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Home From The Sea: Tales of Lovecraftian Terror
In these pages you'll find some glowing fog, some mad scientists, some tentacled things, booze, dreaming gods, cigarettes, some boats of various sizes, a bar or two, some stiff upper lips, a ghosthunter, a great detective and a multitude of universes, among other things.
Home from the Sea contains 14 tales of Lovecraftian Terror
Contents:
SymbiOS
Carnacki: The Island Of Doctor Munroe
The Terror that Came to Dounreay
Inquisitor
The Tenants of Ladywell Manor
Carnacki: The Larkhall Barrow
The Invisible Menace
Sherlock Holmes: The Color that Came to Chiswick
Professor Challenger: Ripples in the Ether
The Doom that Came to Dunfield
Home From the Sea
Amoeboid
From Between
#Dreaming
Praise for William Meikle:
__________________________
"One of the premier storytellers of our time." - Famous Monsters of Filmland
"William Meikle is an entertaining writer with a knack for Lovecraftian fiction." - Lovecraft eZine
"Willie Meikle has a gift for writing highly entertaining thrilling novels." - Ginger Nuts of Horror
Home from the Sea contains 14 tales of Lovecraftian Terror
Contents:
SymbiOS
Carnacki: The Island Of Doctor Munroe
The Terror that Came to Dounreay
Inquisitor
The Tenants of Ladywell Manor
Carnacki: The Larkhall Barrow
The Invisible Menace
Sherlock Holmes: The Color that Came to Chiswick
Professor Challenger: Ripples in the Ether
The Doom that Came to Dunfield
Home From the Sea
Amoeboid
From Between
#Dreaming
Praise for William Meikle:
__________________________
"One of the premier storytellers of our time." - Famous Monsters of Filmland
"William Meikle is an entertaining writer with a knack for Lovecraftian fiction." - Lovecraft eZine
"Willie Meikle has a gift for writing highly entertaining thrilling novels." - Ginger Nuts of Horror
213 pages, Kindle Edition
First published April 3, 2017
89 people are currently reading
157 people want to read
About the author
William Meikle
408 books1,849 followersI'm a Scottish writer, now living in Canada, with more than thirty novels published in the genre press and over 300 short story credits in thirteen countries.
My work has appeared in a number of professional anthologies and I have recent short story sales to NATURE Futures and Galaxy's Edge. When I'm not writing I play guitar, drink beer and dream of fortune and glory.
For an intro to me, my writing and my accent see my Youtube channel
My work has appeared in a number of professional anthologies and I have recent short story sales to NATURE Futures and Galaxy's Edge. When I'm not writing I play guitar, drink beer and dream of fortune and glory.
For an intro to me, my writing and my accent see my Youtube channel
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
November 26, 2017
4.5
If you are a Lovecraft lover, when you see a Lovecraftian sounding title and tentacles, it rouses certain expectations. Unlike some, William Meikle delivers and then some.
This is a great collection of stories where humour and dread often appear side by side.
There are various time settings: the past, the present and the future.
There are various protagonists: from Sherlock Holmes, a Spanish inquisitor, scientists and soldiers, sailors and many others to some guy with a Twitter account.
And there are various ideas: from science fiction horror of beings attached to one's neck, messing up time and space, treasures people were unlucky to find, scientific experiments of sending messages into the unknown and being answered to military trying to use something that shouldn't even exist here and so much more.
Of course, I loved some more than others, but I won't bother rating them separately since the whole collection delivered and more. The stories:
If you are a Lovecraft lover, when you see a Lovecraftian sounding title and tentacles, it rouses certain expectations. Unlike some, William Meikle delivers and then some.
This is a great collection of stories where humour and dread often appear side by side.
There are various time settings: the past, the present and the future.
There are various protagonists: from Sherlock Holmes, a Spanish inquisitor, scientists and soldiers, sailors and many others to some guy with a Twitter account.
And there are various ideas: from science fiction horror of beings attached to one's neck, messing up time and space, treasures people were unlucky to find, scientific experiments of sending messages into the unknown and being answered to military trying to use something that shouldn't even exist here and so much more.
