Review: The Supply Closet of Eternal Terror by Roy Griffis

Book 4 of the Cthulhu Amalgamated series is the most off-the-wall entry yet

WARNING: Mild spoilers follow for book 3, Breakroom of a Thousand Nightmares.

In what was supposed to be the conclusion of a trilogy, The Breakroom of a Thousand Nightmares (reviewed here) wrapped up Griffis’ series our hero shoggoth Narg’s buddy Murph meeting an untimely demise, and Narg himself finally settling down into a relatively stable teaching gig and settling down with his one and only shoggette, Bugg.

His domestic bliss (occasional pangs of grieving for his “homelad” Murph aside) is rudely disrupted when an interdepartmental hostile takeover within the Amalgamation occurs. Suddenly Narg’s being informed by his ambitious but dim new boss that the old boss (his Uncle Beefbits) has been eaten and that he’s got new assignment . . .

To go back in time and kill the young H.P. Lovecraft.

The Story

As our previous reviews (here, here and at the link above) detailed, After a major shakeup at The Amalgamation that ends in Nar’lah’s uncle BeefBits being eaten by some upstart Star Strider who’s got more ambition than sense. Narg, who now has to work for the guy who killed his favorite uncle, is told that human knowledge of the eldritch world is growing exponentially and needs to be staved off. Thus, our hero shoggoth finds himself tasked with carrying out the would-be corporate raider’s grand scheme, to go back in time and find the source of the knowledge leak. His boss’s suggested starting point? Early 20th century Massachusetts, to remove what he believes to be the source of all this spreading mythos lore: a young Howard Phillips Lovecraft.

And to make sure his newly recruited-under-duress employee stays on task, the new boss enlists a the added help of a couple of denizens from Hell which the Amalgamation is attempting to merge with; the dimwitted demon Belphegor and his companion, a nasty, nagging six-armed hamster named Bitty who have the ability to help Narg phase between realities, dimensions and time. Upon arriving in Massachusetts however, Narg gets to meet the perpetually anxious but brilliant nine-year old Lovecraft and his ailing mother. In time, Narg realizes that Lovecraft isn’t actually the source of the forbidden mythos knowledge, but possibly a witch from his family line who lived a hundred years prior. Narg, relieved at the chance to stave off Belphagor and Bitty, who are happy to sew the operation up and murder the Lovecraft lad, precision and nuance be damned (no pun intended). Thus the group set off back in time to Elizabethan England and just the beginning of an expansive tale that spans several other time periods and locations. Of course, young Howard has been swept back in time with them, complicating things.

The thing is, the trail doesn’t stop there, and each stop back in time reveals another potential source from further back in the past. Narg has to track down From meeting famed occultist John Dee to visiting an exiled Napoleon who’s got a secret chunk of the Rosetta Stone stashed away, to the modest hut of the Mad Arab himself and even crossing paths with an old flame in the primordial and savage past of a young Earth, this is Griffis’ grandest entry in the series yet. His trademark humor and bonkers action are on full display throughout, making it the fastest 488 pages you’ll ever fly through.

The Characters

We find Narg in a particularly vulnerable place for our uncharacteristically empathetic and eloquent abomination. He’s still reeling from the death of Murph from the previous book, and his extended time among the Squishies, as humans are called by his kind, has left him missing the warmth of company and friendly interaction. Between the rough introduction his new boss (who killed his uncle and all that) and being thrust into his newest mission not only without a human guide but having to deal with hostile demonic ones, our hero is dealing with some rather tumultuous changes this time around.

Combined with the fact that Narg is slowly realizing that he’s developing a sense of morality as he finds himself more and more offput by the task he is given, and the influence over him introduced by a certain “friend” alluded to from book three, his many eyed and betentacled girth is firmly stuck between a rock and hard place, and his newfound moral compass sees him eventually filling out an unabashed hero’s role as he fights to not only keep the literal forces of hell from harming his young charge, but does his best (however imperfectly) to shield him from the traumatic elements of the situation the young man has unwillingly found himself caught up in.

