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4.0 out of 5 stars
Very Strange, But Has Some Great Moments., Jul 19 2002
With flying, time-jumping, interstellar Grandfather clocks, immortal Outer-Space monsters, drop-dead gorgeous alien women, and an (unintentional, I assume...) oddly homoerotic "friendship", Volume Three of Brian Lumley's Titus Crow series wraps up the set in a mostly satisfying manner. The first half, In The Moons of Borea, unites Hank Silberhutte, former Texan turned Warlord of the Ice-Planet Borea, with Henri-Laurent de Marigny, the former crony of Titus Crow. Together they ride a HURRICANE through Space (!) to try to retrieve the Time-Clock from the clutches of Ithaqua. With Outer-Space Vikings, frozen evil priests, and space-travel-via-weather-anomaly, this is perhaps the weirdest story I have ever read. Lumley manages to save the story by introducing some truly unique bad guys at the end, the aforementioned Ice-Priests of Ithaqua, but his penchant for describing the Eyes of Ithaqua as "Burning Carmine Orbs...." almost made me throw the book in the trash. He must use that line, or some "Carmine_ _ _" variation line, at least once a page in the "Moons" half of the book. In the second half, "Elysia, The Coming of Cthulhu" we should be getting an epic battle between the forces of good and evil, but we get almost 200 pages of Henri pining over his friend Crow, while scouring the Universe for characters from other Lumley books. (Considering the fact that Henri and Crow are both involved with women who are portrayed as stunningly beautiful, they seem to spend a lot of time thinking about how much they miss each other. Strange...)The characters of Hero and Eldin (and the villainess Zura) are very interesting, though, and the brief final battle against The Elder Gods is compelling, with an ending worthy of a summer popcorn movie. All in all, not a great book, but some truly original moments make it worth a look.
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