Of course, I loved some more than others, but I won't bother rating them separately since the whole collection delivered and more. The stories:
SymbiOS
Carnacki: The Island Of Doctor Munroe
The Terror that Came to Dounreay
Inquisitor
The Tenants of Ladywell Manor
Carnacki: The Larkhall Barrow
The Invisible Menace
Sherlock Holmes: The Color that Came to Chiswick
Professor Challenger: Ripples in the Ether
The Doom that Came to Dunfield
Home From the Sea
Amoeboid
From Between
#Dreaming
September 14, 2024
Entertaining horror listening 🎶🔰
This kindle novel is from my Kindle Unlimited account
Sixteen stories of terror horror haunting adventure mystery for an enjoyable read.
I would recommend this novel and author to 👍 readers of British 🏰 terror horror haunting adventure novels 👍🔰. 2024 👒😤
This kindle novel is from my Kindle Unlimited account
Sixteen stories of terror horror haunting adventure mystery for an enjoyable read.
I would recommend this novel and author to 👍 readers of British 🏰 terror horror haunting adventure novels 👍🔰. 2024 👒😤
January 9, 2019
A good collection of Lovecraftian horror tales. I know Lovecraft isn't everyone's cup of tea., but if it is yours, you could do a lot worse than this.
A story with Sherlock HOlmes, and another with Professor Challenger mix things up a bit.
A story with Sherlock HOlmes, and another with Professor Challenger mix things up a bit.
September 5, 2018
Interesting
Found this by chance and thought that the stories were well told and showed great promise. A good read for a starry night.
Found this by chance and thought that the stories were well told and showed great promise. A good read for a starry night.
January 18, 2019
Stories range from a tale about an Inquisitor torturing a dark creature for information in the 1500s to a modern-day Twitter story. Most tales, however, fall in an in-between place, in the past but not too far back. Most of the tales take place in such areas as Glasgow, Oxford, London, or even Newfoundland. There’s a lot of booze and tobacco. Mad scientists build inventions to repel Russian ICBMs or render battleships invisible, with horrible consequences and side effects.
Doorways are opened. Strange and compelling rhythms tear holes in time and space. A massive creature destroys entire swaths of London, and a strange ooze eats people in Oxford. There’s a Sherlock Holmes story in which an odd green substance found in a brewery starts turning people into slime.
Some of the tales are quite tense! Men try to rescue a whaling vessel, only to find themselves trapped on a ship full of tentacled creatures. A man’s experiments have called down a strange creature that kills all who come into contact with it.
I recently read a collection of stories in which it seemed like most of the stories ended a moment or two too early; this collection didn’t have that problem. Nor did it go too far in the other direction and over-explain. The stories felt like they were the perfect length–enough to pull the reader in and make it fairly clear what’s happened, without trying to make things too mundane or easy. If you enjoy cosmic horror and mysterious ripples in reality, Home From the Sea is an excellent choice to read.
Consider my rating a 4.5
Original review posted on my blog: http://www.errantdreams.com/2019/01/r...
Doorways are opened. Strange and compelling rhythms tear holes in time and space. A massive creature destroys entire swaths of London, and a strange ooze eats people in Oxford. There’s a Sherlock Holmes story in which an odd green substance found in a brewery starts turning people into slime.
Some of the tales are quite tense! Men try to rescue a whaling vessel, only to find themselves trapped on a ship full of tentacled creatures. A man’s experiments have called down a strange creature that kills all who come into contact with it.
I recently read a collection of stories in which it seemed like most of the stories ended a moment or two too early; this collection didn’t have that problem. Nor did it go too far in the other direction and over-explain. The stories felt like they were the perfect length–enough to pull the reader in and make it fairly clear what’s happened, without trying to make things too mundane or easy. If you enjoy cosmic horror and mysterious ripples in reality, Home From the Sea is an excellent choice to read.
Consider my rating a 4.5
Original review posted on my blog: http://www.errantdreams.com/2019/01/r...
March 20, 2018
A fair, if not wonderful, collection of semi-Lovecraftian tales. I found the stories uneven and having *far* too much repetition of plotlines from story-to-story, and a distinct lack of new narrative ideas.
In fact, one could argue that a fair number of the stories have the exact same plot, and only change by swapping-out the main characters one for another. After the third or fourth repetition of this it almost became thrilling when I found the same story wasn't being reused yet again!
