The Moon Pool by Abraham Merritt (free)

Free ebook The Moon Pool by A. Merritt

This is a review of another free ebook that is available at Gutenberg, and probably any other free ebook repository as it is in the public domain. The book was written by Abraham Merritt and originally published in All Story Weekly in two parts, in 1918 and 1919.

It is written, by Abraham Merritt, as a "true" account of incidents reported by an organization calling themselves: "Executive Council of the International Association of Science" and they say they contracted Abraham Merritt to rewrite the notes of Dr. Goodwin so they can be understood by the layman.

The Plot

The story centers around 4 main characters: A scientist, Dr. Goodwin (main character), a Dr. David Throckmartin, his wife, and their associate Dr. Charles Stanton. who have supernatural experiences and visit a lost civilization deep underground.

It starts when Dr. Goodwin meets his friend Throckmartin on a boat and they share a supernatural experience with some sort of moon energy thing, and Throckmartin shares a story of his previous research trip to a remote location in the Pacific, where it seems he lost his wife and Dr. Stanton. The thing they saw is said to use moonlight to operate and is searching for Throckmartin.

In Throckmartin's tale, The group, including Throckmartin, stumbled into the area of a thing they call The Moon Rock, which hid an entrance to something underground. This rock reacts as if electrified when touched and they suspect it is a door of a sort though to what they do not know. They all have some sort of strange experience at that location. Later, one of the team disappears from camp, and they find part of her handkerchief stuck under the edge of the Moon Rock. So they know it is a door, and suspect their friend was taken thorough it. They try to open it but are unsuccessful, and suspect it opens only at night. They decide to wait for night, in hopes it will open as it did before. The door opens but they are unsuccessful due to more supernatural stuff happening and they loose Stanton. They plan to wait the next night, and this time Throckmartin is successful getting in. He sees the Moon Pool inside and he is just in time to see his wife taken into the pool by a supernatural phenomenon (floating lights). Throckmartin then escapes the Moon Pool cave, and eventually out too sea in a small boat, where he was picked up by the large boat Goodwin was on. Shortly thereafter the moon lights take Throckmartin from the boat.

Goodwin decides to go after Throckmartin and the others. He gets a boat and coincidently finds an old acquaintance named Olaf Huldricksson tied to floating wreckage of a boat, who lost his wife and daughter to the same lights and was half crazy from the experience. They then find even more wreckage in the sea, this time a hydro-airplane, and its pilot Larry O'Keefe. Thus, the little band of adventures is gathered and off to the Moon Door and behind it the Moon Pool.

I am not going to give away much more of the plot and ruin it. From here, in the world beyond the Moon Pool, the heroes encounter supernatural beings, and a lost civilization and eventually fight a battle between good and evil that threatens the entire world.

The plot is a sort of old timey lost civilization adventure / fantasy story, in the style of Rider Haggard, Arthur Conan Doyle, or Edgar Rice Burroughs. Though, since it is set in the time it is written in, and takes place mostly in a lost underground civilization, it does not have much in it to date it. It reminds me of watching an old adventure moving like King Kong. In that movie, we know they are in 1933, or there abouts, though once we are in the jungle, the story is mostly about man against nature, without too much reliance on any sort of technology to date it.

The story is crazy, but engaging and fun. The characters are interesting and some are super intense. I cared about the characters and always wanted to know what was going to happen next; I was totally hooked once I got into it. There are a lot of spooky moments, and even some very creepy things, even by todays standards, and especially for the period when it was written. Over all it is a good book, not a great book but good. I liked Mr. Merritt's follow up called The Metal Monster better but still I am glad I read this one. It is available as a free ebook after all so I cannot complain of course. I may have said this in other reviews but I must reiterate that to find a good free ebook like this one, I had to read many that I do not want to remember or write about. Some were not worth the cost in time and some may have scarred me for life. To find these gems I have suffered at the hands of even good authors like Manly Wade and Doc E Smith, and worst of all for my sanity there were a few bad/terrible ones form my favs Andre Norton and Rider Haggard. I will not review books on this blog that I cannot recommend as, like I said, I do not want to remember them and they are not worth my time, or the reader's, even if they were a free ebook.

I had never heard of Abraham Merritt, but tried to get more of his work as soon as I finished this. Gutenberg have one other book of his, the follow up to the Moon Pool called The Metal Monster. The Metal Monster is only a follow up to The Moon Pool, in that it also has Dr. Goodwin as one of the main characters, and the events of that book are not really related to the events of the Moon Pool. I will write a review for The Metal Monster later. That is also a great tale.

I definitely plan to read more of Mr. Merritt's work. I wish there were more free ones out there. Gutenberg Australia have others available but these are not public domain books in all countries.


Free eBook Download at Gutenberg:
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/765

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moon_Pool