At the Mountains of Madness and Other Novels of Terror

by H.P. Lovecraft, August Derleth (Introduction), E. Hoffman Price (Contributor)

NIGHTMARE STORIES FROM THE LAND OF TOTAL FEAR

Renowned as one of the great horror-writers of all time, H.P. Lovecraft produced works of enduring power. Now gathered together into this omnibus volume are seven classics of screaming supernatural terror and vilest horror...

Front cover illustration by Tim White.

Contents:

- Introduction: H. P. Lovecraft's Novels by August Derleth
- At the Mountains of Madness
- The Case of Charles Dexter Ward
- The Dreams in the Witch-House
- The Statement of Randolph Carter
- The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath
- The Silver Key
- Through the Gates of the Silver Key

Genres: Horror, Fiction, Fantasy, Short Stories, Science Fiction, Classics, Lovecraftian

552 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1964

About the author

Howard Phillips Lovecraft, of Providence, Rhode Island, was an American author of horror, fantasy and science fiction.

Lovecraft's major inspiration and invention was cosmic horror: life is incomprehensible to human minds and the universe is fundamentally alien. Those who genuinely reason, like his protagonists, gamble with sanity. Lovecraft has developed a cult following for his Cthulhu Mythos, a series of loosely interconnected fictions featuring a pantheon of human-nullifying entities, as well as the Necronomicon, a fictional grimoire of magical rites and forbidden lore. His works were deeply pessimistic and cynical, challenging the values of the Enlightenment, Romanticism and Christianity. Lovecraft's protagonists usually achieve the mirror-opposite of traditional gnosis and mysticism by momentarily glimpsing the horror of ultimate reality.

Although Lovecraft's readership was limited during his life, his reputation has grown over the decades. He is now commonly regarded as one of the most influential horror writers of the 20th Century, exerting widespread and indirect influence, and frequently compared to Edgar Allan Poe.
See also Howard Phillips Lovecraft.

— Wikipedia

Reviews

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has been in my collection for some years now - but I have never got round to reading it. In fact its the first of a 3 volume set and part of the Grafton series of Lovecraft and Cthulhu books.

Now I will have to put my hand up and admit though I have read many of the stories before. You see I have lost count of the number of editions, versions and combinations of books which contain the works of H P lovecraft and his fellow macabre authors. So this was a far easier read than you would expect even with the 500 plus pages to this first volume.

So why keep this edition when it clearly has its contents elsewhere - well apart from the brilliant Tim White cover (he did the covers for all the books and the Hounds of Tindalos is one of my favourites) the book has some of my favourite stories from Lovecraft.

Okay this may sound sacrilegious but Lovecraft wrote a lot in his sadly short writing career, some are brilliant, some are truly astounding but some are sadly lacking and unfortunately every different anthologies have varying mixes of quality. Thankfully in this case they are all good.

So what of the stories well apart from no spoilers and a very wide range of stories the titular story is a classic. So much so that it seems to be stuck in development hell as various people struggle to get the story turned in a film (I hope they do).

So for fans of horror who want to know a little more of the grand masters of the genres this is as good a place to start - however be warned Lovecraft's style is not for everything it is more atmosphere than shock horror but if that is your thing this is a must.

[Sarah (is clearing her shelves) · Rating 3 out of 5]

20/08 - I've just finished the first short story in this anthology, At the Mountains of Madness. I've previously read an anthology of Lovecraftian short stories, but nothing by the man himself. The first thing I want to say is that, other than having starfish shaped heads, I have no idea what the alien entities, the old ones, are supposed to have looked like. Lovecraft's description of all their different body parts and their dimensions went completely over my head and left me wishing for a picture. I really liked the way Lake sent reports of what they'd found over the radio, getting more and more excited with each new development. It really added to the tension as I was reading.

Has this been made into a movie? If not, why not? I can see this as a fantastic Paranormal/Blair Witch shaky hand-held camera kind of movie (but not the kind that draws mockery) with the reports from Lake done in video messages instead of radio transmissions and when the rest of the team get to the destroyed campsite they could find a damaged-but-still-working camera which could start to tell the story of what happened. If it had a good director and some decent actors, I could totally see that being a hit and something that Lovecraft fans would tacitly agree to see, hoping it wouldn't be a desecration of Lovecraft's memory, only to find it far surpassed their expectations and was a credit to his memory.

I was a little put off by the discussion of Shoggoths without any explanation of what they are, as if I and everyone else reading his work should know what a Shoggoth is because I've read all his other work. Maybe that, and my brain being unable to turn Lovecraft's description of the Elder Ones into a cohesive animal/vegetable thing, were the reasons why I didn't find this scary. I enjoyed it and look forward to reading the rest of the short stories, but it wasn't scary.

22/08 - So, I've now looked up Shoggoths and the Elder Ones to see what Lovecraft might have been imagining when he wrote those horribly complicated descriptions. Nothing like what my slightly less sophisticated imagination had conjured up, but at least now I have a solid image to concentrate on whenever more Shoggoths or Elder Ones appear in any Lovecraft stories that I subsequently read.

Now I'm onto the next story in the anthology, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, which is possibly even better than At the Mountains of Madness. I love the mystery of what Ward's ancestor, Joseph Curwen, might be - zombie, vampire or something else - and through figuring out what Ward has become and how.
On another note, I am surprised at the number of errors I'm finding in the editing - repeated words, words with incorrect first letters and general misspellings. Is this how the stories (I've noticed the errors in both) were published originally or is it just this anthology that needs an overall edit? To be continued...

