Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s short story, Lot 249, was originally presented in a collection of medical stories called Round the Red Lamp.
Published in 1892, this collection of short stories created a scandal when first released. Doyle’s fans were expecting more Sherlock Holmes-type detective and crime stories but this collection featured mostly harrowing medical stories about disease and amputation.
The story I read is called Lot 249 and is about an Oxford college student whose downstairs neighbor may or may not have reanimated an ancient Egyptian mummy through some type of dark magic. This story was written during a late 19th-Century fascination with Egyptology and was the very first to use a reanimated mummy as the antagonist and would influence horror stories for years afterward.
It’s a short, quick read. It reminded me a lot of Lovecraft’s Herbert West story in style, which wouldn’t be published for another thirty years. Lot 249 is mostly three characters interacting over the course of a few days. We get the details of the events through dialogue after the fact. We don’t really see any of the mummy attacks. We actually don’t really even get to see the mummy walking around. There are a few quick glimpses in the coffin, but that’s about it. And surprisingly enough, the story is wrapped up completely with no “will the mummy actually come alive again” type cliffhanger ending. You could almost argue that there’s no definitive proof that the mummy did in fact come alive and start killing people. Like I said, a lot of the eyewitness testimony is coincidental and hearsay. Doyle leaves it up to the reader to fill in the blanks however he wants.
It’s an interesting story to read from the perspective of that this will influence the “creeping mummy” horror genre for so many years to come. I’m glad I included it here, even if it isn’t the most exciting story I’ve ever read. I’m a fan of Doyle and was glad to be able to include him in this year’s AWESOME-tober-fest.
In 1990, Lot 249 would be adapted as one of the chapters in the Tales from the Darkside: The Movie. The adaptation in that movie would be written by Michael McDowell who also wrote the movie Beetlejuice and the movie novelization for Clue: The Movie. It would star a very young Steve Buscemi, Julianne Moore and Christian Slater.
Also, check out the blog Countdown to Halloween for more Halloween-y, bloggy AWESOMEness.
, however, I found the first three books of the Landover series in 
for super cheap so I snapped it up and started reading without much thought. The basic premise is that a lawyer, disappointed with his life after his wife dies, finds an ad in a catalog to buy a magical fantasy land called Landover for $1 million. Spontaneously he decides to do it, but it doesn’t turn out to be exactly what he expects. Initially, that premise spoke “satire” to me. I fully expected a massively tongue-in-cheek parody of fantasy novels. What I got was surprising. The novel takes a while to really get started, but once it does, it’s really good. It takes the premise honestly and earnestly. It’s not a satire or a parody. It plays the entire plot straight and is a better novel for it. I liked it much more than I thought considering my expectations were completely wrong and the first 80 pages or so were kind of slow to get through. I’m definitely looking forward to the next book in the series.
– I love Peter David’s novels and for years I tried to read everything he’d written. I originally read this book back in 2005 when I randomly found it on eBay. I loved it. The story is a parody of fantasy books in general. It uses a lot of the tropes and has fun with them. Peter David is great at humorous dialogue and he doesn’t disappoint here. Essentially, it’s your traditional epic hero fantasy, except, instead of focusing on the hero, the story focuses on one of the side characters. And that side character is well aware he’s in a hero’s tale and that he’s not the hero. In fact, he prefers it. Lots of fun with the fantasy genre. Also, I’m surprised at how similar this book was to Moore’s Fool. I guess it’s sort of the same idea, except David’s idea goes a little more broad with the concept. And, honestly, I think it’s a better book.
, 
, 
or 
. And I liked all of these choices but I didn’t love them. So, I flipped a coin and the first book in Sanderson’s fantasy series gets the nod. It’s a great piece of fantasy world building with a cleverly different system of magic. Like Troll Mountain, I reviewed it for the second High Fantasy Month back in February. I just felt that this book runs a little long. But I liked it and I plan on reading the second book, even if I’m hearing that the second book is even longer. And unnecessarily so.
Cavalcade of Awesome 