Julianus reviews The House of Toad by Richard Tierney in the Occult Book Reviews archive.
A sort of modernised Cthulhu Mythos novel featuring a Black Magician named “J. Cornelius Wasserman” who is fond of saying, “Let thine own Will become the Law of Laws.” Like many such books, it starts out interesting and then succumbs to deus ex machina as the author lets the good guys win. File it under “fictional use of Crowley”, cross-index it with “Lovecraft pastiche”, then go reread the real things.
Hermetic Library fellow T Polyphilus reviews Scroll of Thoth: Tales of Simon Magus & the Great Old Ones (Cthulhu Fiction Series) by Richard Tierney:
This book collected most of Tierney’s “Simon” stories, in which the protagonist is the Gnostic hierophant Simon Magus. They are adventure stories with a strong Weird Tales flavor, set in a well researched late antique context. They are really good, even if you’ve outgrown (or never particularly liked) pulp sword and sorcery stuff. The appropriation of the Lovecraft “mythos” and its integration with classical Gnostic theology is handled really artfully.
Unfortunately, the very best Simon story is not included in The Scroll of Thoth. “The Throne of Achamoth” was co-written by Scroll editor (religious scholar and fringe ecclesiastic) Robert M. Price, and it appears in the Azathoth Cycle collection, also published by Chaosium, and also out of print. [via]
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