Note:  if you want just one or two of these titles, please look for them in my eBay store... they are now listed individually. You'll also find some photos of the artwork in these books.

David Hero is an Edinburgh artist who has odd snatches of memory that seem to come from another world--- the world of dreams. But DREAMLAND is real, located in a parallel dimension of the multiverse, created by the dreams of mankind... and by the dreams of others, including Cthulhu. When he met his friend Eldin the Wanderer in Dreamland, and then encountered him again in Edinburgh, there was a crisis... and both ended up in Dreamland together as adventurers, with only vague memories of the waking world.

Dreamland was invented by H P Lovecraft, and most extensively utilized in his short novel, "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath," which is as close as HPL could get to a sword-and-sorcery story (his hero, Carter, did carry a sword at one point but it didn't do him much good). When I looked back at HPL's story after reading Lumley's, I was vastly impressed by Lumley's detailed knowledge of the "Dream-Quest!" Lumley's "dreams" novels are swords-and-sorcery stories too, with some nasty horrors encountered on the way. But whereas HPL wrote in the style of the 19th century (which he naturally inbibed as a child from reading the old books in his grandfather's library), Lumley is a modern storyteller.

Let me repeat my comment on these Dreams novels... These novels are not intended to be taken too seriously (which does NOT mean that there are no moments of sheer horror through these novels). Elsewhere, Brian Lumley tells us that what he had in mind while writing them was Bing Crosby and Bob Hope in their old "Road" movies. So just enjoy them as they are! (And anyway, how serious was H P Lovecraft when he took Randolph Carter back from Dreamland's moon in a "great leap of cats.") 

In SHIP OF DREAMS we meet night-gaunts again (including a human gaunt-master), King Kuranes, Zura the zombie queen, and have lots of fun with flying armadas from the sky-city of Serannian.

In MAD MOON OF DREAMS, the whole world is turned about: former enemies become allies against two Great Old Ones, Mnomquah (in his moon prison) and Oorn (on Dreamland's earth). Baleful yellow beams strike earth and suck up people and animals to be used as fodder in an evil plot to destroy the Dreamlands (and with them, the Waking World). ... And Hero and Eldin suffer a curious fate there on the moon...

First edition (first printing) books published at $7.50 apiece by W. Paul Ganley: Publisher in 1986-1987.  They have great artwork including the dust jackets and lots of interior art.  Even if you have read one or more of these in the later Tor mass market paperback editions, you might well want these first editions also — if only for the artwork!  They are "as new" and suitable as gifts, too.