24/08 - Of course Lovecraft doesn't reveal exactly what happened to Curwen on the night he was annihilated, he leaves it up to our imaginations. Is that a 'thing' with Gothic horror stories, that not everything is revealed as anything our imagination might create would be scarier than if the author told us outright what happened? Because I don't agree. I have a number of theories, all slightly different variations on the same theme, but I'm not sure and I find that more frustrating than disturbing/scary. To be continued...

26/08 - I loved the ending of The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, I couldn't guess what was going on with Charles at all. I was thinking that Ward might have conjured Curwen up and sort of subsumed him into himself and begun to turn into Curwen, so I was surprised when the truth was revealed.

Now I'm halfway through The Dreams in the Witch House which is not quite as good. I was not impressed or scared by the description of the "small, white, furry thing" that flashes across rooms in the corner of your eye and has the face and hands of a human - that's just weird and possibly funny, it reminds me of a scene from a kids' movie where the witch/wizard turns the annoying person into a rat but it still has the human face superimposed on the rat body. It just doesn't work for me. But the idea of either bringing something tangible out of a dream or somehow finding it in the real world after you've dreamed about it definitely made an impression, so much so I had my own strange experience.

Since I started reading Lovecraft just over a week ago I've been having strange, vivid dreams. One night my brother tried to shoot me, then I woke up got a drink and went back to sleep only to find myself and my family in a very futuristic airport where I was the only one to notice the terrorist with the smoking backpack walking through the airport. I was yelling at everyone to get down when I woke up the next morning. Then another night I had a dream about a character from a short 'whodunnit' murder mystery tv series called Harper's Island. The character was John Wakefield a serial killer killing off everyone on the island. In my dream he was roaming my large, well-treed backyard and had captured my mum (except she wasn't my actual mother, she looked completely different) and trussed her to an A-frame, like what you use to grow beans on. I was sneaking through the yard searching through the stacks of farm tools for the perfect weapon to kill Wakefield with. I finally decided on a very long pole with a three-pronged fork on the end (who knows what kind of farm tool it was supposed to be), long enough so that I didn't have to be too close to him and pointy enough for killing. I was holding it preparing to stab him in the back while he was taunting my 'mother' when I started to get cramp in my hand so bad that I could hardly continue to hold the weapon (I have been getting some bad hand cramps lately that I've attributed to too much typing). I woke up somewhere around there, before I had the chance to drop the weapon or kill Wakefield. And last night I dreamed I was at a friends' birthday party and we were playing some kind of crazy party game that involved being bound hand and foot and placed on our sides in a box until one whole side of our body had gone numb (from lying on it for so long). My body was going numb when I woke up to find that I was lying on my arm and it had gone numb.

Now, I'm pretty sure those weird dreams coming one after another while I'm reading Lovecraft is all just a coincidence. While I enjoy horror and fantasy (ghosts, vampires etc) and would be quick to believe if there was ever any evidence (something actually happened to me), I don't actually believe in the supernatural - it just makes for great stories. Wow, this review is long and I've still got 4.5 stories to go, hope I can fit it into the 13,034 characters I've got left. To be continued...

28/11 - Finally getting back to this after nearly two years of reading other books. When I stopped reading last time it was at the end of The Dreams in the Witch-House, which, looking back at my review from last year, I found more frustrating than scary, but still enjoyable. The Statement of Randolph Carter was a good offering but felt unfinished, like the second last chapter of a story, not the only chapter. What happened to Carter between hearing that 'other' voice on the end of the phone and waking up in the hospital? What did Warren see in the depths of the earth? Did the 'thing' on the phone get out into our world? Then, when I started reading The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath and it had Carter in it again I thought it might expand on The Statement of Randolph Carter, explain some of the questions the reader was left with, but I had absolutely no idea what was going on in that story. To me, it seemed to be a whole lot of rambling purple prose and waffling about overly existential ideas. I only read 20 pages before I gave up and skipped to the next story, The Silver Key, which also features Randolph Carter and some unnecessarily descriptive writing. We'll see how much I can bear before surrendering. To be continued...

30/11 - The Silver Key and Through the Gates of the Silver Key continue the story of Randolph Carter. They were both a mix of the rambling of The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath and the more readable (for me) narrative of The Statement of Randolph Carter. I enjoyed learning more, and thus understanding more, about what happened to Carter and am glad I made the effort to finish the last two stories after the frustration/waste of time that was The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, but after reading the whole anthology I've realised that Lovecraft isn't really for me. When it comes to horror it seems I don't find oblique scares all that scary, I'm a 'show-not-tell' kind of reader and Lovecraft appears to be the master of 'tell-not-show' horror. When things are left up to the reader I find myself more frustrated that the author didn't tell us or give better clues to lead us to the answer, rather than curious and excited that I get to create my own ending. I probably wouldn't read another Lovecraft book, but if you're a fan of his, or a first timer looking for a good example of his work then I recommend you try this book. I think it has a good selection of his writing, showcasing a range of some of his most popular stories.

PopSugar 2015 Reading Challenge: A Book you Started but Never Finished

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

The horror in At the Mountains of Madness is not in sadistic descriptions of slashings, torturings, mutilations and bloodletting, but rather in the slow build-up of the feeling that humanity is not alone in the universe and that the other inhabitants, if they consider us at all, don't really think much of us. The only times the history of the Elder Things mentions us it is as either an amusing animal kept for entertainment or as a foodstuff.

The horror is that there are unfathomable depths of pre-history, that humankind are very much late-comers and that, if we are not careful, we might come to the notice of things that could wipe us away with little thought.

