Review: Horror Novel Reviews: Honesty in the Terror
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 08 2, 2013
A decade ago, perusing a second-hand bookstore, I came across a copy of the classic Call of Cthulhu campaign Horror on the Orient Express, sealed and complete in its box.  Anyone with even the vaguist familiarity with Call of Cthulhu has heard of Orient Express, a campaign that defines the game, despite so few having ever been blessed with the opportunity to play it. Not realizing what they had in their possession, the store had marked the campaign for only ten bucks.  Purchasing it at that price as a criminal act, and one could not be passed up.  I left the store giddy with visions of being at long last able to live the long out-of-print campaign.But it was not to be.  A moment of inattention on the part of my then wife allowed our then toddler son to destroy much of the box-set with tiny, terrible tearing hands and copious amounts of slobber.  A child little more than a year old had succeeded where the Great Old Ones had failed, derailing the Orient Express.His mother and I are divorced now.Now, ten years later, I have finally been able to experience Horror on the Orient Express, thanks to the writer Nick Marsh, artist Eric Smith and the fine folks at Yog-Sothoth.com.The Express Diaries was born of gameplay sessions recorded for podcast at Yog-Sothoth.com, with Marsh transcribing and translating them into novel form.  Readers would not be blamed for being wary of such a book.  Novels based on roleplaying games are not known for being quality literature, books based on player characters in such games even less so.  There are exceptions, of course; Anderson's Drizzt Do'Urden series comes to mind.  And The Express Diaries is one of those exceptions.  Marsh gives us a fun Cthulhu Mythos novel, one that rises well beyond its origins as a roleplaying game novel.To be certain, this is a Cthulhu Mythos novel, not Lovecraftian.  The Express Diaries is an exciting, pulply romp across a post-Great War Europe populated with cults and creatures lifted from the imagination of Lovecraft and divers hands.  One searching for the atmosphere, rich and bleak, that defines a Lovecraftian work will not find it here.The Express Diaries is a story within a story, told as a recovered document, framed by a historian investigating the events almost a century later.  The adventure is unfolds in journal entries from the various characters.  Marsh manages to give each character a unique voice in their respective entries, a great feat for any writer.  And in a brilliant move, he writes as the characters writing for themselves, not a wider audience.  References as made to events within the characters lives and greater world, for which they give little explanation; writing for themselves, they would need no explanation.  The historian however, provides us with copious footnotes about these vague references, filling in the personal and historical details.Eric Smith's art adds to the experience, bringing the book to life.  The Express Diaries is filled character and location sketches, along with images of fliers and postcards.  Many of the clues the characters are visually represented on the page alongside the text.  The art brings the book to life, creating a grand illusion that this is not a novel but a chronicle of real events, in a real time, witnessed by people as living as you.The book is not perfect, marred not by any flaws in writing but production.  There are several formatting errors, though these do little to take away from experience.Overall, The Express Diaries is a joy to read, accessible to both the casual horror fan and lovers of the Cthulhu Mythos alike.Written by Bruce Priddy from Horror Novel Reviews. Horror Novel Reviews does not receive payment for reviews. All books are promotional copies.