Strange Eons

Strange Eons is a novel by Robert Bloch. It consists largely of references to Lovecraft novels and short stories, which it neither expands on nor explains very much (for example, we are still left wondering what those odd things were that killed Harley Warren, and Bloch -- rather than telling us -- has one of his characters die in a similar fashion and doesn't explain that).


 * Anyone Can Die: There are multiple protagonists throughout the book, and almost all of them die, as well as many other characters.
 * The Bad Guy Wins: Mark becomes Cthulhu at the end and destroys everything.
 * Death by Childbirth: Kay Keith is said to have died this way during the Time Skip after giving birth to Mark Dixon. Supposedly justified in that Mark's father is Cthulhu, but he appears to be shaped exactly like a normal human until Nyarlathotep shines the crystal on him.
 * Decoy Protagonist: The viewpoint characters are arguably all this, except Mark at the end.
 * Dying Dream: Subverted. Mark thinks he's having one of these when he's taken away by the fish people, but it's real.
 * Hollywood Silencer: The gun used to blow off the top of Fred Elstree's head is totally silent.
 * Human Mom, Nonhuman Dad: Mark.
 * Informed Attribute: Kay Keith, the second protagonist, thinks to herself that she's not "the fainting sort" after we see her faint for the first time. She then goes on to do it several more times.
 * Literary Allusion Title: The title is part of a couplet from the Necronomicon, found in "The Nameless City" and "The Call of Cthulhu": "That is not dead which can eternal lie / And with strange aeons even death may die". One of the last lines in the book is "Death died", though it's never stated what this means.
 * Nuclear Option: Cthulhu is successfully nuked, but Mark becomes his replacement.
 * Time Skip: Mark is introduced after one of these, since he doesn't exist yet in the earlier chapters.