In day two of Brian Lumley week I present the first volume of Lumley's two Mythos Omnibuses (is that a word?), which contains (yet again) The Burrowers Beneath, The Transition of Titus Crow and The Clock of Dreams, which together comprise the opening trilogy to what would eventually comprise a series of at least nine interlinking books, throughout which Lumley continues the work of Derleth in attempting to systematize the Cthulhu Mythos.
In any case, The Transition of Tius Crow - a direct sequel to The Burrowers Beneath - remains one of my favourite Lumley works, and in part because our eponymous hero becomes a veritable Mythos-bashing Doctor Who-like figure, flying around time and space in a clock (the weird alien one from 'Through the Gate of the Silver Key') which is bigger on the inside than on the out. Despite how bad that sounds, Transition is rip-roaring pulpy goodness, and even manages to occasionally evoke a sense of the cosmic - dealing as it does with Crow's travels through vast swathes of time and space.
Admittedly Lumley is unable to sustain this on account of his insistence on subjecting the Mythos to a Derlethian moral dualism; the Mythos is, however, both big enough and strange enough to encompass multiple philosophies (even if they are diametrically opposed), so I for one remain unashamedly a fan of Lumley. Just don't mention Kthanid.
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