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This month we read the classic H.P. Lovecraft Dream Cycle story, the one I believe, that in many ways forms a template for the Cycle stories to come, "The Doom that Came to Sarnath." First published in The Scot, a Scottish amateur fiction magazine, in June 1920, this story is still considered "early Lovecraft."

I read it today and want to give the story my rare five stars. I absolutely loved the prose, the imagery, and to my eyes don't think Lovecraft ever wrote better than right here. 1920 and already in full command of his writing powers! That's my opinion, not one widely shared. I'm going to wait a week or two to read the story again, fresh, and see if my opinion still holds before I write my review.

Please feel free to join in and write your opinion here at this topic as you read it this month. We all enjoy reading other readers' takes on these stories. If you don't have the book yet The Dream Cycle of H.P. Lovecraft: Dreams of Terror and Death and thus need a text for this story, the best one is here: .

Clearly the men of Sarnath should have given Bokrug his due.

Dan wrote: "Clearly the men of Sarnath should have given Bokrug his due."

Exactly!

I finally read this story too, and I also loved the imagery. Absolutely wonderful. This reminded me more of CAS� writing than any of the others so far, and that’s because Lovecraft here evokes that certain kind of exquisite strangeness steeped in decadence in a world beyond anything I can ever imagine. And of course, the tragic ending � which in this case seemed rather telegraphed, unfortunately. Also, the odd names used to create a sense of strangeness is usually a rather cool technique, but there was a bit too many of them here so close to each other, and that made them feel less special. It was the Land of Mnar, city of Sarnath, City of Ib, cylinders of Kadatheron, likeness of Bokrug, papyrus of Ilarnek, Thraa, the river Ai, oil of Dother, Mtal and a lot of materials I’d never heard of before. As of now, I think CAS manages to use words that evoke the strange, unknown, ancient or mysterious more effectively, in my opinion, but I still enjoyed this one.

By the way, is anyone familiar with the podcast called "The H.P. Lovecraft Literary Podcast"? I recently discovered it. Each episode is dedicated to one of Lovecraft's short stories. I've been listening to the ones we've co-read so far, and it's been very interesting to hear their takes on the stories. I've learned a thing or two about Lovecraft as well. Episode 4 is about "Polaris", 5 about "Beyond the Wall of Sleep", 7 about "The White Ship" and now episode 8 about this short story. Can't wait to hear what they have to say. Just wanted to mention it.