The Eldritch New Adventures of Becky Sharp by Micah S. Harris

    THE ELDRITCH NEW ADVENTURES OF BECKY SHARP by Micah S. Harris is a peculiar example of a novel, starring the villainous co-lead of VANITY FAIR as she's granted immortality by the forces of the Cthulhu Mythos then put through a variety of oddball adventures that roughly resemble A LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMAN. This despite, or perhaps because, she is one of the most selfish and self-absorbed antiheroines in English literature. It's a bit like PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES or Phillip Jose Farmer's Wold Newton books. If that seems like a bit of a mouthful, it's a rather hard book to describe even if it's straightforward in its plotting.

    The premise is that Becky Sharp gets forcibly dragooned into the service of the British Empire and goes from misadventure to misadventure. These involved confronting African jungle queens, secret cults, Sherlock Holmes, a serial numbers filed off version of Tarzan, Captain Nemo, the villainess of Arthur Machen's The Great God Pan, and a few other references I'm not literature literate enough to get. There's even a confrontation with Great Cthulhu himself as Becky finds herself on a Norwegian vessel during the events of "The Call of Cthulhu"'s climax.

    This is a wacky book. That's about the only way I can describe it. The Cthulhu Mythos is involved in a lot of the science fiction and period fiction of the time. There's the Great Race of Yith, Cult of the Black Pharaoh, Cult of Tulu (Cthulhu), and other groups. The treatment of the Mythos is far pulpier and one-dimensionally evil than terrifying or inscrutable, though. This pulpy handling of the characters is contrasted with the fact that Becky remains as doggedly determined to do the least amount of heroism as necessary in order to save her own life or the world (where she leaves).

    The prose style is deliberately simple and straight forward, often daring the reader to figure out who various characters and stand-ins are. Some of them are very simple like "The Great Detective" who still pines for Irene Addler but others take a bit more to figure out. This is quite a bit of fun but some of the stand-ins are a bit too obvious and unnecessary given the nature of public domain. After all, why would you rename a still-white whale "Mocha Dick"?

    This is a fun and entertaining read that took me a little to get into. I’m mostly familiar with Vanity Fair through the various movie adaptations so the use of Becky as a protagonist wasn’t as effective as it might have been. I suspect those who don’t know her at all will also wonder why we should care if she’s being made into the world’s most poorly chosen secret agent. There’s also some period accurate racism on display, though Becky sees other races as no worse than her own (and treats them both like garbage). I give it a solid 4/5 stars since I set it down a few times but always picked it back up.

Available here