Still another theory: You guys are a bunch of nitpickers.
Hey, we are indeed all nitpickers. I, myself, am nit ridden, and pick upon the nits on the nits of other nitpickers. I'm like, totallly meta-nit.
I mean, solidarity. I didn't see the problems either. Lovecraft is a nebulous writer. I don't think the story is all bad. And, yeah, it is Lovecraft so how much logic can you expect?
But, well, I don't think that's quite totally fair. I look at it more.... umm, how do I say this?
Imagine you find a motorcycle. Not just a motorcycle, one of these:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brough_Superior_SS100It gives you a great ride. You love it. But you hear the drive train on this particular unit occasionally locks up, and hurled one particular pod-cast host down the highway at very high speeds like Steve Austin, while the other enjoys the smooth ride through the English countryside.
One guy is pissed and road burned, and stalks away shaking his fist vigorously. The other one tells all his mates down at the pub what fun wearing a silly hat and googles.
Of course, i want to know what made half the riders end up in the ditch when the other half are grinning ear to ear with bugs in their teeth and all.
I can enjoy it while admitting it's not perfect and it's an antique, so it's design is dated, and it was machined individually, not mass produced and subjected to modern QA standards ( like a writing partner who is of drinking age, or an editor that does his job ). I can also take it apart with no disrespect.
I personally think there is a lot of good. The overall concept is cool. I think some of the narrative runs like a dream. I especially like how the doom this guy is caught up in is so simple, it might be Athenian. I like the themes. I especially like how everyone sees different motivations in the actions of Lizards, and who / what / how the walls are.
But, you know, this is sort of a foray into the "hard science fiction" realm rather than fantasy. I think it triggers certain reader expectations of internal consistency that were violated a bit.
I guess my point is I hope you look at this not so much as nit picking, but as a bunch of people in a garage who all have their own opinions. The bike they just disassembled is in pieces on the ground and some of them are disappointed in it.
I hope especially you see that someone who was dragged 200' by a plot device that didn't work is going to have a hard time seeing anything but junk, just like the guy who had fun feels the Stanfield types "Oh, we should have got a DuBois bike instead, this thing is crap..." are taking something away from them by disrespecting the new ride.
I think we've all been there on some story the rest of the world loved right? Maybe not this one, but there is probably a murder "mystery" that didn't seem so mysterious to you personally, or a horror movie that seemed more like just a "horrible movie". I mean, you can't expect someone who feels that way to praise it after slogging through with it in frustration.
I'm a mechanic, so i want to know why it works sometimes and not others. I actually think the problems with this thing were very small. I think I said that before...
You could even have fixed the walls in a standard Lovecraftian way.
Stanfield: "No, these walls... I can't speak of it, they defied all laws of physics and reason... no, it is madness. The mud, they were in the mud, all in the mud, and the walls... Oh, god, the WALLS. No, no, some things are better left beneath. May such blessed gods of oblivion as there are protect us all from what I saw trying to dig under those hideous, mind blasting walls that were my own ancestors!"There. Fixed it.