A rare few of the tales were fairly compelling but all-in-all it didn't leave me truly feeling immersed in the HPL universe - these stories could have nearly all been about any collection of unknown horrors, and it wouldn't have materially changed the plot of most of the stories.
If nothing else this collection has gotten me to consider reading Mr. Meikle's "Holmes & Challenger" and "Carnacki" books, so I would definitely agree that the writing was compelling enough from that perspective to make me interested enough to search out his other work.
In fact, one could argue that a fair number of the stories have the exact same plot, and only change by swapping-out the main characters one for another. After the third or fourth repetition of this it almost became thrilling when I found the same story wasn't being reused yet again!
A rare few of the tales were fairly compelling but all-in-all it didn't leave me truly feeling immersed in the HPL universe - these stories could have nearly all been about any collection of unknown horrors, and it wouldn't have materially changed the plot of most of the stories.
If nothing else this collection has gotten me to consider reading Mr. Meikle's "Holmes & Challenger" and "Carnacki" books, so I would definitely agree that the writing was compelling enough from that perspective to make me interested enough to search out his other work.
July 11, 2019
Home from the Sea
by William Meikle
This is a collection of stories in a "Lovecraftian" vein, and all are connected to the sea/water in some way.
Overall, the collection is quite fun. It bounces between exciting novelty, and a somewhat telling repetition of ideas and even sentences. The whole seems to create an almost original branch of the mythos that is all Meikle's, particularly the influence of music and rhythm on the mind and the "others."
Some of my particular favorites among these stories are perhaps "Inquisitor," pitting a shoggoth against a member of the Spanish Inquisition (bet you weren't expecting that!); and the title story, in which whalers are faced with something horrific from the depths. They both take some basic familiar ideas and use them in novel ways to create something very interesting.
The book does have some minor little editing issues (one story had a bunch of commas replaced by the 3/4 symbol. What?) but is generally very well done and quite readable.
Definitely worth a read for horror and Lovecraft fans.
by William Meikle
This is a collection of stories in a "Lovecraftian" vein, and all are connected to the sea/water in some way.
Overall, the collection is quite fun. It bounces between exciting novelty, and a somewhat telling repetition of ideas and even sentences. The whole seems to create an almost original branch of the mythos that is all Meikle's, particularly the influence of music and rhythm on the mind and the "others."
Some of my particular favorites among these stories are perhaps "Inquisitor," pitting a shoggoth against a member of the Spanish Inquisition (bet you weren't expecting that!); and the title story, in which whalers are faced with something horrific from the depths. They both take some basic familiar ideas and use them in novel ways to create something very interesting.
The book does have some minor little editing issues (one story had a bunch of commas replaced by the 3/4 symbol. What?) but is generally very well done and quite readable.
Definitely worth a read for horror and Lovecraft fans.
January 20, 2019
This braw collection (for any non Scottish readers, braw means 'good' or 'great'!) of Lovecraftian tales is superb!
I love William Meikle's work, and became hooked after reading his wonderful Victorian 'Ghost Club' stories collection...(what a brilliant read that is, by the way) and when I delved into the murky depth of this awesome collection, I certainly wasn't disappointed.awesome
These stories span a timeframe that takes us back to the era of whaling ships, yet ends with a superbly crafted and terrifyingly modern internet based tale, that had me making sure I had switched off my Kindle Fire, before I went to sleep! (You just can't be too careful when it comes to insidious horrifying stuff, seeping through the ether. Very scary!)
All in all, this is a rollicking collection that any fan of Loveraft mythos will find is a great read. I certainly did!
I love William Meikle's work, and became hooked after reading his wonderful Victorian 'Ghost Club' stories collection...(what a brilliant read that is, by the way) and when I delved into the murky depth of this awesome collection, I certainly wasn't disappointed.awesome
These stories span a timeframe that takes us back to the era of whaling ships, yet ends with a superbly crafted and terrifyingly modern internet based tale, that had me making sure I had switched off my Kindle Fire, before I went to sleep! (You just can't be too careful when it comes to insidious horrifying stuff, seeping through the ether. Very scary!)
