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Review of The Fishers from Outside
All reviews are spoiler free.
This is an odd tale. Carter can, at times, have some goods lines in him. Take this description of Zimbabwe’s jungle:
“The jungle, I somehow knew, had not surrendered, but had merely retreated before superior force, and was biding its time, waiting for the puny, ephemeral children of men to leave that it might inexorably regain its antique dominion over the mighty walls and towers.”
That’s a strong image. It’s well crafted. Carter can have a few lines like this here and there that give point to the fact that’s he not a mere hack. But at the same time, Carter is not something relevant. His work is fully derivative. While setting a Mythos story in Zimbabwe is nice compared to others, it’s still in an identical location as two Lovecraft stories. The work is fully derivative and there’s not a clever or unknown plot line or twist here at all.
Nothing that happens is unpredictable. Carter is setting out to tell a Mythos story, not a story that happens to be in the Mythos. He hits many elements hard, and does not that has not been done before or sense. Carter doesn’t care. He was criticized for enjoying genres that never grew up, and then challenged the point that they had to. Reading them was fun! Writing them was fun!
This is Carter at that. His story intends to be fun, he doesn’t care that it’s hitting the exact same notes. Was is fun for you to read it? Great! He’s happy.
As this is coming near the end of his career as his writing style has honed, I am giving it a 3.0 rating out of 5 stars.
Next let’s say in 1988 and do Carter’s “Dead of Night”
I have a copy in my collection called “The Book of Iod” as edited by Robert Price and published in 1995. This story is set in the same place as Robert E Howard’s River Street District that was inhabited by his Steven Harrison detective series of stories.
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