Rediscovered Authors: Moon Pool by A. Merritt

      

    Moon Pool was published in 1919 by the author A. Merritt and inspired later writers like Lovecraft. It is a pulp fiction action novel that takes place in a Lost World under a South Pacific Island. It is considered to be pre-Tolkien fantasy. 

    The story follows the botanist, Dr. William Goodwin in the South Pacific. There he finds his stranded friend Throckmartin who desperately asks him for help. His wife and friends vanished in a pool in the lost city of Ponape (Pohnpei), (a real abandoned city in Micronesia). On the way to Ponape, they run into a Norwegian sailor named Olaf whose wife and child were kidnapped, a half-Irish/half-American WWI pilot named O'Keefe, and a Red Russian named Marakinoff. They hear stories of a luminous malevolent monster kidnapping people from nearby ships.   After Throckmartin is kidnapped mysteriously in the ruins of Ponape, the rest of the crew find a way to sneak into the moon pool portal with the help of a mysterious woman and her half frog half woman companion. They hope to save their friends and lost loved ones in the mysterious subterranean world of Muria. 

    The lost world is technologically superior to the world above. The society is decadent. and worship The Dweller, The Shining One, who had been going to the surface, kidnapping people and using their energy. The people of Muria also make human sacrifices The Dweller, a superior being created by the ancient ones. The men get help from a mysterious woman who helped them before named Lakla who serves the ancient ones. 

    The narrative shifts to a tiresome love triangle involving Larry O’Keefe, a half-Irish, half-American pilot, who instantly falls for Lakla, a priestess serving the benevolent Ancient Ones, angering Yolara, the wicked priestess of the Dweller. This romantic subplot is tiresome and melodramatic, and O’Keefe, meant to be the hero, becomes unlikeable by the end. The climax is disappointingly clichéd and anticlimactic, though it may have felt fresher in 1919.

    I enjoyed the political references to World War I and the “Red Russians,” particularly the antagonist Dr. Marakinoff, a Communist scientist seeking to harness the Dweller’s ancient power for world domination—a precursor to Indiana Jones’ Nazi villains. Unfortunately, Marakinoff is underdeveloped and sidelined for much of the story. 

    Merritt's vivid prose created a dark, mysterious atmosphere, with our characters vulnerable on boats in the sea with little escape from the monster, the scary abandoned city on an isolated island that the natives feared. Once inside it was a twisted false Utopia of rainbows and flowers with terror underneath.  The plot, however, was melodramatic, which fits the pulp style. Even though I didn't like it, I think it would make a great movie! I recommend this book only if you like pulp fiction or want to read the story that inspired Lovecraft.