A writer on the occult turns his talent to the most famous fictional tome and writes it. Bringing together the threads of HPL and friends many stories. Certainly very different. ( )

I personally own no fewer than five books claiming to be the Necronomicon, the originally-imaginary tome of eldritch lore alluded to in the fiction of H.P. Lovecraft and his colleagues and emulators. (This count excludes several books of collected stories that are simply titled Necronomicon.) Occultist Donald Tyson has written the most recent of these, and it is the second and more successful of two that I know of to take all of Lovecraft's references as factual, and to elaborate the full contents of the book from the scattered quotes and allusions in the stories. An inferior and unfinished attempt in this vein was made decades ago by Lin Carter.

Unlike the Simon Necronomicon of the 1970s or the original Owlswick Necronomicon, there is no fancy binding for the Tyson version. It only comes in softcover--albeit attractively designed with a largish page size--or e-book (!) formats. It does contain some seals and sigils, and alludes to others available in the standard canon of ceremonial magic, and I think this is the first Necronomicon to actually present an elder sign image based on the one in Lovecraft's written correspondence with Clark Ashton Smith. But the text is really the focus of this book. Rather than working in Elizabethan pastiche to manifest the English translation made by Doctor John Dee, Tyson has chosen to furnish a new English "translation" from the Latin of Olaus Wormius. He manages to keep an archaic style, while using plain modern language.

Tyson has supplied the book with the subtitle "The Wanderings of Alhazred," which accurately reflects the contents. He has carefully worked out a biography for the Arabian poet and author of the Necronomicon that allows him to access the recondite lore bodied forth in the book, and an itinerary around the Medieval Near East (illustrated nicely in a prefatory map) serves as the larger organizing structure of the book. The speaker of the text is careful not to identify himself until the end, though. Throughout the book, he refers to his own actions in an abstracted third person, as the doings of "a recent traveler" in such-and-such a place, or even in the second person, as what you might do, should you find yourself in this-or-that circumstance. This mode of writing lends a highly suitable tone of arch irony to the book. To clue in the reader from the outset, there is front matter by Theodorus Philetas (the Greek translator from the original Arabic) "Concerning the Life of Abdul Alhazred." Theodorus is in turn introduced by a preface from Olaus Wormius.

Of the ten or more Necronomicons I've read, this one is probably the most entertaining for a hardcore Lovecraft fan. I detected allusions to dozens of Lovecraft's stories, and the incorporation of canonical quotes (such as the long passage from "The Dunwich Horror," here featuring on page 72) is managed very artfully. For practical occultism, the book seems to be of little use, but Tyson has also authored a Grimoire of the Necronomicon (evidently paralleling "Simon's" Necronomicon Spellbook), which I will almost certainly read, given the amusement furnished here.

Awesome. I can't believe I haven't read this sooner. ( )

My favorite of the fake Necronomicons. Doesn't try to be a grimoire, but more of an entertaining and insane travelogue of the Mad Arab. ( )