His demonic co-workers, Belphegor and Bitty, are an Abbott/Costello comic relief duo who, the former a somewhat lunkheaded demon who’s not nearly has impressive as some of his glamoured manifestations (an angel of light, red skinned-demon in a tuxedo, etc) would like to have you believe; The six-armed hamster demon Bitty who he frequently confers with, is more on point mission-wise, but both are eager to finish things quickly if not carefully and return to their hellish realms in glory. Their impatience with Narg and his ever-expanding reasons as to why they can’t kill Lovecraft drive the plot forward from place to place, and they convey influence over humans and through magic, often in hilarious ways.

Lovecraft himself is, when Narg meets him, a brilliant but socially awkward, lonely and miserable boy. Having lost his father and a beloved uncle early, and with his mother in perpetually ill health, he pines for stability of a stable family. Narg first encounters him just as he has thrown himself into a river in an attempted suicide; after Narg (inhabiting a human ‘meatsuit’) fishes him out, he’s grateful for the company and for someone to share his scientific curiosities with. His dialogue is quite older than the adolescent he’s supposed to be, but he was a rather well-studied amateur scientist in his youth who read voraciously on a number of disciplines, so it doesn’t come across as implausible as it would for someone else.

He shows a surprising metal hardiness when it comes to laying eyes upon those things that drive men mad, and is even able to briefly read ancient occult texts with minimal vomiting. To protect him, Narg tells him that all the supernatural shenanigans he’s been involved with are a dream, and while this prevents him from going mad, it also emboldens him to wander off places and get into trouble, since he believes himself to be the master of his own imaginings. In this Griffis strikes just the right balance of introducing a potentially annoying younger character in doses that allow interactions to breath between the many (many) characters that cross our MC’s paths, while still maintaining our interest.

The list of various historical figures that make appearances are many, and as I am no history buff, I might say that each is at least suitably accurately presented for the story in which they preside, and that they are likely to rankle any armchair scholar only minimally. Cameos include brilliant scientists, mathematicians (and occultists) advisors to Elizabeth I Edward Kelley and John Dee, authors of the infamous tome of evil, the Black Book, Napoleon Bonaparte, who uses a sword to dissect a fucking reanimated corpse golem with surgical precision, Abdul Alhazrad, whose visit is brief but unquestionably the funniest, Narg’s old girlfriend, who’s awfully bored after being banished to the hot, sticky dinosaur-ruled realm of a young Earth, unable to leave because she’s been grounded by her father, a middle manager within the Amalgamation. Each encounter is self-contained and almost gives the book the feeling of a vignetted anthology that breaks up the various acts and moves the almost 500 page book at a brisk pace.

The World

Save for the setting at the very end of the book (which I won’t spoil here,) the settings in each of the temporal field trips our heroes mostly serve as backdrop to the real star of the book, its characters. If this winds up being the final book in the series (unlikely as this volume, like the others, includes one of Griffis’ trademark post-credits “stinger”), it can stand alone as one of his finest demonstrations of character depth and development in the tough to write for genre of horror-comedy.

Politics

None, though there will no doubt be reeee-ing from overly serious Lovecraft fans. From its inception, this series has been Griffis’ love letter to the Cthulhu mythos and Lovecraft’s legacy. While it is written with tongue firmly planted in cheek, it is not thumbing its nose.

Content Warning

Some vulgar language, occult themes, though invoked largely comedically, and mostly off-page and not-too-overly described fantasy/horror violence.

Who is it for?

Lovecraft fans with a good sense of humor, fans of the previous entries, maaaaaaybe alt-history fans? Hard to say, but it’s funny, give it a shot!

Why buy it?

Anyone who’s a fan of the Cthulhu Amalgamated series who have been wishing for its return have got it in spades. Roy Griffis’ humor is unsparing and unique, with jokes coming from all angles; the man is the Mel Brooks of horror, and just when you think he can’t raise the stakes on the funny, he still manages to surprise you.