If you've ever, like me, wondered how a longer Lovecraft's Dream Cycle story would have panned out, then look no further. The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadeth is the answer to that and for all intents, it's not a pretty answer. It's a novella, some claiming it as more a proper novel as it has a word count of over 42 000 words, but that said, Lovecraft, himself wasn't too happy with it beyond stating it as a "good practice for writing longer prose". Some have claimed it as charming, albeit in a dire need of rewriting, others as an unreadable mess. And some, perhaps willing to spin it long enough, as an Alice in Wonderland kind of a fantasy. Personally, I found it a rambling, sprawling mess of all the things that Lovecraft had penned with his Dream Cycle in mind at that point. It is a story lacking focus and coherence, but with some morsels of intrigue thrown here and there. Furthermore, the story was never published during Lovecraft's lifetime, only seeing the light of day in 1943, around 6 years after his death.
Randolph Carter has seen dreams of a majestic sunset city, which he longs to approach, but which has remained unapproachable for the dreamer. When he prays the gods of dream to reveal the city to him, the dreams are snagged away from him, so, as an expert dreamer, he decides to enter the dreaming to seek out the gods in order to find where the city is. From there, Carter embarks on a long, messy journey across the lands of dreams. On this journey, he meets all kinds of residents of the dreamworld, visits all kinds of places and many of these encounters end up having very little meaning besides Lovecraft stuffing places and people from his other writings to bloat a relatively simple tale into an epic, messy narrative.
The city of Ulthar, the priests of Atal, a ghoul of Richard Pickman, Kuranes and Nyarlathotep are merely friction of familiar names that have found their way to the story. This is perhaps the most definitive attempt on Lovecraft's part in writing a pure fantasy story. While it's not a successful attempt, it is, in places an interesting one. As Joanna Russ stated, it is charming but lacks polish and rewrites.
What the story really boils down to is, that it's overflowing. Lovecraft threw absolutely everything in his Dream Cycle arsenal at it, trying to pin it all down into one, single narrative. And while it has, at places rather grand imagery and intriguing lore, the story itself just can't escape under its heavyweight caused by the sprawling story, which makes barely sense.
You could claim The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath is a valiant attempt, but a successful one it isn't. Not by a long shot. And that is a shame, as it does have some charm about it.
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