"loathsomeness waits and dreams in the deep"
An anthology of short stories by horror master and racist prick, H. P. Lovecraft. It's missing a few big hitters such as Innsmouth and Mountains of Madness, but there's more than enough here to please fans of cosmic horror. I've written a short review for each story, perhaps to drive myself mad, which I'm sure Lovecraft would appreciate.
Dagon - The Gibbous Moon and more architectural murals showing fishlike horrors. I wasn't really sure what was going on in this one, but water is pretty scary.
5/10
Herbert West: Reanimatior - Two medical students do their best Dr Frankenstein impersonations. With added grave robbing and eventually, murder. The reanimated are more violent and less human than Shelley's Monster. Herbert West becomes the monster in a way.
"The body must have looked even worse in life". In reference to a 'negro' boxer, who is also described as 'gorilla like'. Wow...
7.5/10
The Lurking Fear - Dark things uncovered beneath a ruined mansion. Cursed family dug too deeply. The narration is deep, bassy and very robotic. The worst so far, displaying very little emotion. The story reminds me of the video game Darkest Dungeon.
6/10
The Rats in the Walls - Would be better if not for the name chosen for the protagonist's cat, which is oft repeated. It's a racial slur. A bad one. The forbidden one that rhymes with digger and here is affixed to man. The cat is black. It might not surprise you that Lovecraft, a notorious racist, would name a cat n*****man. Incidentally Lovecraft called his real cat the same thing. The man was a racist bastard, even for his time, what more can I say, although the fact that they kept the name in the story is probably to the publisher's credit. Why sugar coat racist shit, or pretend it never happened?
Otherwise this is a pretty good tale, similar to the lurking fear in that it's about an old family who built a mansion over something horrible. Our racist hero is a descendant and him and some friends go exploring. There's also stuff with unseen rats and madness, and the sense of dread is more apparent than in TLF. I like this a little more than TLF as it contains more history and exploration, plus it isn't set in the US and has a clearer narrative. The is also the best narration so far, with some actual acting and emotion towards the end. Still, it left me wanting more and ended too soon, like a lot of these short stories.
7/10
The Whisperer in Darkness - One of the best but I listened to a standalone version before so won't review again.
7.5/10
Cool Air - I heard this one before in another collection. It's a decent enough short about a doctor Jeckyl type who looks unwell. It also contains actual dialogue which is a nice change. Not a whole of substance though, and it's not scary in the slightest.
6/10
The Call of Cthulhu - I can't help but think this would be better if it wasn't written in Lovecraft's usual first person past tense narrator voice. It causes disconnect with some of the horrific events, which happened to other people, our narrator just recounts them. Some characterisation and emotional investment would really make this story shine, as it includes horrible cults, dead cities and beings from the stars, namely, dread Cthulhu. The writing is sometimes great in this one and the narrative itself is decent, it just lacks that human connection, although perhaps that makes the alien horror all the more horrifying. The narrator is fond of the word 'mongrel' in this one, racism being harder to escape from than Cthulhu himself. The audiobook narration for this story is done by an English guy and he's really good, sounding way less robotic and full of dread.
8/10
The Colour out of Space - A great example of the mysterious and terrifying other, and the outright alien, as well as some good old fashioned body horror. Lovecraft paints a picture of creeping dread, as a visitor from the stars brings ruin to a farmstead. There was a decent nick cage adaption of the same name that's well worth checking out. The narration came from the basey robot again and was a little better here. There's even some voice acting in the few passages with dialogue.
7.5/10
The Horror at Redhook - Finally a story in the third person, albeit one with little dialogue. Still, it's a nice change of pace. This is a slow burn of a story in which a policeman delves into an unsavory part of town, Red Hook, which leads to an aristocrat who is meddling where he shouldn't. The horror and lore are a little too vague and our protagonist is reticence in investigating the really horrible stuff. Are all Lovecraft's protagonists wimps?
6.5/10
The Music of Erich Zann - Why does this mad, mute violin player, fiddle? Is his wildly beautiful music the cause of the cosmic horror over the town or is his playing keeping it at bay? That uncertainty and the vast unknown of the cosmos is focus of this short's horror. I also like that it's present tense first person for the most part.
7/10
The Shadow Out of Time - My favourite kind of Lovecraft story, full of lore, creeping horror and an intriguing premise; that premise being that an ancient alien race can project their minds into another beings body at any point in time. The evicted consciousness winds up in the now vacant alien body, where it is free to explore the and learn from them. Unfortunately the evicted's memories are erased before they are sent back (or forward) into their own time and place. The displaced time often returns to the people who were taken over as scattered fragments of memory during their dreams.
The protagonist of the story is one such person and seems to remember more than most. A good chunk of the story is him remembering and recounting his time with the cone shaped mental time travellers known as the Great Race of Yith. The fear comes not only from this violation of his mind and body, but also from what he finds out while he's part of the Great Race's society. It turns out that they were once at war with the old ones, a race of eldritch beings from the stars. The great race managed to defeat them, sealing them away beneath the earth in massive vaults. These dark vaults are noticed by our protagonist during his stay with the Great Race, and he notices that they are poorly guarded, and weakening. Back in his own body he hears from a colleague that something very similar has been found in the Australian outback...
8.5/10
The Dunwich Horror - Another winner, the Dunwich Horror is more traditional in its storytelling. There's a backwards out of the way village, an inbred, monstrous looking aristocratic family who largely keep to themselves, -when they aren't disappearing villagers and carrying out strange rituals- a giant invisible beast that needs slaying and a group of university educated men ready to carry out the task. There's more if a traditional narrative to TDH which I like although the broken English some of the characters speak makes it difficult to follow at times.
7.5/10
The Haunter of the Dark - I kept zoning in and out while listening to this one. Partly due to the return of the bassy monotone narrator. He's like the love child of James Earl Jones and a sat nav. The story didn't grab me all that much either, as it's time after the fact in a tension killing perspective. It's generally light on horror and wild imagery. Forgettable.
4.5/10
The Outsider - Nothing is more horrifying thann ones own reflection. This short had Amnesia: The Dark Descent vibes so was pretty decent.
6/10
The shunned House - Sentient malevolent mushrooms in the basement. I think that was the plot. Oh, and they were French. And possibly possessed.
5/10
The Unamenable - The unreviewable
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The Thing on the Doorstep - Body snatching horror, insanity, black magic and walking corpses, TTotD is a really good short and builds well. Also a tie in with the fishy folk of Innsmouth, which I liked.
8/10
Under the Pyramids - A nice change of setting as we travel to Egypt and find out that those monuments to dead kings may be built upon temples to gods far older and more terrifying than the dead gods of Egypt. This time the racism and xenophobia is aimed at Arabs which I guess you could say is refreshing, but only when applied to a bigot like Lovecraft. Still this one is pretty good as it plays upon those mysteries of Egypt and our fascination with that ancient culture.
7/10
All told this is a good collection of Lovecraft stories, with a few exceptions and a couple of glaring omissions. I just wish they'd chosen better narrators for the audiobook, but at least we aren't stuck with just one. There's a good variety to the stories although there are obviously themes and similarities, and I'm not just talking about the racism. Most stories are written in the first person, past tense, in the form of recollections, and the majority of the protagonists are pretty cowardly, unable to view the alien monstrosities for more than a few moments without fainting, or going mental. Still, good stuff.
Audiobook - 7.5/10