Nonetheless, the Elder Things are portrayed as one of the few, if not the only, of Lovecraft's non-human races with which we can feel any sympathy. He remarks that, despite the terrible toll they take upon the expedition, they were not evil things of their kind and that they had not acted any differently than would we in the same circumstances. The fate of the Elder Things is one that evokes a feeling of pity.

I've read that this story de-mythologises the Cthulhu Mythos and recasts the stories as science fiction rather than as tales of the supernatural and cosmic horror, but I don't think that is necessarily correct. Although the Elder Things are described as being composed of normal matter and having originated somewhere within our own mundane dimension, Lovecraft specifically states that the Star Spawn of Cthulhu and the Mi-Go are composed, at least partly, of some exotic material and that their origins lie outside the realm we know. Also, credit must be given to Lovecraft's characterisation, something that he is not often accorded: the story is written from the perspective of a scientist who has interpretted the history of the Elder Things through pictorial representations. Naturally the narrator's own world-view, that of scientific materialism, infuses his interpretation.

One of Lovecraft's best.

[Greg]

As At the mountains of madness is an anthology of short novels by H. P. Lovecraft, and I’m only reading each novel in between other books, I thought I would write a composite review in a piecemeal fashion. That is, I would write a review of each of the novels in the anthology in the order I read them and this means that this review won’t be completed for months or maybe even a year!

The first novel I read in this anthology (in July 2011) is The case of Charles Dexter Ward, which is a tale that, for me, appeals in different ways. As horror, it is typical of Lovecraft’s work in being a gradual revelation of something evil afoot. The story slowly unfolds of Charles Dexter Ward whose interest in genealogy and local history as a teenager develops into an obsession – ‘from the study of the past to the study of the occult’ (p. 146). In his initially conventional researches, certain documentary discoveries lead him to take an increasing interest in esoteric knowledge about certain ancestors, ancient technology, chemistry and scientific experimentation, his sanity all the while diminishing as a result. Only towards the end do we get glimpses of real horror – first in historical (eighteenth-century) contexts as Ward’s researches are revealed, then in contemporary ones, as answers to the reasons for Ward’s activities are sought by his family doctor. The effect this gives, of course, is a growing sense of suspense and unease as the narrative proceeds.

As an historian myself, I appreciate the approach taken by Lovecraft in writing the story as if it were an historical narrative – there are no passages of dialogue for example – and both its documentary air and attention to detail gives it a semblance of historical truth. I also liked it because, to a degree, the narrative follows Ward’s own historical and genealogical research, activities appealing to all historical investigators of the past. Initially, Ward’s focus is on the history of the older buildings and districts of the town he lived in, as well as his own family, and to this end, he spent much time ‘at the City Hall, the State House, the Public Library, the Athenaeum, the Historical Society, the John Carter Brown and John Hay Libraries of Brown University, and the newly opened Shepley Library in Benefit Street’ (p. 149). Graveyards also had ‘historic value’ (p. 153) but he had no morbid attraction to them initially. It was only following the discovery of his ancestor Joseph Curwen (p. 153) that things began to change and led him to chase up documents in ‘the Essex Institute, the Court House, and the Registry of Deeds’ (p. 197), as well as in collections of privately held family papers. This degree of research – in so many archives – is remarkable and would normally only be expected of a professional scholar or a postgraduate student, not for a schoolboy or a young undergraduate with no formal training as an historian or archivist. At a time (centring on 1920) when there were no modern distractions such as television, computer games or the Internet, perhaps it’s not entirely implausible to think that an older teenager could develop such a broad knowledge of record repositories and their contents as well as some skill as a palaeographer.

The case of Charles Dexter Ward is also interesting as a literary document of its time, which was written in 1927-8 but not published until 1941, according to August Derleth’s introduction to the volume. These include its near-contemporary cultural references, its use of archaic or rare vocabulary and Lovecraft’s attitudes towards race and class.

Among the cultural references, Albert Einstein, who had published his theory of relativity in 1916, as well as a number of other important theories in physics by this time, is referred to at a point in the story dating to 1920, indicating how famous he had already become:

[Ward] was seeking to acquire as fast as possible those neglected arts of old which a true interpreter of the Curwen data must possess, and hoped in time to make a full announcement and presentation of the utmost interest to mankind and to the world of thought. Not even Einstein, he declared, could more profoundly revolutionize the current conception of things (p. 210).

Two internationally renowned (and, coincidentally, Irish) literary figures – Oscar Wilde and Lord Dunsany (the latter an acknowledged influence on Lovecraft’s early work [p. 5]) – are also mentioned in passing:

From that time on the obliteration of Curwen’s memory became increasingly rigid, extending at last by common consent even to the town records and files of the Gazette. It can be compared in spirit only to the hush that lay on Oscar Wilde’s name for a decade after his disgrace, and in extent only to the fate of that sinful King of Runagur in Lord Dunsany’s tale, whom the gods decided must be [sic] only cease to be, but must cease to ever have been (p. 193).

Wilde’s ‘disgrace’ was his conviction for homosexual sex in 1895 (Terrible Queer Creatures: Homosexuality in Irish History, pp. 154-6).

It’s interesting, too, to be reminded that some technology has been around for a while – from photostatic copying (p. 197) to electric log fire-places (p. 206).

Lovecraft’s use of archaic or rarely used words adds to the documentary feel of the narrative, e.g. ‘anent’ (pp. 206, 285 and elsewhere), ‘mephitic’ (p. 260), and ‘stertorously’ (p. 281), as does the ancient Grecian terminology employed in referring to assorted containers based on their shape or appearance – lekythoi, Phalerons, Kylikes and Kylix (pp. 274, 277, 278).

