I was pretty excited with this book at the start. I actually managed to plod through seventy-percent of it, then just skimmed through until the end. The facts presented are relevant and interesting but I felt they were few and far in between. The atmosphere is there, the darkness, the little bits of paranoia. Maybe you'd need a lot of Lovecraft background in order to really appreciate this book or something. But all I got from it was lots of interesting tid-bits that did not really cohere into a whole.

There was something unnecessarily overdone with the sentences. Dropping arcane words did not add to the story. At least I know now what gibbous means. It's when the moon is only three-fourths full.

There are not a lot of memorable scenes. All I remember right now is the scene where the main character was in the hill and looking at his apartment window. The pianist girl's visit to the mental institution was particularly interesting, but that's basically it with that character. The main character I could not really get into. I tried, but I just did not grow sympathetic with his problems. I'm still trying other works of Lieber though as there's a lot of positive words of him from other well-known writers of similar interest.