This book was first brought to my attention in 2004 by James Ambuehl, as of some interest to Cthulhu mythos fiction fans. He mentioned it again a few months ago and I was able to get a used copy for afew bucks plus shipping. City of Pillars dates from 2000, from The Invisible College Press. It is a decent 215 page trade paperback; my copy is a little beat up, being used. Cover art by Juliana Pelosi (the author's wife? sister?) was pretty forgettable. Editing was decent with only a few typos or word substitutions (eg: poured for pored)
This book is only very tangentially connected to mythos stories. It centers around Irem, the ancient city mentioned a few times in passing by HPL (here is the Wikipedia link for those interested: [...] There is an ancient manuscript (albeit witten in human tongues by human hands) and a vast global conspiracy (but not the Cthulhu cult). That's it, really. Otherwise it is not a Cthulhu mythos story.
Briefly, Mitchell Sinclair is an up and coming attorney who cuts in front of a car remarkably similar to his at a toll booth. The guard tosses a manuscript into the back of his car, perhaps intended for the driver behnd him. Before he knows it, he is being hunted by men wearing black suits who want their manuscript back. They are relentless and ruthless, and Mitchell flees with the manuscript as the body count rises. The remainder of the book is devoted to his efforts to translate the manuscript and avoid capture, while visiting places whose identities he has been able to uncover in his researches. His need to know the truth, and either get revenge or at least understand his tormentors drives him to increasingly desperate and deviant acts.
Mostly I found City of Pillars a better read than, say, The Dark Destroyer. Partiuclarly, the first 1/3 to 1/2, when Sinclair is driven on the run, had a nice frenetic pace and good, tense atmosphere. I gobbled this part up in one night. After that, however, the plot changed from a continuous narrative into short, disparate vignettes, with some loss of momentum and interest. Quite a lot of mysticism and drug use was alluded to, although not elaborated on as well as it might have been. For example, Mr. Pelosi mentions the divine geometry and the Kaballah, but not in any detail. There were bits about meditation and mathematics, almost like just mentioning them was supposed to make us buy into the protagonist's transformation. Maybe these were thrown in to attract the New Age afficianados to the book? After a while it was like word salad in some parts and window dressing in others. If you ever saw the movie Pi you can better see how the Kaballah can be integrated into a narrative framewok and further a plot. The absence of dialogue and character develoment didn't really hamper a story like this. Even in the less well connected latter part of the book, the action bits had a good tense pace to them, and it was absorbing to see what Mitchell would do next, how low he would sink. I guess the biggest let down was the ending where nothing was really explained and I was left feeling like the author had pulled fast one.
Oh well, it only took me a couple of days to read it so I liked it better than some of the mythos dogs I have been slogging through lately. By all means try it, if you can find a cheap copy.
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