Issues of race and class in the work of Lovecraft are not new to his fans or detractors. Of course, America was a much more racist and class-ridden society in the 1920s than it is today, so it should not be surprising to see this reflected in the work of a quasi-reclusive and well-to-do white. Even allowing for the time in which it was written, the racial comments about non-whites – or more particularly people of mixed race – and the condescending attitudes towards the working class are a little distracting for the modern reader. I’ve already touched on this in a group-read thread about The case of Charles Dexter Ward at Horror Aficionados, but will reprise what I said there and modify it a little here.

Lovecraft used xenophobic slurs in describing the people employed by the eighteenth-century occultist, Joseph Curwen, seemingly in an effort to emphasise their evil or at least their strange and suspicious nature. Thus, at his farm, Curwen’s

only visible servants, farmers, and caretakers were a sullen pair of Narragansett Indians, the husband dumb and curiously scarred, and the wife of a very repulsive cast of countenance, probably due to a mixture of Negro blood (pp. 157-8).

At Curwen’s town house, there were ‘two swarthy foreigners who comprised the only manservants’ and an ‘incredibly aged French housekeeper’ who was notable for her ‘hideous indistinct mumbling’ (p. 158). If this were not enough, all the sailors employed by Curwen ‘were mongrel riff-raff from Martinique, St Eustatius, Havana or Port Royal’ (p. 162).

Curwen’s descendant, Charles Dexter Ward, would himself gain two associates as he delved deeper into the occult – ‘a villainous-looking Portuguese half-caste from the South Main Street Waterfront who acted as a servant, and a thin, scholarly stranger with dark glasses and a stubby full beard of dyed aspect whose status was evidently that of a colleague’ (p. 233).

While his descriptions of foreigners and people of mixed race were particularly negative, Lovecraft seems to have been less troubled by non-whites who were not of mixed race. Even so, his attitude towards African Americans could still be condescending, possibly as a result of his attitude towards the working class generally, though of course many blacks at this time would’ve been in low-paid employment. In the novel under review, the young Ward discovers that Joseph Curwen’s town house still exists but is inhabited by a black family that was ‘much esteemed for occasional washing, house-cleaning, and furnace-tending services’ (p. 200). Furthermore, ‘the present Negro inhabitants were known to him, and he was very courteously shown about the interior by old Asa and his stout wife Hannah’. In contrast to the many white characters in the story, we are never told their surname, but they are perhaps a step above many of the servants who are referred to throughout the novel without even a first name being used (such as the Wards’ butler [p. 238] or, indeed, Curwen’s above-mentioned employees). In the story, Ward treats Asa and Hannah well as they are ‘properly reimbursed for [the] invasion of their domestic hearth’ when Ward investigates a portrait painted on the wall above their fire-place (p. 202). Later on, ‘good old black Hannah came to help with the spring cleaning’ (one presumes she was also paid for this ‘help’!) (p. 227). This black couple is not described in the most flattering terms (they are both referred to as being ‘old’ and Hannah is called ‘stout’) while their other attributes – courteous, esteemed and reliable – if positive, nevertheless emphasise their primarily utilitarian nature to somebody like Lovecraft.

Lovecraft’s patronising attitude towards blacks can also be seen in the name of the Ward’s ‘venerable and beloved’ black cat, Nig, presumably short for ‘nigger’, which would probably have been considered humorous for a pet’s name in the 1920s.

Nevertheless, some concern is shown for the fate of black slaves owned by Curwen in the eighteenth century:

but not until modern times,… did it occur to any person … to make dark comparisons between the large number of Guinea blacks he imported until 1766, and the disturbingly small number for whom he could produce bona fide bills of sale either to slave-dealers at the Great Bridge or to the planters of the Narragansett Country (p. 164).

So there is some ambiguity in Lovecraft’s attitudes towards blacks. Based on this novel, at least, he didn’t dislike them on racial grounds but he seems to have regarded them only in the sense of faithful working-class employees, although he does show some concern for the fate of Curwen’s slaves. This is in marked contrast to his attitude towards people of mixed race and to foreigners generally but is closer to his attitude towards the working class. For example, he refers to ‘two workmen of high intelligence’ (p. 148), as if this were remarkable, commenting later on that ‘servants’ imaginations, fortunately, are limited…’ (p. 294).

There are occasional typographical errors and misplaced or extraneous words that could’ve been edited out. There are also a couple of chronological problems in the text, one of which was also spotted by Bandit, that a good editor should’ve spotted before the story went to print (or when the novels were collected into At the mountains of madness). In the first instance, we are told that Charles Dexter Ward comes of age in April 1923 before he departs for Liverpool for a European tour in June 1923 (p. 213). Ward returns home in May 1925 – just under two years later – but we are told that he gains ‘his first taste of ancient New England in nearly four years’! In the second instance, we are told that ‘on February 9, 1928, Dr Willett received a letter from Charles Ward’. When the text of this letter follows, Lovecraft erroneously dates it to March 8, 1928 – a chronological impossibility.

Despite the racist, xenophobic and snobbish elements of the writing and the need for an editor to clean up the story’s chronology as well as the typography, it is a testament to Lovecraft’s story-telling skills that works like The case of Charles Dexter Ward remain very popular today. My reservations aside, I found it to be an enjoyable read.

