There's a million stories in the Dreaming City.
The Tree of Azathoth is the third in the Cthulhu Armageddon novels by C.T. Phipps. It is a novel which takes place in an After the End version of the Cthulhu Mythos.
John Henry Booth is witnessing the final hours of his world with Yog-Sothoth devouring what little remains of Earth. Choosing to live rather than die, John seeks the help of an old enemy who transports him to a strange art-deco city inhabited by both humans as well as monsters.
This is the Dreaming City, created by Randolph Carter and expanded by countless human (as well as otherwise) dreamers since. It is a city that the last survivors of Earth have fled and possibly other humans.
Seeking out signs that his loved ones might have also survived the destruction of his world, John discovers faces of friends both dead as well as alive. He also discovers that he is not the first John Henry Booth to have walked the streets of this surreal location. Others have arrived from different worlds and met their ends at the hands of the horrors within.
John suspects that his survival may have only led to something worse as he faces a terrifying choice that may finally strip him of his long fought for humanity.
The Tree of Azathoth contains the following tropes:
- And the Adventure Continues: Booth heads off with Mercury to seek out ways of destroying Hastur and helping Gabriel as well as the other human survivors.
- Author Powers: Gabriel Booth possesses these as he is a powerful Dreamer in the Dreamlands as well as a movie producer. All magic is apparently based on this as Dreaming turns out to be the source of magic for mortals, drawing power from this realm.
- Back from the Dead: Jessica O'Reilly seemingly returns from the dead as a citizen of the Dreaming City. She is actually a clone created by Gabriel as a "gift" for his father.
- Beast Man: Franz Jermyn appears to be a combination of a human and an ape. This is a reference to Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family by HP Lovecraft.
- Big Bad: Franz Jermyn is a powerful Evil Sorcerer who wields considerable influence over the Dreaming City. He turns out to be a Big Bad Wannabe versus Hastur.
- Bittersweet Ending: Verging on Downer Ending. Arthur Jermyn is dead and humanity continues to live on in the Dreaming City after the Earth is destroyed. The price for this is Gabriel must continue making stories to keep the city stable, though, and is now an Eldritch Abomination. Booth can't bring himself to give him a Mercy Kill but hopes to find a cure in the future.
- Canon Character All Along: The Kastro'vaal are revealed to have been the origin species for shoggoths.
- Cats Are Mean: Blackman is a Talking Animal that regularly makes sociopathic and evil statements. Everyone just sort of shrugs it off. He's also Hastur's avatar.
- City of Adventure: The Dreaming City is a city with countless plots, intrigues, monsters, crime, and corruption. This is because Gabriel Booth has written it that way due to being a fan of Pre-Rising pulp fiction.
- Cosmic Horror Story: After a long time of being closer to Two-Fisted Tales and Lovecraft Lite, this comes back with a vengeance with Earth destroyed and the revelation that the entire Multiverse is just an expression of Azathoth's insanity.
- Deadpan Snarker: Blackman and Booth get all the best quips as they play off one another's deeply sarcastic senses of humor.
- Did You Just Have Tea With Cthulhu: John in addition to being pals with Nyarlathotep also spends a considerable amount of time having Snark-to-Snark Combat with what turns out to be an avatar of Hastur.
- The Dog Was the Mastermind: An almost literal case with Blackman the cat turning out to be Hastur's avatar.
- Doppelgänger: Detective Booth is an alternate version of John that has been living in the Dreaming City for centuries.
- Dreamland: The majority of the book takes place in HP Lovecraft's Dreamlands. John has notably visited this place before but this is a much deeper part of it.
- The End of the World as We Know It: Earth has been dying for the entirety of the series but is finally destroyed along with the entire universe around it at the start.
- Face–Heel Turn: Martha Booth attempts to kill John after two books of being Ambiguousy Evil.
- Fate Worse than Death:
- Gabriel Booth has become a Great Old One or something akin to it by merging with the Dreaming City in order to guarantee the survival of humanity's remnants. He is forced to constantly type backgrounds, adventures, and objects to keep the populace alive.
- Franz Jermyn uses his magic to transfer his spirit to the Empty House in hopes of becoming a god. Instead, he spends thousands of years trapped there alone until he's forgotten human language.
- Faux Affably Evil: Franz Jermyn is a pleasant, charming, and polite individual. He's also a former Nazi who plans to enslave Booth and sell his companions into slavery.
- Genre Shift: While the first two books were Weird West, this is an homage to Film Noir Detective Fiction.
- Lovecraftian Superpower: John finally accepts his Kastro'vaal nature and proceeds to become a full member of his race.
- Loving a Shadow: Jessica to Detective Booth and John. She was made to love them and John points out that is unfair to both of them. Especially since she is a much nicer more pleasant version of the "real" Jessica.
- Mercy Kill: John believes he needs to give one of these to Gabriel once he discovers his condition but can't bring himself to do it.
- Monster Progenitor: John's past incarnation is revealed to have been the origin for the shoggoth race, the Elder Things experimenting on him for millennia in order to create a Slave Race from them.
- My Greatest Failure: We discover that John Henry Booth has two that are pressing with him and related. The first is killing Jessica in The Tower of Zhaal and the second is letting the town of Blacklung be destroyed by the Color.
- Snark-to-Snark Combat: Booth and Blackman can't help but make fun of one another constantly. That is when they're not making fun of everyone else.
- Superpowered Evil Side: John has always viewed his Kastro'vaal nature as one of these. His attempt to deny it has resulted in a complete lack of a control over his Lovecraftian Superpower.
- Surprise Incest: Booth discovers that Martha Booth was his biological sister, of sorts, due to the fact that both of them are the children of Alan Ward. This was notably foreshadowed by the fact that Martha and Alan as well as Gabriel all share the trait of albinism.
- Visions of Another Self: John has the memories of Detective Booth merge with his own the longer that he spends in the Dreaming City.
