Sherlock Holmes vs. Cthulhu: The Adventure of Deadly Dimensions by Lois H. Gresh is the showdown that you never thought possible for a man like Sherlock Holmes who does not believe in the supernatural. Gresh has a really clever quote for this instance. “Superstition has no place in the world, Watson, only science. What we perceive today as otherworldly, we will know as science tomorrow. I am certain of it.” This book mixes the writing of two literary masters Lovecraft and Cohan Doyle, and has joy playing at themes they both never tackled. The Lovecraftian part is vicious brutal and outright otherworldly, where the Sherlockian is smart and witty. These two worlds don’t fit in as seamlessly as I would have liked but the mystery angle works, and is quite compelling. From the Sherlock world we get Moriarty, Inspector Lestrade, Mrs. Hudson, Mary Morstan, Mycroft Holmes is mentioned, and of course Watson as the Narrator of this Holmes adventure. From the Lovecraft world we some of the otherworldly creatures, the Order of the Dagon, and corpses in piles.

The Plot: Sherlock is called out on a strange case of a furniture makers death, this is not an ordinary death the skeletal remains are stacked in a stack with some weird skeletal orb on top. Holmes can’t seem to find a logical reason for this happening. Then Holmes and Watson investigate a another murder with the same MO, only the worker who is accused of the murder swear the machine did it. Murder’s keep happing with few clues and all point to something otherworldly Cthulhu and do not fit into Holmes’ logic. Can he stop these murders before the call to Cthulhu goes out?

What I Liked: The relationship of Watson and Holmes is there and really good, Holmes shows great concern when Watson is in trouble. I liked the word describing the gore, make you picture it and feel the horror in your soul. The Watson and Mary relationship is cool to see since he’s married in this and was only ever engaged in the Cohan Doyle books. The machine was descried well and I loved the mystery behind it. I liked the final twist, it really makes me want to check out the next one. I like how Moriarty was involved in the story.

What I Disliked: This novel tells different the story mainly through Watson, but once and a while it will tell you the story from others point of view that the reader and Sherlock and Watson have never met before. This is a horrible way to tell the story and really throws you out of the story as you have to figure out who they are and what they look like. This book has some boring parts you have to power through to get to the next part of the mystery. The chanting in a language you can’t understand fills like 4 pages total it’s way too much. I thought the two worlds meshed okay when it was just the body parts, but when the Order of Dagon is involved it didn’t gel right.

Recommendations: I would recommend this to Lovecraft readers more than Doyle readers. There’s more Sherlock than Lovecraftian but I feel it nails this and the style of his writing more than Doyle’s. If you like crazy mash ups this this is for you. This book is the first in a trilogy and it ends in a pretty good little cliffhanger. I rated this book 3 out of 5 stars, this is one of the better candidates for a 3.5 stars because there were parts I really enjoyed and parts that didn’t.