[Taru Luojola · Rating 1 out of 5]

Perkeitä varten luettu kirja, jonka lukemista olet tarkoituksella vältellyt, koska joskus luin kissan arpomana jo kolmannen omnibussin ja totesin sen varsin tylsäksi. Tämä ykkösosa oli lukukokemuksena ehkä vielä haastavampi, koska kolmosessa oli sentään pääasiassa lyhyitä tarinoita mutta tässä oli kahlattava läpi kolme romaania ja niiden päälle vielä jokunen lyhyt ja keskipitkä tarina. Nimikkoromaani oli paitsi tylsä myös lähinnä hölmö ennemmin kuin kauhistuttava. Charles Dexter Wardin tapauksessa oli hetkensä, ja kellariotusten löytyminen onnistui jopa hieman raottamaan kauhun verhoa, mutta kokonaisuutena tarina oli niin ikään puuduttava. Kaikkein unettavin rimanalitus oli kuitenkin unimaailmaan sijoittuva Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, ja sen kohdalla jo ihan vakavissani harkitsin, että kirja saa jäädä kesken, mutta sinnittelin loppuun koska perkeitä ei lintsata. Nyt kun kaksi kolmesta Lovecraft-omnibussista on luettu voin jo melko vakuuttuneena sanoa, että okei, Lovecraftilla on ideansa ja oikeissa käsissä tästä mytoksesta voi saada suht paljonkin irti, mutta Lovecraftin itsensä käsissä se menee lähinnä hukkaan ja suurinta kauhua lukijalle edustaa kirjan alussa syntyvä odotus siitä, että kirja pitäisi jotenkin jaksaa lukea loppuun.

[Maarit · Rating 3 out of 5]

H.P. Lovecraft Omnibus 1: At the Mountains of Madness (1999) sisältää nimikkonovellinsa ja lyhyen johdatuksen lisäksi kuusi muuta Lovecraft-tarinaa: The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, The Dreams in the Witch-House, The Statement of Randolph Carter, The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, The Silver Key sekä Through the Gates of the Silver Key. Näistä neljä jälkimmäistä kertovat Randolph Carterin seikkailuista unimaailmassa ja sen ulkopuolella, muiden ollessa enemmän tai vähemmän itsenäisiä tarinoita.

Kokoelman kiinnostavimmat novellit olivat mielestäni Randolph Carterin unimaailmaan sijoittuva seikkailu The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, joka tosin välillä tuntui junnaavan paikoillaan vähän turhankin kauan. The Case of Charles Dexter Ward oli myös mielenkiintoinen lukukokemus, joka toimi kaikin puolin niin sujuvuuden kuin kiinnostavuuden ylläpitämisen kohdalla. Sen sijaan teoksen Antarktikselle sijoittunut nimikkonovelli At the Mountains of Madness kaipasi mielestäni tiivistämistä ja vähemmän asioiden perusteellista kuvailua, joka teki novellista hitaasti etenevän ja paikoitellen jopa tylsän. Muut novellit olivat keskitasoisia, vaikkakin kohtuullisen kiinnostavia. Valitettavasti pisimpien novellien suvantohetket olivat minulle liikaa ja sen vuoksi annan kirjalle vain kolme tähteä.

[(shan) Littlebookcove · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely love H.P lovecraft. at first I found his works to be very hard to grasp but I suddenly just understood and I'm now addicted! this book is delightful. especially his dream circle works two of stuch are in this book.

[Francisco · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first in a three volume collection which brings together the complete works of Lovecraft, this first volume collects his novels and some related material. This starts off with his most famous novel, At the Mountains of Madness and continues to The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, the short novella The Dreams in the Witch-House and closes out with the longest section which brings together what might be called the Randolph Carter cycle, starting with the Statement of Randolph Carter, continuing with the novel The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath and finishing with the two Silver Key short stories which complete Carter's story.

It's a good collection but as usual in these things you will get more enjoyment from some stories rather than others. While for some Lovecraft might seem a bit one tone, there are substantial differences between these tales. There is the slow burn of Mountains, the folk horror of Witch-House and Dexter Ward and the Dunsanian dreamscapes of the Carter cycle.

Your mileage may vary, but as a particular fan of the folkier side of horror I've always liked the two stories in that style substantially more than the two other slower affairs. And of the two others I much prefer Mountains to the surreal and almost dissociative Kadath, where it is really easy to fall into a dream state yourself while reading it. All in all an essential collection with some of Lovecraft's most famous works.

[Deep · Rating 3 out of 5]

At times better, at times worse prose than I remember.

[Branjak · Rating 3 out of 5]

well, kind of a mixed bag.
especially the dream quest of unknown kadath has to be one of the most tedious things i have ever read.
the other stories are mostly good reads

[Eirin · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've already read the third Omnibus, and in comparison to that, this was a major disappointment. It had its good parts, naturally, but on the whole it was tedious, and not horrifying in the least, which is supposed to be the point. The prose is chocked full of adjectives and adverbs, which really slows the stories down. If half or two thirds of them had been cut out, all the stories would've been instantly better, because the plots and characters are actually quite good. It was much too labouring to read. The action was delayed too much, and it didn't add that creepy effect delay in horror is supposed to have.

Also, most of the stories were too repetetive, with the use of descriptive phrases attached to certain characters, and mentioned everytime they were mentioned. This can certainly have massive effect in a text, but here it just got too much, and I started skipping whole phrases and sentences because yesI do remember that the shrouded emperor should not be named, I get it now. No need to hammer it in. And, since he is building up a mythos with a lot of the same characters in all the stories, this necessarily got annoying after a while. I do realise however that Lovecraft probably didn't mean for a lot of his stories to be read at once, which is what made the repetitions tedious - as stand alone stories, or stories read at intervals, this would probably work much better.

