Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

** spoiler alert ** Obsessively detailed, devoid of plot development, and lacking in dramatic tension - his shorter stories like The Colour Out of Time, The Call of Cthulhu, The Whisperer in Darkness are much better
It's interesting that this story is probably Lovecraft's best known and often considered his best. Unlike the far more concise but equally creepy and imaginative stories, this story basically spends it's entire excessive length in obsessively repeating the same descriptions of eldritch Elder Ones and nameless horrors, using the same set of a dozen or so adjectives, especially the following:

Grotesque, Hideous, Nameless, Ancient, Eldritch, Abnormal, Blasphemous, Accursed, Loathsome

And rather than create any dramatic tension with the question of whether the narrator and his companions survive their encounter with the ruins of an impossibly ancient and sinister alien civilization in the antarctic, Lovecraft frames the story as a diary so we know full well they survive, and despite repeating endlessly of how horrifying the events are, much more time is spent on a completely tension-destroying final section that describes every last detail of his Elder Ones and their evil Shoggoth creations in impossible detail, based on their perusal of hundreds of detailed wall carvings and sculptures. Any anthropologist or paleontologist would burst out laughing at the preposterousness of being able to deduce such details from such scant sources, it puts Sherlock Holmes to shame!

The only thing that makes the story memorable is the obsessive details of the sinister and harsh and forbidding conditions of the antarctic mountains and his details about the aliens, but creating an amazing set design (like HR Giger's paintings for Alien(s) still doesn't make it a terrifying and propulsive story until the directing skills of Ridley Scott and James Cameron and acting performance of Sigourney Weaver are added to the mix. That's why it's quite surprising that this story was the inspiration of John Carpenter's The Thing. If he had done a faithful rendition, it would have been the dullest film of all time, so well done to take such liberties.