Abdul Alhazred's Necronomicon Book Review 

Thanks a lot for this comprehensive review! I was looking to get this book now it just went down on my priority list. I guess I'll start with Simon or Asenath Mason. Very unique perspective and I agree with what you said about planetary magick.

Nice review. I've also read the book and I do see it more positively (really positive), but I did come from a completely different direction. I mainly came for the stories and wanted to be immersed in this Lovecraftian world. So I actually only browsed over all the celestial stuff. However, I'd like to comment on the impractical sigils. I think it's important to take the background story of this particular book into account as it was laid out in the preface. This is a translation of the late 15th century Black Letter Edition of the Necronomicon. That's also where these woodcuts come from. So we're not looking at the original sigils but at reinterpretations of late medieval/early modern artists. Basically, we're looking at things through a medieval filter. As such, the artists surely embellished the designs and made them more beautiful and more complex than they needed to be. Also, from other sources (like the Picatrix), it seems as if the actual specific design of a sigil isn't really important as long as the image can somehow be identified, e.g. if it says that a sigil should display a woman holding an apple, it doesn't really matter how detailed woman and apple are as long as they can be somewhat discerned. Apart from that, the book is big. And it's supposed to be. It's a collection of various stories, topics and sources. I think it deliberately was designed like that, like an ancient holy book, which includes repetitiveness. If you read ancient Holy Books like the Bible or the Quran, or magical books like the aforementioned Picatrix, they are filled with repetitive phrasings. I think this is all part of the world building here. Sure, you could have shortened the Hymns to Cthulhu, you could have kept out celestial stuff which can be found elsewhere. But this is supposed to be Abdul Alhazred's collection, so it's bound to contain a lot of that stuff. So for me, the book is designed to be read like you'd read the Bible: Not front to back, but you pick individual stories here and there. Also, while it clearly is disjointed (and I believe deliberately so), I did get a kick out of some of the cross references. For example, in one of the stories (don't remember which one) Abdul Alhazred describes in passing how he found the Hymns to Cthulhu that are included in the book. Or I'm sure you have noticed that the woodcut of the Silver Key is adorned with some of the sigils that are explained later in the book. If you cross reference those two, otherwise independent, sections, the narrative around the Silver Key becomes a bit clearer. Regarding the tacked on stories in the end, I think you may be right. Though there is some logic to it. There are basically three types of stories, as far as I can tell: Autobiographical stories of Abdul Alhazred, stories that Abdul Alhazred received through visions and stories Abdul Alhazred collected through other means (those are in the last book). So I get the separation of these stories along those lines into various different books. However, I think the book should have started with the Book of Forgotten Lore, not ended with it. Instead, I would have put the visions at the end of the book, like it is with the Bible and the Book of Revelation...then again, maybe that would have been too on the nose and of course there are many more books about visions in the Old Testament of the Bible.

What is a realistic price for the book? Sorry my english is bad!