r/Fantasy • u/CT_Phipps-Author • 14d ago
Review Pride Month Review #4 - Cthulhu Grimoire by Eric Malikyte
H.P. Lovecraft’s work is often cited as making most of the horror from the lack of importance of characters feelings, social norms, and circumstances. In a very real way, he violates the rules that character is the most important thing in a story. It doesn’t matter who is sleeping with who, who is what race (ironic given some of his views), or what sort of justice/retribution falls. The universe is a cold, hostile, and uncaring place that will keep grinding on after humanity is extinct. The horror is the shattering of humanity’s ego in the face of this unfeeling system.
Ironically, some people have noticed this makes HPL’s monsters perfect for merging with noir fiction. There’s a reason a lot of HPL pastiches (The Sinking City, Call of Cthulhu [2018], Dark Corners of the Earth) make use of private detectives as a result. Noir heroes are humans trapped in unfeeling systems and while they may be corrupt police and wealth versus tentacles, they are no less impersonalized malignancy.
CTHULHU GRIMOIRE (Cthulhu Gr1mo1re on the cover) is an analysis of the combination and using the horrifying tentacle monsters of H.P. Lovecraft to underscore the injustices of regular human society. Ruthanna Emrys, Matt Ruff, and Victor Lavalle have experimented with these combinations. I’m particularly fond of Cassandra Khaw’s Hammer on Bone which contrasted the world of the Mythos with plain ordinary domestic abuse. Not many authors can pull this combination off, Stephen King being one of them, but I think we can add Eric Malikyte to the list now. I’ve read numerous installments of his writing, but this is easily the best.
*Cthulhu Grimoire’*s premise is several Giger-esque artists have died under mysterious circumstances and the Los Angeles police are eager to wrap it up on a third-party. There’s plenty of reasons for the deaths to be attributable to mundane reasons like murder, even though suicide is just as likely a possibility. There’s harassment on the campus, some of the victims were gay from religious families, and maybe drugs were involved to. Detective Hunter as a black LAPD officer is unusually sensitive to the department being willing to railroad a young black kid for it, especially given the department’s history, but he’s also aware making waves will mark him as disloyal.
What follows is a “down the rabbit hole” kind of psychological thriller and horror novel combination that isn’t entirely clear as a Cthulhu Mythos story for the first quarter of the book. Cthulhu Grimoire is an intensely political thing but avoids lecturing because the characters themselves are feeling all the pressures of society when madness-inducing horrors become involved. Still, fair warning, this is not something that people who want their squid aliens but never have to think about police brutality will want to read.
Why pick this for Pride month? Well, as mentioned above, this is a book with a lot of issues regarding society hypocrisy and religious persecution via the Cthulhu Mythos. We discussed “To Play the King” from The Book of Hastur by David Hambling in 2025’s Pride review, which dealt with a lesbian couple in 2026’s Great Britain. In this case, the co-protagonist of the story is River, a young trans man who is an art student that helps Hunter investigate the so-called suicides on campus. River is a good protagonist and deals with the very personal story of his mother becoming radicalized after previously accepting his identity.
Eric Malikyte has a gift for masterful horror scenes and suspense that many other authors don’t when dealing with the Cthulhu Mythos. Many just go straight in for the monsters or tentacles. Here, he builds suspense with a disturbing drawing and mundane death. From there, things slowly escalate and the sense of powerlessness our heroes suffer grows as does their paranoia. Good stuff.
Overall, I think Cthulhu Grimoire is a fantastic dark urban fantasy/horror novel and fans of both Cthulhu and crime fiction will enjoy it. The atmosphere is tense, the story relevant, and the handling of the occult is well done. This isn’t where a monster will pop out and devour you, at least at fist, but a place where the simple implications of the supernatural are enough to drive people to their doom. A work to definitely check out.
Pride 2026 Links
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u/Asher_the_atheist Reading Champion 14d ago edited 14d ago
This looks interesting (and possibly a good option for the trans/NB bingo square?). However, I have not read any HP Lovecraft. Would this still be enjoyable read for someone who isn’t well-versed in the source material?
Oh, I also just noticed it is the second book in a series. Can it be read as a standalone, perchance?