Yeah, I know, two reviews in one day. I meant to put this one up earlier this week but couldn't as the back-end for Blogger was down. So, better late then never.
First off, let me just say that The Door To Lost Pages will always have a special place in my heart for one small reason: There's a quote from my blog in the very first page after you open the cover! It's from my review of Claude Lalumiere's Objects of Worship, and after I saw it I giggled for a good ten minutes. Really, giggled, it was terribly amusing and you should have been there.
Anyways, on the the actual review of this work. I greatly enjoyed The Door To Lost Pages. It takes some of the ideas that sprang forth in Objects and runs with them. Similar to that book, it's a collection of shorter works. It differs in that all of the works are set in the same world/realm/idea and tied together by a supernatural bookstore called, funnily enough, Lost Pages.
I think the best way to describe this book is Lovecraftian. Throughout the entire work there is an unspeakable eldritch horror hanging above, ready to invade our dreams. Every night a war takes place, a war that can only be seen by a few mortals, those who have the ability to walk through the door into Lost Pages.
I enjoy Claude Lalumiere's work. It's dark, it's sexy, unconventional, while at the same time remaining accessible. This is the kind of book you read when you want something different, something that will challenge your mind but doesn't leave you lost and wandering through a sea of overblown language and imagery. It's literary without being pretentious. It's what genre fiction can be when it takes itself seriously and doesn't hold to the idea that just because it's genre that it is somehow lesser than "literature".
I hope we see a new book from Claude within the next few years. In fact, I'm hoping we see a full blown novel. I'd love to see what he could do with a single idea and over 70,000 words to explore it in.
The Door To Lost Pages can be ordered through Amazon, here.
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