Synopsis
FROM ARKHAM TO THE ANTARCTIC. FROM BERLIN TO NAMIBIA. ANDREW DORAN IS ALL THAT STANDS BETWEEN US AND ANNIHILATION.
Andrew Doran’s life has been plagued by knowledge. The knowledge that we are not alone in this universe or the next hindered by the knowledge that the things we share our universes with are malevolent and manipulative.
What does one do with that knowledge? That power?
Dr. Andrew Doran uses that knowledge to spend every moment of his life keep the world safe from the horrors that creep at the edge of your dreams. With the resources of Miskatonic University and a ragtag team of misfits and adventurers, he travels the globe to secure threats to our reality.
Nightmares might plague him, threaten his friends and family, or drive him mad, but he won’t stop.
He cannot stop.
*****
“A great combo of Urban fantasy and a period thriller.” -The Bookwyrm Speaks
“Plenty of Pulp Action.” -MarzAat
“A fantastically pulpy, fists-swinging, guns-blazing, magical lightning-hurling action-adventure that readily proves that not all Mythos tales need to be grim, foreboding and often achingly depressing in order to be successful or authentic.” -Sci-Fi and Fantasy Reviewer
“Always Entertaining.” -Booknest.EU
Review
THE ANDREW DORAN OMNIBUS VOLUME ONE by Matthew Davenport is a collection of the first three volumes of the Andrew Doran series (THE STATEMENT OF ANDREW DORAN, ANDREW DORAN AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS, and ANDREW DORAN AND THE SCROLL OF NIGHTMARES) as well as several novelettes from the BOOKS OF CTHULHU series. Andrew Doran is transparently a stand-in for Indiana Jones, albeit with even more arrogance, and his stories take him against Cthulhu cultists as well as the forces of the Third Reich.
The Statement of Andrew Doran‘s premise is that Andrew Doran is an archaeology professor at Miskatonic University in 1941 when America has entered the war. The Nazis, desperate to defeat the United States, turn to the occult power of the Necronomicon. Their agents steal the tome of eldritch lore and Andrew proceeds on a Europe-spanning mission to recover the tome even as it takes him against numerous Lovecraftian monsters before a climax in Berlin.
The subsequent volumes follow a surprisingly un-Indiana Jones-esque problem where every time Andrew successfully solves one problem, he manages to create several others. Andrew is a fun character that absolutely believes he knows the right thing to do in any circumstances even as it becomes increasingly clear he doesn’t have nearly as much of a handle on things as he thinks.
Those looking for books about elderly scholars getting driven insane by the slightest contact with the Mythos won’t get what they want. Andrew Doran is more likely to punch, shoot, or spell his way out of most problems. The books are definite homages to the pulp fiction of the 1930s with Andrew more like Doc Savage than H.P. Lovecraft’s typical antiheroes. This may turn off Lovecraft purists but as someone who grew up on Masks of Nyarlathotep and other Call of Cthulhu tabletop games, I think Andrew works just fine.
The Statement of Andrew Doran even attempts to imitate a pulp magazine’s format with multiple individual adventures collected into a single serial. Later books in the series move away from this into a more typical novel-length narrative. However, I think Andrew Doran works best in short stories and novelettes that are included throughout this story. He’s a character of action and Matthew Davenport does extremely well with short encounters with the various supernaturals of the Cthulhu Mythos.
Matthew Davenport draws from a lot of Lovecraft’s stories to create his shared world. The Dreamlands, shoggoths, Yog-Sothoth, Cthulhu, Hastur, and Nyarlathotep all make appearances along with original creations. The monsters and cults of Cthulhu are almost uniformly evil so there’s no real moral ambiguity unlike in Lovecraft. This is the one misstep I think in the series and I would have appreciated more amorality than Deep Ones allying with fascists. Andrew himself does a few morally indefensible things to achieve victory and this is the one exception.
In conclusion, the Andrew Doran Omnibus is a pretty good collection of pulp adventure stories. They’re not horror to any real extent but use the monster-filled world of Lovecraft to tell fun adventures. Andrew Doran’s arrogance and attitude are sometimes annoying but provide him a larger than life personality that leaps off the page. I think this is the best way to enjoy the series as well versus the individual volumes as they’re better binged than done one at a time due to the episodic nature of his tales.
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