Tales of Nyarlathotep

Books of Cthulhu #4

by C.T. Phipps, David Hambling, Matthew Davenport

TALES OF NYARLATHOTEP is the fourth book of the Books of Cthulhu series by Crossroad Press (Tales of the Al-Azif, Tales of Yog-Sothoth, The Book of Yig). It is an anthology featuring pulpy tales of horror starring Outer God and his myriad plots as well as games. Nyarlathotep is functionally omnipotent and treats humanity like ants underneath a magnifying glass. He is impossible to kill but perhaps capable of being thwarted. Or maybe that's just what he wants you to think.

Experience such stories as a redneck family dealing with their insane body-snatching ancestor, a resurrected pharaoh trapped in a museum, a depraved family of British nobles out to harness ancient forces, and a post-apocalypse town under siege by a an immortal gun-slinging god's avatar. Whether a hero or an ordinary human, none can triumph but maybe they can survive for another day.

This book contains thirteen chilling and adventure-filled tales by some of the best Cthulhu Mythos authors today, including Stoker Award-winning author David Niall Wilson (The Call of Distant Shores), as well as such fantastic authors as C.T. Phipps (Cthulhu Armageddon), David Hambling (the Harry Stubbs series), Matthew Davenport (the Andrew Doran series), Andrea Pearson (Mosaic), Eric Malikyte (Ego Trip), and David J. West (Let Sleeping Gods Lie).

Fans of Necroscope author Brian Lumley's Titus Crow series will also see the authorized first appearance of the titular character since The Compleat Crow!

Genres: Horror

357 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 12, 2023

About the author

C.T Phipps is a lifelong student of horror, science fiction, and fantasy. An avid tabletop gamer, he discovered this passion led him to write and turned him into a lifelong geek. He is a regular reviewer on Booknest.EU and for Grimdark Magazine.

He's written the Agent G series, Cthulhu Armageddon, the Red Room Trilogy, I Was A Teenaged Weredeer, Lucifer's Star, Psycho Killers in Love, Straight Outta Fangton, The Supervillainy Saga, and Wraith Knight.

Blog: http://unitedfederationofcharles.blog...

Website: https://ctphipps.com/

C.T. Fanclub: https://www.facebook.com/groups/14917...

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ctphipps

Reviews

[C.T. Phipps · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Crawling Chaos Reigns!

I am a huge HP Lovecraft fan and have written many stories starring his gods and monsters. This volume is all about his chattiest monster, Nyarlathotep. From rednecks to museum heists, this book has it all.

[Myles · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the 4th book I've read in the collected authors "Tales of" series, in addition to Al- Azif, Yig, and Yog Sothoth, in addition to many of the authors individual works, and this collection does not disappoint.
While this collection offers many callbacks to each authors own previous writings, this requires no additional reading as each story is really self-contained. Honestly, I great enjoyed going back to revisit the world's of Andrew Doran, Miskatonic University, and Cthulhu Armageddon, but my enjoyment of this book would have been the same in a vacuum.
There isn't much to say other than I highly recommend this book, the other books in this series, and each authors own works from this stellar table of contents such as Hambling, Davenport, Phipps, and Malikyte, especially if you're a fan of humorous and pulpy Lovecraft.

Also, very happy to see Stubbs and Titus Crow again!

[Alex Sarll]

It's a bold gambit to present an anthology as tales told by one character to another, and end with the listener furiously unimpressed by stories "empty of any insights. Indeed, they were aggressive in their pointlessness". Now, granted, that listener is a wicked Stygian sorcerer-priest, so we're not necessarily meant to take his verdict as gospel, but...well, put a suitably hieratic head-dress on The Worst Person You Know Just Made A Great Point and it would apply regarding a decent chunk of the contents. Of all the demon-gods of Lovecraft's cosmology, Nyarlathotep is the one who, for opaque reasons, can interact with humans on a comprehensible level, albeit usually with an ultimate intent every bit as terrible as any of the others. Which you'd think would make him easiest to theme a decent story around, wouldn't you? And that does pay off in CT Phipps' Cookies For The Gentleman, in which the disconnect between the domestic scale and the cosmic scope of the nightmarish torments is part of why it's such an effective horror story. One which doesn't tie too closely to any established Mythos lore, sure, but then that's precisely where many of the others in the book and the series as a whole come a cropper, treating the canon as a series of checkpoints and drowning any potential unease in soothing familiarity. If we leave Matthew Davenport's Andrew Doran story in merciful obscurity, this is maybe most pronounced in the same author's Dream Math, which somehow manages to make being thrown into dangerous alien worlds in your sleep as utterly devoid of any emotional impact as those times when you dream you've been to the supermarket and you haven't. In comparison, Andrea Pearson's Coolidge And The Enchanted Dagger looks like a masterclass in melding the Mythos and an educational setting, even though really all it's done is kludge Lovecraft and Rowling together, to the disservice of both's work (though I imagine so long as you did that after her heel turn and before his redemption, they would find plenty to talk about).

