Ramsey Campbell’s Severn Valley tales constitute some of my favourite post-Lovecraft Cthulhu mythos fiction, contemporising Lovecraftian horror via the inclusion of elements of gritty social realism (as well as provding inspiration for last year’s daily blggong project, The Horsingdon Transmissions).
Whilst a strain of cosmicism have often been evident in his non-mythos work, it has been gratifying to see Campbell occasionally return to more explicitly Cthulhuvian forms of cosmic horror - albeit inflected with his uniquely subtle and unsettling style - in works such as The Darkest Part of the Woods, The Children of the Pool, The Last Revelation of Gla’aki and, most recently, Born to the Dark: the second of a new trilogy of Cthulhu mythos novels - collectively titled ‘The Three Births of Daoloth’ - which I am about to start reading.
The previous novel (The Searching Dead) was mostly set in the author’s native Liverpool; the publisher’s website, however, also refers to the series as ‘The Brichester Mythos trilogy’ - so I’m curious to see whether the current work will return us to some classic Campbellian mythos locales. Regardless, if The Searching Dead is anything to go by, ‘The Three Births of Daoloth’/‘the Brichester Mythos trilogy’ may well turn out to be Campbell’s Lovecraftian masterwork.
Born to the Dark and The Searching Dead are currently available to purchase from PS Publishing.
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