Claimed! | Gertrude Barrows Bennett

Somebody dared to take this box out of the ocean. It's made of some shimmering green material with a scarlet inscription decidedly on its bottom side, as the inscription will inevitably return there if the box is left unattended for a while. And now it has found its way into the greedy claws of rich man Jesse Robinson. But since its arrival, everybody in his household has been having nightmares of the ocean coming to take them. Some thief tried to steal the box, and the man who sold Mr. Robinson the box has gone missing.

Today we'd call this kind of setup Lovecraft-esque, but when Gertrude Barrows Bennett published this story in 1920, H.P. Lovecraft had only published a handful of stories himself. But it's tough not to measure Claimed! against the expectations that a modern reader with moderate familiarity with Lovecraft's stories brings to the table—which is why I won't pretend and will do exactly that: Measure Claimed! against those expectations.

The first chapters of Claimed! constitute a competent and suspenseful setup of a cosmic horror plot: The box at its centre comes with a strange and old history, relayed to us through multiple characters and framing devices. The unexplainable events ratchet up in power, and our cast of characters slowly descends into madness.

But it all begins to fall apart around the halfway point. First, too much of the lore is explained. It can be fair to criticise Lovecraft for calling his horrors "incomprehensible and indescribable," but Claimed! shows us that a full lore dump can be equally unsatisfying. The occult history is much too small in scope to raise the stakes for the finale, never mind capturing the reader's imagination beyond the plot of the novel.

In the same vein (and slight spoiler), the antagonistic force reveals itself as quite weak. Granted, it doesn't need cosmic powers, but the provided lore raises expectations far beyond the demonstration of power that awaits at the end.

Finally, let us talk about the problematic parts. H.P. Lovecraft is rightfully criticised heavily for his overt racism. Claimed! demonstrates that the genre, even though it revolves around "fear of the other," does not require racism to function. Different cultures and countries are used to great effect in broadening the scope and mystery without any racist over- or even undertones. All goodwill generated through clearing this—frankly low—bar is lost, though, when the slight sexism present throughout the novel finds its most overt and shocking expression in the form of a punchline at the very end of the novel.

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