The last two stories I did like quite a lot (they, together with The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, saved the book from getting just one star); "The Silver Key" and "Through the Gates of the Silver Key". They had the twists in plot which I love in Lovecraft's later prose, and were ok written. Ironically, in the last story, which is a collaboration with E. Hoffman Price, I liked the parts written by Price best, because they held true the the Lovecraftian storytelling, but had more action, and a lot less adjective/adverbs.

What was interesting though is how clear Lovecraft's advancement as a writer stood out, as I had already read his latest work in the third Omnibus. There, he excelled, and the stories were truly scary. I do hope the second Omnibus resembles that work more than his earliest.

[Eric · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pendant des années on m'a conseillé de lire du Lovecraft. J'ai fini par céder et j'ai acheté les trois tomes de la série Omnibus, laquelle se veut un rassemblement de l'ensemble des écrits de cet auteur. Mon impression générale après la lecture du premier tome est à peu près la même qu'en lisant du Stephen King: imagination débridée, idées qui me plaisent énormément, mais un traitement qui me laisse sur ma faim, et qui surtout ne me fait pas vivre d'émotions particulières. Dans ces histoires, il n'y a rien qui me fasse rire, pleurer, ni trembler... On ne sent pas aspiré par l'histoire; nous ne sommes que des spectateurs superficiels, souvent même si superficiels qu'on nous cache tout. Désolé, mais ça ne me rejoint pas quand Lovecraft raconte l'histoire de Harley Warren qui est descendu dans un tombeau d'où il a apparemment vécu des choses effroyables, mais sans qu'on ne sache absolument pas quoi. Et ça ne me fait pas frémir de savoir qu'un gars meurt d'un choc en voyant l'apparence extraterrestre de Randolph Carter alors qu'on nous cache complètement cette apparence (sauf pour quelques menus détails sans grande importance).

Lovecraft ne crée pas des personnages auxquels on s'attache, et il ne nous fait pas suffisamment plonger dans leurs sentiments et leurs émotions pour qu'on se sente faire partie du récit. Une des histoires que j'ai le plus aimées est /The Case of Charles Dexter Ward/. Malgré un début extrêmement lent, on a éventuellement de plus en plus envie de savoir ce qu'a bien pu découvrir le personnage, de connaître ses secrets. Encore une fois, on ne s'attache à aucun personnage: c'est seulement la curiosité de connaître la suite qui nous donne envie de poursuivre; une curiosité détachée de toute émotion cependant. Et au final, on apprend quelques trucs, mais on a plus de questions que de réponses...

Bref, mon impression après ce premier tome: Lovecraft est une agace qui ne sait pas captiver l'attention du lecteur, mais qui sait créer des univers qu'on a fortement envie d'explorer. Je tiens également à souligner la grande qualité littéraire de son écriture, parfois difficile à suivre pour un non-érudit de la langue anglaise (mais ça, ce n'est pas un défaut!).

Voyons donc ce que le tome 2 nous réserve...

[Mick Bordet · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although I have read some Mythos stories, it has taken me a while to actually dive into anything penned by Lovecraft himself. I was not expecting to enjoy it as much as I did, but other than the rather meandering "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath", I found all these longer stories to be engaging and still, for the most part, quite chilling. "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward" was the highlight of the book for me; a dark character piece with a few unexpected turns and genuinely creepy moments. "At the Mountains of Madness" itself is like a blueprint for some of the classic horror/sci fi of the last 50 years - the ancestry of "Alien" and "The Thing" are clear to see. Lovecraft's style can be a bit flowery (or the grim equivalent - fungal?) at times, but this is not distracting once tuned into.

[Wayland Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you're at all interested in horror, you really need to read Lovecraft. He put together so many ideas that many writers continue to use. At the Mountains of Madness is one of his best works.

An expedition to the Antarctic suffers mysterious losses, and the expedition leader goes to find out what happened to one of the scouting teams. He finds signs of ancient civilization and so much more. The past isn't always gone, and, cliche as it is, there are some things Mortal Man was not meant to know.

It's a short book but a well crafted one, and a must for horror readers.

The edition I read, which doesn't seem to be listed in Goodreads, is "The Definitive Edition" which includes at the back a commentary on horror writing at that time by Lovecraft himself. That alone was worth reading if you're devoted to this kind of story.

[Peter · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book collects 7 novels and novella's written by Hp lovecraft. I read all these between other books over a very long period. I just finished the last story in here. Most of these are part of his chuthullu mythos. All the stories were at least enjoyable, and some of them like "at the mountains of madness" or "dreamquest in unknown kaddath" are very good.

The language is very difficult at times but the way the language is used provokes a very chilling effect at times. In the pacing and the characterization you feel that these stories are written in the 20's, 30's and 40's. But you also clearly see the influence Lovecraft has on modern horror writers.

Lovecraft is a writer, everybody should have at least sampled.

[Ian · Rating 5 out of 5]

This contains Lovecraft's two classic short novels, "At the Mountains of Madness" and "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward", together with the less essential "Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath" and some other story about a thinly disguised version of HPL himself. AtMoM and tCoCDW are both wonderfully creepy endlessly re-readable peaks of the horror genre.

[Lawrence · Rating 3 out of 5]

http://gnomeship.blogspot.com/2013/06...

