The Yog-Sothoth Cycle

by Robert Price

Who will not shudder at the cry “Yog! So-thoth!” ? Even we Lovecraftians still get a proper chill when we read of it or hear Wilbur Whately shout it in a movie. It is probably the most effective of HPL’s fictive coinages, seeming to conflate hoary—but at least familiar—aspects of ancient myth with things even more outré, a name of three syllables that by themselves articulate Lovecraft’s crucial device of invoking already spooky archaism as a mere pointer to blasphemous mysteries from an even further-removed archaic past. It is linguistically analogous to Lovecraft’s celebrated non-Euclidean it wasn’t designed by human tongues and the human tongue accordingly cannot keep up with it! But “Yog-Sothoth” is already half-familiar to our memory, hinting at the forbidden rites of Nitocris and Im-ho-tep —and far worse!

And yet we relish it and rejoice to chant it!

You will have plenty of opportunities to do some shivering as you gather the courage to read the mind-blasting horror tales assembled here, including eldritch short stories by A. A. Attanasio, Robert Bloch, Ramsey Campbell, Charles Garofalo, David Langford, Edward Lee, Stephen Mark Rainey and Don Webb—and two linked novellas by Richard L. Tierney. Introduction and story notes by compiler Robert M. Price.

The Yog-Sothoth Cycle , the long-awaited culmination of the infamous “Cycle” series pioneered by Chaosium, Inc., and at long last finished by Ramble House!

406 pages, Paperback

Published November 17, 2022

About the author

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Reviews

[David · Rating 2.5 out of 5]

Not the best of these anthologies, and an underwhelming end to this series of Lovecraft-inspired collections.