The Shadow Over Innsmouth

3/10

lmao what if foreigners lived near us and started breeding with us and they were SO foreign we didn't even know which race they were.

the first quarter of this book is the narrator commenting on how weird the foreigners at Innsmouth are because they're a port town and they got mustuh gotten mixed up in some extra weird foreign blood. He goes and visits and walks around and talks about how insane it is how foreign they look, how foreign their art is, how foreign their nose shape is, and how it sends shivers through his being. At one point he wonders if them being *just so goddamn weird* could perhaps be caused by a disease, but reassures himself that couldn't be it because of their skull shape.

I always heard the appeal of Lovecraftian horror as the horror of something so weird and otherworldly it's completely incomprehensible. Which sounds cool. But I feel like the otherworldliness and incomprehensibility here just manifests as xenophobia, which, aside from being hard enough to relate with to feel the horror the protag feels, also completely sends the tone with the absurdity lmao

The big chapter at the end was kinda cool tho. The world building was basically done, so he'd pretty much stopped trying to scare you about how scary it would be if foreigners bred with us. It was just a big long bit about him in his dark hotel room worrying about being watched, then sneaking through dark, dilapidated streets while being hunted by fish monsters (well, people bred with people who have fishy-kinda eyes and otherwise look weird, but it's happening in *my* head so).

Also, the big "and it could happen to you!" at the end was, very obviously, him finding out his great great great like grand uncle or something had the weird foreign blood, so he tries to kill himself, but before he can he becomes too much like the foreigners and accepts it. ~SPOOKY~