At the Mountains of Madness

Respected it rather than liked it.

This is a case of very cool mythos and great concept but later authors have written the same type of stories better. It left me even more impressed by Dracula and Frankenstein, which managed to be great books in their own right even as the blazed a trail.

A lot more geology than you'd expect in a horror novel and HP Lovecraft is not gifted with the writing ability to make descriptions of sediment layers interesting.

The payoff is top notch, loved the description of the shoggoth and the terror the protagonists experienced as they fled the city, really well done but it was too little too late.

Almost but not quite made up for the turgid middle.