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mountains of Madness and the Case of Dexter Ward are shoulders above the wider writing which has Randolph Carter as a theme. The Dreams of the Witch House, the Statement of Randolph Carter and the Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath leave me uninvolved - the latter especially; Lovevraft suffers if he isn’t anchored in the reality of the 20s; it’s adrift in dreams without an anchoring reality.

The Silver Key is Lovecraft using Randolph Carter at his most autobiographical: “they had chained him down to things that are, and had explained the workings of those things till mystery had gone out of the world. When he complained and loved to escape into the twilight realms where magic might be molded all the little vivid fragments and prized associations of his kind into prized vistas of breathless expectancy and unquenchable delight, they turned him instead toward the newfound prodigies of science, bidding him find wonder in the atoms vortex and the skys dimensions. And when he had failed to find these boon’s in things whose laws are known and measurable, they told him he lacked imagination and was immature because he preferred dream-illusions to the illusions of our physical creation”

From the Silver Key: “The trees and the hills were close to him, and formed the gates of that timeless realm which was his true country”

“Once in a while he could not help seeing how shallow, fickle, and meaningless all human aspirations are and how emptily our real impulses contrast with those pompous ideas we profess to hold”

“Perhaps I should not hope to convey in mere words the unutterable hideousness that can dwell in absolute silence and barren immensity”

Cthulhu clearly lived in Clevedon - the landscapes are so evocative. The hills and forests of Vermont - like Washington state - both remind us of Clevedon when we were younger?

Writes a bit like Melville - the portent is well emoted. He is so very good at beginnings and the endings, the ambiguous veil/unveil, leaves you uncertain as to where you are. And the cosmos and science fiction delighted me

He beautifully intertwines the New England and Vermont landscape and countryside with foreboding - weaves it all together. Like Lynch and the Washington forests

Dagon is a satisfactory beginning; Theresa Nameless City is more satisfying. “I awoke at dawn from a pageant of horrible dreams”

Call of Cthulhu: “ we live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far”

The Dunwich Horror: starts so deliciously. He is so very good at beginnings; and leaving you uncertain of endings

The Whisperer in Darkness: chapter 6 and rhetorical description of his travel into the countryside has fantastic writing and makes you feel his movement to another world (space touching other worlds).
“This hesitancy applies with still greater force to the things I heard whispered that evening in the darkened room among the lonely hills”
The plot twist is fabulous - the last paragraphs!!

Mountains of Madness: I can’t believe I fell in love with Nicholas Roerich in Moscow before reading about him here! But enough mentions HP- 10?! 15?! P332 onwards is a heady description of the city and the history of the old ones - just fabulous

[Ben Koops · Rating 4 out of 5]

Blij verrast door hoe goed de meeste van deze verhalen nog steeds zijn. Ik heb ooit wat beduimelde zwarte beer pockets gelezen van Lovecraft, waar Charles dexter ward tussenzat en ik geloof ook kadath. Wat nog maar eens bevestigt dat je dit echt in het Engels moet lezen. Lovecraftiaans is niet voor niks een woord, en zijn proza is echt gotisch. Een beetje barok, duister en vaak cryptisch woordgebruik. Het was echt een plezier om dat weer te ontdekken. Er zijn wel wat parallellen met Poe te trekken, die overigens ook zijdelings wordt genoemd, iemand noemt The narrative of arthur gordon pym. Maar dit staat toch echt in een eigen klasse. Niet alles is even goed uiteraard, maar deze bundeling is mooi chronologisch opgebouwd. Dus de mythos bouwt op zichzelf en is logisch, en vooral dat is zo leuk. Dat universum uitdiepen en elke keer weer iets meer van die kosmische horror ontsluieren. Buiten de sterren te stappen waar alles zijn samenhang verliest. En ook goed om te zien hoe ongegeneerd excentriek sommige van die verhalen zijn. Dream quest en through the gates of the silver key zijn een wilde rit wat dat betreft. Meer fantasy dan horror, met rangen van mythische wezens in vreemde onbegrijpelijke werelden. At the mountains en charles dexter zijn dan weer meer klassiek van opbouw, vooral die eerste heeft een perfecte spanningsboog. En die tweede is een van zijn beste verhalen, ook een van zijn langere, meer een novelle.

En hoe ouder je wordt hoe meer je sommige verwijzingen snapt. Een van de karakters noemt op een bepaald punt Eliphas Levi, en wat andere esoterische titels kwamen voorbij die ik kon identificeren. Dus dat was grappig. Ook leuk hoe andere auteurs weer voortbouwen op de Ctulhu mythos. En hoe bepaalde fictionele werken meerdere keren genoemd worden, zoals de Necronomicon. Het creëert allemaal een sfeertje van echtheid. Je vangt ook nooit meer dan een glimp op van de zogenaamde monstruositeiten die de verhalen bevolken. Een methode die horror film makers nu nog steeds gebruiken. Vreemde kijk op het leven had de man ook. Je kunt wel met hem eens zijn dat we het meeste van wat we zien voor waar aannemen, maar dat illusies soms echter kunnen zijn. En dat we het meeste niet weten. Het zelf verwijzende wordt wel een beetje oud na een tijdje, en misschien was HP ook maar een stoffige studeerkamer geleerde die te weinig van de echte wereld had gezien. Maar je blijft voor de sfeer.

[Tim · Rating 2 out of 5]

I figured that, after being tangentially aware of Lovecraftian horror for years, I owed it to myself to actually read some of his work. I'm glad I did, even though I didn't particularly enjoy the experience.

