosa is, or what has happened to produce such horror. However, Baker can't help but be much more specific, and that, frankly, takes away a degree of the horror. "You must not let daylight in upon magic" wrote Walter Bagehot and I think that also goes for nameless-evils-from-beyond-the stars. "In his house at R'lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming". Don't wake Him up, in case He simply looks silly.
So I'd say this is amusing enough, but perhaps diminishes its source material rather. Which is a pity, because Chambers' originals are well worth a read, true brooding classics. (If you do read them, and I'd really urge you to, do beware that he only wrote a few King in Yellow stories, and Chambers anthologies therefore tend to be padded out with other, much inferior stuff which really isn't worth bothering about.)
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Kindle Edition
"The Martian Ambassador" was, for me, a real find last year. A really excellent work. This sequel sees the return of the two lead characters from that book. For me its the chemistry between the two leads that sets this series above, say, George Mann's works (The Affinity bridge, etc).
The title (The Feaster From The Stars) conjours images of lovecraftian entities out of space and time and that's exactly what we get here.
That said, this lacked that certain lovecraftian "something" and also certainly struggled to live up to the first excellent book in the series. I personally think this reflects that some of the excellent scene setting that took place in the first book had been pretty much set aside here - eg Earth and Martian/Venusian politics took very much a back seat and were not really moved forwards at all. Rather the autor has taken the well established characters and cast them into a wholly new situation - rather than continiong their story arc, although I am perhaps being slightly unfair as the relationship between the two main characters does develop in this book.
For anyone who enjoyed the first in the series this is pretty much a must read. If you haven't read the Martian Ambassador then I would recomend that you give that a try first.
So hey, maybe the plot in this sequel was perhaps a trifle too outlandish at times (eg the flying fairy galleon!) but I must admit I still enjoyed it immensly and am eagerly awaiting the next novel, which hopefully will represent a stronger entry in the ongoing series.
The title (The Feaster From The Stars) conjours images of lovecraftian entities out of space and time and that's exactly what we get here.
That said, this lacked that certain lovecraftian "something" and also certainly struggled to live up to the first excellent book in the series. I personally think this reflects that some of the excellent scene setting that took place in the first book had been pretty much set aside here - eg Earth and Martian/Venusian politics took very much a back seat and were not really moved forwards at all. Rather the autor has taken the well established characters and cast them into a wholly new situation - rather than continiong their story arc, although I am perhaps being slightly unfair as the relationship between the two main characters does develop in this book.
For anyone who enjoyed the first in the series this is pretty much a must read. If you haven't read the Martian Ambassador then I would recomend that you give that a try first.
So hey, maybe the plot in this sequel was perhaps a trifle too outlandish at times (eg the flying fairy galleon!) but I must admit I still enjoyed it immensly and am eagerly awaiting the next novel, which hopefully will represent a stronger entry in the ongoing series.
2 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I had great hopes for this novel, having thoroughly enjoyed Baker's first 'Blackwood and Harrington' novel. The Martian Ambassador is a standard Steampunk mystery with enough tweaks to remain interesting. It is comfortably familiar yet fresh. This second instalment promised the same shenanigans but this time on a steampunked London Underground - what's not to like? Sadly though, Baker failed to deliver on his promise. Instead he cranked the weird lever to full, but forget to inject any plot or characterisation.
The story is straightforward. A giant creature from another dimension is coming to Earth and it's going to absorb everyone. Oh yes, and it's mind bogglingly scary. No, it is! It's so scary it will unhinge your mind. There is no way you can comprehend how scary it is, without going insane. It's from another dimension, you see, and indescribable; you just can't describe how terrifying it is... And so it goes on. Such is Baker's insistence that his creation is terrifying, it becomes anything but. Blackwood and Harrington have to save the world from this unspeakable horror - and maybe they do...
FFTS is apparently based on some short stories by Robert W Chambers, a forerunner to Lovecraft. I've never been a fan of HP's particular brand of sauce, so perhaps I was never going to like this book. Pandimensional sci-fi just isn't my thing. 'The Martian Ambassador' worked so well, because though Baker has created an alternate world, much of the novel is rooted in reality. The central mystery took place in a well-defined area that the reader could identify with. In FFTS we are dealing with a creature on the far-side of the universe, that came from another universe, that exists in a dimension we can't possibly imagine (whatever that means). I just understood all this to mean that there were tentacles involved.
I have a suspicion, (though absolutely no evidence to back it up) that this an early novel, dusted off and hastily altered after the relative success of 'TMA'. The two novels are very different, and Blackwood and Harrington feel bolted on and very flat. Baker's prose is leaden compared to his first book. Sentence after sentence read like this '...a vast, amorphous mass which flapped and writhed hideously, like the gelatinous denizens which pulsated in the gelid darkness of Earth's deepest oceans.' It becomes extremely tiresome, and not remotely scary or exciting.
Much like its scary monster, FFTS is a flabby mess, with little to recommend it. This is a great shame, after such a promising debut. I sincerely hope this is a blip, and the promised third novel is a return to form. If not I shall be condemning Blackwood and Harrington to the Aether.
The story is straightforward. A giant creature from another dimension is coming to Earth and it's going to absorb everyone. Oh yes, and it's mind bogglingly scary. No, it is! It's so scary it will unhinge your mind. There is no way you can comprehend how scary it is, without going insane. It's from another dimension, you see, and indescribable; you just can't describe how terrifying it is... And so it goes on. Such is Baker's insistence that his creation is terrifying, it becomes anything but. Blackwood and Harrington have to save the world from this unspeakable horror - and maybe they do...
FFTS is apparently based on some short stories by Robert W Chambers, a forerunner to Lovecraft. I've never been a fan of HP's particular brand of sauce, so perhaps I was never going to like this book. Pandimensional sci-fi just isn't my thing. 'The Martian Ambassador' worked so well, because though Baker has created an alternate world, much of the novel is rooted in reality. The central mystery took place in a well-defined area that the reader could identify with. In FFTS we are dealing with a creature on the far-side of the universe, that came from another universe, that exists in a dimension we can't possibly imagine (whatever that means). I just understood all this to mean that there were tentacles involved.
I have a suspicion, (though absolutely no evidence to back it up) that this an early novel, dusted off and hastily altered after the relative success of 'TMA'. The two novels are very different, and Blackwood and Harrington feel bolted on and very flat. Baker's prose is leaden compared to his first book. Sentence after sentence read like this '...a vast, amorphous mass which flapped and writhed hideously, like the gelatinous denizens which pulsated in the gelid darkness of Earth's deepest oceans.' It becomes extremely tiresome, and not remotely scary or exciting.
Much like its scary monster, FFTS is a flabby mess, with little to recommend it. This is a great shame, after such a promising debut. I sincerely hope this is a blip, and the promised third novel is a return to form. If not I shall be condemning Blackwood and Harrington to the Aether.
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