Many thanks to author Jonathon T. Cross for sending over a copy of this book, presumably because he liked what I had to say about his debut novel, 'Valley of the Spun' back in July. That was general fiction, a semi-autobiographical trip through addiction and the consequences of addiction, told in a neatly matter-of-fact style that was happily free of any moralising. This is very different, a horror story spawned from the pulp era but updated to the modern day. In many ways, it's a translation of Lovecraft's 'The Call of Cthulhu' into a modern-day setting.

That clash of styles, while still recounting a coherent story, is probably its biggest success, even if it takes us a little while to warm up to it. Certainly, the modern elements seem jarring, starting with the title and continuing into the opening chapter. I'm not even 100% sure what the title is, because there are three elements none of which are explained. I'm taking 'Cthulhu's Lure' as the title, with 'Madness from the Sea' as a potential series and 'Love & Tentacles' as a sort of tagline, but I could be entirely wrong.

That opening chapter, taken from an online journal, is formatted in a friendly handwriting font I'm thinking is Bradley Hand ITC, and unfolds as precisely the sort of hentai tentacle fantasy that the diarist claims not to understand. It's a far cry from 'Weird Tales', which is brought quickly to mind when we reach the next chapter, told by a different voice in a different font, tense and style. We're bound to compare them from moment one and that instinct only grows when we realise that they focus on a husband and wife.

The journaller is Frances Smith, whose writing seems to be tailored for her growing fanbase on the internet, the Squid Squad, that eats up her erotic dreams of tentacled monsters in the south seas. As you'll expect in a journal, she's writing in the first person and she's talking to her readers, who now include us. We become quickly complicit in what most believe is a fantasy sex life unfolding in her head and put down on virtual paper for the illicit enjoyment of her reading public. However, a subset of the Squid Squad are more devout and gradual reveal themselves to be a bona fide cult.

Her husband is Donnie, whose take on all this is told in the third person, in a far more traditional serifed font, and in an antiquated style, echoing the traditions of the pulp era but with some nods to modern linguistic choices. Like broken sentences like this one, separated for effect. He's not one of the Squid Squad and sees them all as sick and twisted. He seeks psychiatric help for Frances, an acutely modern take on the way that so many Lovecraftian characters experience a happy ending through going blissfully insane.

The story that they share is eerily familiar, but it's rather interesting to see it told from both sides in such different ways. Frances is lost in her fantasies from moment one and only gets caught up in deeper ways as she learns that fantasies are visions and visions might be prophecies and there's a secret reality of elder gods that she's genetically predisposed to tapping into. Donnie is lost in his disdain for the whole thing and he becomes almost as fanatical in his efforts to stop it and retrieve his wife before he loses her for good to the tentacled monster in her dreams. You know which one.

I wonder how Cthulhu Mythos aficionados will see this. My guess is that those who see themselves as purists will turn their noses up at it halfway through the first chapter, as cleavage bursts over a plethora of searching tentacles. If they get as far as to be introduced to SquidSlut, they'll throw up their hands in disgust and hide this away from potential readers as well as the guardians of all the infamous books in the mythos library.

Modern readers, on the other hand, may find themselves confused by the old fashioned prose with which they'll be rudely confronted in the alternating chapters, with its extended sentences, eager use of commas and even semi-colons, and rambling descriptions. They probably know Cthulhu from tentacled plushies and hentai anime or, as Cross explains in his bio, 'The Real Ghostbusters'.

The more open-minded the reader, the more they're likely to get something out of this, and some might get a real kick out of its approach. It sits firmly in two different eras and Cross both knows it and revels in it. To me, as an old school fan, it's this approach that makes the book and maybe I'm the right demographic for it, because we're stuck firmly in time between the old school chapters and the new school ones. We're a similar distance from both, not old enough to have experienced the pulp era when it happened, so enjoy it as old fashioned entertainment, but not young enough to truly understand everything that these modern whippersnappers get up to online. Both sides seem equally weird to us.

I was surprised to see another Jonathan T. Cross book so quickly, but I have no reason to be. So he only joined the scene this year with that debut novel? What's to say he didn't write that ten years ago and he has a couple of dozen more books already written, laid out and ready to publish. This is agreeably different and also much shorter, surely counting as a novella rather than a novel. What might he come up with next, if he's going for variety? I might not be expecting a Christian thriller with a female lead and a transgender villain, but then I have no idea what to expect instead. Let's see what time will give us. ~~ Hal C F Astell

For more titles by Jonathon T. Cross click here