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Synopsis and Review of Out of the Ages
In my book this is more than 20 pages long, but due to very little happening, I can give you a quick one paragraph synopsis.
Dr. Blaine, Curator of Manuscripts at the Sanborne Institute in CA, is reviewing the manuscripts and research of one Prof. Copeland, who was famous as one of the key force of Pre-History Asia but who went increasingly off the rails and has been in an asylum for 8 years, having written books such as 1906 Polynesian Mythology with a Note on the Cthulhu Legend Cycle. After reviewing and investing the 12 objects found and kept by Copeland, and reviewing his works and researching his evidence, Dr. Blaine comes to accept that this has been happening as he is taken over at night by dreams sent from beneath the Pacific. He is then, himself, sent to the sanitarium.
That’s it.
This story is classic Carter. He wants to introduce things like the children of Cthulhu, and he writes something like this that takes a deep, deep, deep dive into the Mythos, where almost every paragraph is steeped in it. The first 80% of the story is just telling what someone else had done, not seeing it. The last are the 7 or so dreams, but each is a paragraph long and quickly you wrap up the story, and then move on. This is heavily derivative.
It’s not even good with the details. You’ve read Call of Cthulhu. Do you ever the character being known a that the time as part of the myth cycle of Pacific only to find out that it was all true? Nope! This was lost history, so they had to track it down in Greenland and New Orleans and elsewhere. No one knew who Cthulhu was. So how the “Cthulhu Legend Cycle” mentioned is the title of a book in 1906? The details of Carter don’t even line up with the stories he is trying to emulate.
2 stars.
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