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walkonpooh · 2 years ago

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Hive - Tim Curran Review

An Antarctic expedition led by Paleobiologist Dr. Robert Gates has uncovered frozen, but partially thawed mummies of an ancient race of beings that very well may upend every aspect of what we know about science and religion, including who or what may have made humankind. Dr. Gates brings the frozen bodies back with him to Kharkhov Station, a mistake which may just cost the world.

Hive by Tim Curran is a direct sequel to At the Mountains of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft, mixed with heavy aspects of John Carpenter's The Thing. It takes one hundred percent in Antarctica and primarily in three locations, Kharkhov Station, Medusa Drift (Deep Field Camp) and the subterranean caves and city of the Elder Things, who are the primary antagonists of the book and the Old Ones.

I think Curran does a great job setting the place up, giving a great isolated atmosphere to the story, though at no time did I love this crew say as much as the crew of Outpost 31 in The Thing. Even the main protagonist Jimmy Hayes is just sort of there for me (though I did like that he was from Kansas). All of the characters in Hive are pretty stereotypical blue collar workers, with a pencil pusher basically with LaHune, who is "running" the expedition and is the main human antagonist, consistently getting in the way of the scientists and workers.

I loved Curran's descriptions of the Elder Things as gelatinous winged creatures, thought that was really awesome. I absolutely loved the part with the video feed of drilling down into Lake Vordog and what is discovered in the ice, that was probably my favorite section of the book.

I have a couple critiques that kept me back from *loving* this book, as someone else said "Their tiny minds could not hope to contain or understand what it was they were seeing" (p54) but yet there are pages upon pages of descriptions of the beings. So I think that Curran sort of fails to properly convey the insanity inducing/mind breaking aspect of the Elder Things/Old Ones/Shoggoths that Lovecraft is able to convey and also I think an aspect that is dropped, never really approached, is the paranoia that is present in John W. Campbell's Who Goes There? and its adaptations. These beings are taking over people from Kharkhov Station, but why? They seem to do better when they stay in their own form. I feel like Curran never really justified this beyond being a cool horror image (and it is a cool image, discarded human skin like a spider shedding it's skin).

My biggest problem with the book is the two flashback sections of previous expeditions. I feel like there had to of been a better way to incorporate them into the narrative if Curran felt they were necessary. As they are, they grind the main narrative to a halt and I don't feel that there's anything in them that couldn't have had a way to be conveyed in the main story. As a world building exercise, they're fine I guess, though sort of plodding, possibly could have worked better as separately published short stories. I did find out in the originally published version of Hive these weren't present and I don't know if that was a publisher edit or an author edit, but I think it was a correct edit. If they were absolutely necessary, maybe they could have been published as a side-novella?

I hate my critiques were longer than my positives, because I really did enjoy this book. I will definitely read the sequel, Hive 2 and I added another book from Curran to my Halloween Reading List for 2023 as I think Curran is a really talented writer.

4/5

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