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Book Details

Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath

78.6% complete
1927
2016
1 time
Book Cover
Has a genre Has comments Has an extract Has a year read Has a rating In my library 
2133
No series
Published 1943 by Arkham House
No dedication.
Three times Randolph Carter dreamed of the marvellous city, and three times he was snatched away while he paused on the high terrace above it.
May contain spoilers
And vast infinities away, past the Gate of Deeper Slumber and the enchanted wood and the garden lands and the Cerenarian Sea and the twilight reaches of Inquanok, the crawling chaos Nyarlathotep strode brooding into the onyx castle atop unknown Kadath in the cold waste, and taunted insolently the mild gods of earth whom he had snatched abruptly from their scented revels in the marvellous sunset city.
Comments may contain spoilers
A novella that was finished in 1927 but never published in Lovecraft's lifetime.  It was published after his death in 1943 by Arkham House.
Synopsis not on file
Extract (may contain spoilers)
In the clear sunshine of morning Carter began the long ascent, taking his zebra as far as that useful beast could go, but tying it to a stunted ash tree when the floor of the thin wood became too steep. Thereafter he scrambled up alone; first through the forest with its ruins of old villages in overgrown clearings, and then over the tough grass where anaemic shrubs grew here and there. He regretted coming clear of the trees, since the slope was very precipitous and the whole thing rather dizzying. At length he began to discern all the countryside spread out beneath him whenever he looked about; the deserted huts of the image-makers, the groves of resin trees and the camps of those who gathered from them, the woods where prismatic magahs nest and sing, and even a hint very far away of the shores of Yath and of those forbidding ancient ruins whose name is forgotten. He found it best not to look around, and kept on climbing and climbing till the shrubs became very sparse and there was often nothing but the tough grass to cling to.

Then the soil became meagre, with great patches of bare rock cropping out, and now and then the nest of a condor in a crevice. Finally there was nothing at all but the bare rock, and had it not been very rough and weathered, he could scarcely have ascended farther. Knobs, ledges, and pinnacles, however, helped greatly; and it was cheering to see occasionally the sign of some lava-gatherer scratched clumsily in the friable stone, and know that wholesome human creatures had been there before him. After a certain height the presence of man was further shewn by handholds and footholds hewn where they were needed, and by little quarries and excavations where some choice vein or stream of lava had been found. In one place a narrow ledge had been chopped artificially to an especially rich deposit far to the right of the main line of ascent. Once or twice Carter dared to look around, and was almost stunned by the spread of landscape below. All the island betwixt him and the coast lay open to his sight, with Baharna's stone terraces and the smoke of its chimneys mystical in the distance. And beyond that the illimitable Southern Sea with all its curious secrets.

 

Added: 01-Nov-2018
Last Updated: 17-Feb-2020

Publications

 20-May-2008
FNH Audio
Audiobook
In my libraryI read this editionHas a cover imageBook Edition Cover
Date Issued:
20-May-2008
Format:
Audiobook
Length:
2 hrs 27 min
"Read":
Once
Internal ID:
2138
Publisher:
ISBN:
Unknown
Country:
United States
Language:
English
Credits:
Maureen S O'Brien  - Narration
From archive.org:

Fantasy, horror, and dream meet in this classic 1926 novella by H.P. Lovecraft. Randolph Carter defies the Dream Gods, as he sets out to find their hidden home on unknown Kadath, and the vision of a lovely sunset city that somehow his heart remembers. But the Other Gods have agents in the dream world -- creatures of power and terror....

H.P. Lovecraft is best known as a horror writer, but here he shows his more cheerful side. We revisit Ulthar (of "The Cats of Ulthar"), and spend a lot of time with cats. The influence of Lord Dunsany is very strong on Lovecraft's writing in this work, but not slavishly so. Even if you don't normally like Lovecraft, you may well like this.
Cover:
Book Cover
Notes and Comments:
Public Domain ℗2013 FNH

This was a free download from archive.org as it is in the public domain.  The recording is less than professional but nice to listen to nontheless.  Just a note, I'm not entirely sure that the narrator is the same Maureen O'Brien from Doctor Who fame.
 01-Oct-2018
Global Grey
e-Book
In my libraryHas a cover imageBook Edition Cover
Date Issued:
Cir 01-Oct-2018
Format:
e-Book
Pages*:
101
Internal ID:
2139
Publisher:
ISBN:
Unknown
Country:
United States
Language:
English
From globalgreybooks.com:

The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath is a novella by H. P. Lovecraft. It was completed on January 22, 1927 but wasn't published until 1943. It tells the story of Randolph Carter, who dreams three times of a majestic sunset city, but each time is abruptly snatched away before he can see it up close. He prays to the gods of dream to reveal the whereabouts of the phantasmal city, but they do not answer, and his dreams of the city stop altogether.
Cover:
Book Cover
Notes and Comments:

Related

Author(s)

H P Lovecraft  
Birth: 20 Aug 1890 Providence, Rhode Island, USA
Death: 15 Mar 1937 Providence, Rhode Island, USA

Notes:
From the Kindle version of Necronomicon:

Howard Phillips Lovecraft is probably the most important and influential author of supernatural fiction of the twentieth century. A lifelong resident of Providence, Rhode Island, many of his tales are set in the fear-haunted towns of an imaginary area of Massachusetts, or in the cosmic vistas that exist beyond space and time. Since his untimely death, Lovecraft has become acknowledged as a master of fantasy fiction and a mainstream American writer second only to Edgar Allan Poe, while his relatively small body of work has influenced countless imitators and formed the basis of a worldwide industry of books, games and movies based on his concepts.

H.P. Lovecraft's tales of the tentacled Elder God Cthulhu and his pantheon of alien deities were initially written for the pulp magazines of the 1920s and '30s. These astonishing tales blend elements of honor and science fiction and are as powerful today as they were when they initially appeared. For the first time ever in a single volume, this definitive collection gathers together in chronological or-der all of Lovecraft's major stories and short novels, including the complete 'Cthulhu Mythos' cycle, just as they were originally published more than half a century ago.

Awards

No awards found
*
  • I try to maintain page numbers for audiobooks even though obviously there aren't any. I do this to keep track of pages read and I try to use the Kindle version page numbers for this.
  • Synopses marked with an asterisk (*) were generated by an AI. There aren't a lot since this is an iffy way to do it - AI seems to make stuff up.
  • When specific publication dates are unknown (ie prefixed with a "Cir"), I try to get the publication date that is closest to the specific printing that I can.
  • When listing chapters, I only list chapters relevant to the story. I will usually leave off Author Notes, Indices, Acknowledgements, etc unless they are relevant to the story or the book is non-fiction.
  • Page numbers on this site are for the end of the main story. I normally do not include appendices, extra material, and other miscellaneous stuff at the end of the book in the page count.






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