Pearson's The Blackwood Relic, on the other hand, has a nice line in faintly bathetic backwoods goings-on, which is welcome, because since I last checked in on David Niall Wilson's Cthulhu-battling redneck Cletus J Diggs, his stories have gone from agreeable comic relief to featuring guest spots from Titus sodding Crow, and if you don't know who that is, consider yourself lucky. But in the other direction, Phipps' post-apocalyptic Cthulhu Armageddon setting worked much better for me here than hitherto, its use of Nyarlathotep appropriately monstrous and unpredictable when in some of the other stories his unknowability collapses into mere convenience. For sheer whimsy, though, another Phipps story takes the lead, making him the Fairy Godmother – or rather, Outer Godfather – in a Cinderella riff. Otherwise, there's a Western from David J West, which is at least neat, and a slice of competent enough asylum horror from Eric Malikyte. But as always, the laurels go to David Hambling, purveyor of local Mythos for local people, who in The Apophis Sarcophagus lets Captain Cross, normally a flamboyant supporting character in his Harry Stubbs adventures, take the lead against a nasty little cult of the Black Pharaoh just off the Triangle. And if you don't know Norwood, I should clarify that the Triangle is not a cousin to the Shining Trapezohedron, it's just the arrangement of Crystal Palace's main commercial streets. Although these days Kadath in the cold waste probably has fewer empty shopfronts.

[Brian's Book Blog · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Great Pulpy Collection

4.5 out of 5 stars

I think one of my favorite parts of these collections from this series is the depth and breadth of stories that come out of it. I’ve read the other books in the series so far and each one has amazing stories from great authors. This one is no different.

Like the last collection, Tales of Nyarlathotep is on the “pulpy” side and I’m for it. I won’t dive into each story as I don’t have the brain power nor the memory to specifically do that, but each one made me feel a certain way. Some made me squeamish and some just had me wondering what was going to happen next. Each one had its own place and each one was building on that feeling I get when reading this series. (It’s a feeling I can’t exactly explain but it sort of speaks to an inner horror lover in me if that makes sense).

As I’ve said in the other collections, I’m a sucker for anything that Phipps puts out and this one was no different, and I love when he does collections like this because I get to discover other great authors (usually within Crossroad Press’s roster). But in a day of lots of noise when it comes to finding new authors, I love books like this to help me find someone new.

The narration by Gary Noon really stands out to me here. This isn’t the first book I’ve listened to that he narrated and it won’t be the last. He really helps bring life to these stories and it’s something you can’t take for granted anymore. A great narrator can truly take a good book and make it great.

Overall, as with the others – I enjoyed the heck out of this pulpy collection of stories. It had something for everyone and really felt like a “complete” collection (aka each story felt “needed” in this collection).

[Bookwyrm Speaks · Rating 5 out of 5]

The fourth book in the Books of Cthulhu series, Tales of Nyarlathotep focuses on one of the more interesting members of the Cthulhu Mythos. Nyarlathotep is a completely different kind of elder being than Cthulhu, Yog-Sothoth or Yig, beings that don’t even think about humans, because they are so many fleas in comparison. Nyarlathotep is a little different. He too has power over time and space, but will deign to contact humans, mostly for his own amusement. These stories all focus on various aspects of that interaction, with cultists who try and bargain for power with him, ancient artifacts that could potentially open the world to his avatars, and adventurers fighting these forces of chaos. We even get a peek at an ancient ruler meeting the being in person (if that word applies to this kind of being) and showing just how one sided any deal you make with something like this can be.



These authors are all used to writing in this mythos, so take their established characters like Harry Stubbs, John Booth, Captain Cross, and many more, in a wide range of times and places. The world building is excellent, and the stories take place with the richest of upper crust nobility to poor farmers to mutant humans in a post apocalyptic world on the brink of annihilation. It leads to a great collection of stories that mix horror, adventure and even some comedy that should appeal to fans of the rest of the series, as well as fans of fantasy and sci-fi in general. I give it my highest recommendation.

[Antonio Marchena · Rating 5 out of 5]

For many years I have enjoyed the Cthulhu Mythos and the different cosmic entities that H. P. Lovecraft and his circle and followers have created. Having that said, I have always have a special predilection for Nyarlathotep, due to the way this deity interacts with humanity.

Tales of Nyarlathotep offers the reader an interesting assortment of stories, from the funnier, to the horrific, passing through the pulpier tales, that highlight the different “faces” of the Black Pharaoh. Some of the tales included in this volume are tied to the literary universes of the authors included in the book, but even if you are not familiar with the adventures of Arthur Doran or the world of Cthulhu Armageddon, the stories are very easy to follow and thoroughly enjoyable.

I had a blast with this volume and I will be patiently waiting for the next installment in this exciting series.

[Johann · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a collection of short stories that are written by a variety of authors who pay homage to the mysterious Crawling Chaos.
The most disturbing thing about him is that he never has clear motives and seems to enjoy simply playing with his food... which would be us.
Recommended for both Cthulhu mythos enthusiasts as well as horror in general.
Got this as an ARC as part of a Christmas giveaway from the publisher. However, this review is all mine.

[Shelby · Rating 4 out of 5]

Starting to see how stories in the anthology are playing off others by the same author in the series, liked this collection and presentation better than Yog (previous book)

[Joseph · Rating 5 out of 5]

Recommended.

Kept me interested in every story. I will miss Mercury. The last Donovam story touched me as well. Worth it.

[Will · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pretty good collection. No real weak ones.

[Matthew Jeffrey · Rating 2 out of 5]

Too pulpy for my taste, but you might enjoy it.

[Jordan Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was my first foray into the expanded Cthulhu Mythos, and I really enjoyed it! I especially loved Captain Cross of the Harry Stubbs series and plan to do additional reading in that universe ASAP. A few people have complained these are very pulpy or steampunk, and that's definitely true! That's not a drawback to me, though, as I read it alongside the entire library of Lovecraft's works and it was a nice relief from the more academic/dry tone of the originals. The story that stands out the most to me was of course the Captain Cross story with the rich old family and the sarcophagus containing the crawling chaos. I don't think you need any background knowledge to enjoy the existing universes in this anthology.