I'm not sure how the stories in this omnibus are ordered, but the book does an excellent job of showcasing the different story styles Lovecraft had. On the one hand, you have the utterly fantastical, borderline nonsensical stories of the exploits of 'dreamers'. These stories are in no way scary and read like a twelve-year-old's imagination. I suppose that, within this fictional setting, these stories are absolutely shocking because they're 'true'. But they're so absurd that, to the reader, they don't evoke anything beyond mild confusion and annoyance.

On the other hand, there's the more traditional horror stories of eldritch beings beyond time and space. These are deliciously creepy and weird, but very hard to work your way through, because they contain a metric ton of mundane detail and are set at a glacial pace. Now, this mundane, even boring, setting and slow pace actually works in favor of the horror. This stark contrast works to the stories' advantage. It's still very annoying to have to sit through all the boring parts though, and the payoff is only sort-of worth it.

I'm glad I read this book. I don't think I'll ever pick up part 2 and 3 of the omnibus. Lovecraft created an excellent world, a marvelously deep setting. I'd rate his world building as 5 stars. But in my opinion, his writing is of a much lower quality.

[Michael Sorbello · Rating 4 out of 5]

William Dyer, a professor at Arkham's Miskatonic University recalls his chilling findings during his scientific expedition to Antartica with a team of researchers. William and his team uncovered ancient ruins and fossils within the innermost unexplored caves, mountains and frozen wastes never before seen. The creation of the world, the races that ruled before prehistoric times, the many wars waged between cosmic beings from across the vast universe, the minuscule role humans play in the grand scheme of all existence. All this is revealed and more within the Mountains of Madness.

A spectacular addition to the Cthulhu Mythos. It presents the Old Ones from a perspective that we've never seen them before. It almost humanizes them and makes us want to empathize with them despite the immense dread, disgust and mystery that often surrounds them. There is also the fact of how real this story feels. It feels like less of a story and more of a scientific research paper that documents legitimate history that actually happened. One of Lovecraft's best and most visually impressive stories, rich with depth and lore regarding the many beings he spent his entire life creating.

The collection also features other great tales such as Dreams in the Witch House, The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath and The Case of Charles Dexter Ward.

***

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[Floris Kleijne · Rating 2 out of 5]

The works of H.P. Lovecraft may be much-revered, admired, and considered the bedrock of gothic horror, but they're not for me. Tedious and long-winded, the prose provided me not the smallest glimmer of terror, but rather boredom and desire to be done with it. It also seemed to me that Lovecraft's effort to create horror result mostly in endlessly repeating the promise of upcoming horror, without said horror every actually materializing. Granted, these works may have been horrific when they were written, and may lie at the root of the entire genre; but similarly, the ape lies at the root of the human species, and I still much prefer to invite actual people to my home.

[Panu-Petteri Väänänen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Despite my earlier misgivings I must join the chorus that chants "Lovecraft is not at his best when writing his longer novels". From the rambling worldbuilding and hodge-pogde of horror that is "The case of Charles Dexter Ward" to the somewhat interesting but just too damn long and boring "The Dream-Quest of unknown Kadath" I have to say the best one is "The Dreams in the witch-house". The titular "At the mountains of madness" suffers from the same prolongation but is still the best longer novel in the book. I have to take a break from Lovecraft now, it remains to be seen if I can muster the will to go through all his work during the year as planned.

[Steven Fretter · Rating 4 out of 5]

A genius writer in my eyes.

Love the writing style and the alliteration. Love the build up of tension, which is usually done slowly with a hard-hitting, yet lingering climax. Love the delving into other-wordly creatures and powers beyond the human realm. Love the atmosphere and the settings Lovecraft creates with such vividness.

I dislike the excessive level of detail he sometimes goes into (such as geology and rocks) which disengaged me and made parts of the story a slug-through. And I disliked the length of two stories, which felt unnecessary with repetition of words and phrases. This is all I dislike. I look forward to reading more.

[Tyler Hardman · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m a little biased. Obviously we can separate the art from the artist, because Lovecraft is obviously dead, but I also had trouble getting over a lot of other racist comments in some of the other stories, like the Dream-Quest of unknown Kadath. Lovecraft himself has a pretty boring writing style at times when describing the entities. “Oooo, they’re so beyond human comprehension, I can hardly describe it woooo”.
Call of Cthulhu is peak
Color out of space. Peak.
Cats of Ulthar. Peak
At the Mountain of madness, peak

[Vick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read it and it scared the s@#$ out of me. No movie (werewolf or not) or book has ever done that to me!! Except a couple of other H.P. Lovecraft novellas. I'm also into documentaries on nature, and when I see those on the artic cold or areas, I haven't looked at them in same way anymore. Brilliantly written.

[Sofia Gonzalez · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have a friend who's a big Lovecraft fan and I never thought it would be my thing. Damn, I couldn't have been more wrong. Lovecraft's writing has just the right amount of oomph to it; the man has a way with words, that's for sure! Reading his stories always fills me with a certain kind of dread that I just haven't found anywhere else

[Tristan]

This omnibus contains:

* At the Mountains of Madness
* The Case of Charles Dexter Ward
* The Dreams in the Witch-House
* The Statement of Randolph Carter
* The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath
* The Silver Key
* Through the Gates of the Silver Key

[Meg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Along with volumes 2 and 3, a superb set of books! Slightly politically incorrect in modern times, with its attitudes towards non-europeans in some stories, but a product of an earlier age. MR James is creepier though!

[Amy · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a book my boyfriend recommended as he is a fan of lovecraft and his games (calll of cthulu) so why not try and buy the book. I stopped reading after the 2nd story. I'll be honest, I got bored reading it. Maybe it's me, I expected a lot more from him.