All in all, this is a rollicking collection that any fan of Loveraft mythos will find is a great read. I certainly did!
August 16, 2020
Uneven, sometime leaning too hard on an apparent favorite image, but well-written, with an excellent grasp of pastiche.
I particularly liked the Sherlock Holmes pastiche, which was spot on, and the best item in the collection, for me. The Jane Austen pastiche is also perfectly done.
The only thing I didn’t enjoy was the constant return to one particular image. It is not that it isn’t an arresting one, and a new twist on R’lyeh — but it felt like the stories were written to include the image, not that the image grew out of the telling. After the third or fourth recurrence, it was, yes, yes, I know, the details are the same, can we move on with the story please.
This is the only reason I’m only going four stars: otherwise the stories are a lot of fun, and the pastiches are a great pleasure.
I particularly liked the Sherlock Holmes pastiche, which was spot on, and the best item in the collection, for me. The Jane Austen pastiche is also perfectly done.
The only thing I didn’t enjoy was the constant return to one particular image. It is not that it isn’t an arresting one, and a new twist on R’lyeh — but it felt like the stories were written to include the image, not that the image grew out of the telling. After the third or fourth recurrence, it was, yes, yes, I know, the details are the same, can we move on with the story please.
This is the only reason I’m only going four stars: otherwise the stories are a lot of fun, and the pastiches are a great pleasure.
March 5, 2018
An interesting mix of stories showing the Mythos through different lenses. Where else could you read a cyberpunk Mythos story, a pulp tale of British backroom boffins vs an eldritch kaiju, or the stories of when Holmes, Carnacki and Challenger each had their encounters with things Man Was Not Meant To Know.
The writing is slightly rough in places, with certain descriptive phrases repeated between stories (“the walls melted and ran” being the most noticeable). Also, it is Lovecraft Lite, feeling more like a series of stories from other genres touching on the Mythos. Still an enjoyable read.
The writing is slightly rough in places, with certain descriptive phrases repeated between stories (“the walls melted and ran” being the most noticeable). Also, it is Lovecraft Lite, feeling more like a series of stories from other genres touching on the Mythos. Still an enjoyable read.
February 28, 2019
Book Riot challenge #9: A book published before Jan 1, 2019 w/ fewer than 100 review on Goodreads.
At one point I thought, "This is better than Lovecraft," particularly as the characters and settings are grounded in an actual time and place so it's easier to share their horror when the elder gods turn up. So much non-Euclidian geometry, lol. Meikle has an excellent vocabulary, and a sense of humor, and his characters clicked with each other - something Lovecraft could never manage.
My favorite story had a female protagonist (woah!): "The Tenants of Ladywell Manor." A Jane Austen meets the Deep Ones mash up. Hilarious.
At one point I thought, "This is better than Lovecraft," particularly as the characters and settings are grounded in an actual time and place so it's easier to share their horror when the elder gods turn up. So much non-Euclidian geometry, lol. Meikle has an excellent vocabulary, and a sense of humor, and his characters clicked with each other - something Lovecraft could never manage.
My favorite story had a female protagonist (woah!): "The Tenants of Ladywell Manor." A Jane Austen meets the Deep Ones mash up. Hilarious.
May 5, 2018
Potpourri of Horror Stories
Not all of the tales in this collection are solidly Mythos related, but they are all entertaining. Themes and tropes are consistent throughout the work, many of the stories based on the military and many of the stories deal with music. From monsters to strange vistas, the collection makes for a suitable diversion.
Not all of the tales in this collection are solidly Mythos related, but they are all entertaining. Themes and tropes are consistent throughout the work, many of the stories based on the military and many of the stories deal with music. From monsters to strange vistas, the collection makes for a suitable diversion.
December 23, 2019
Good anthology
Meikle delivers another solid collection of Lovecraftian shorts. Some nasty deep one, shoggoth, and Cthulhu tales, the last short being both entertaining and horrifying. I look forward to more, especially the Carnacki and Holmes tales. Good stuff.
Meikle delivers another solid collection of Lovecraftian shorts. Some nasty deep one, shoggoth, and Cthulhu tales, the last short being both entertaining and horrifying. I look forward to more, especially the Carnacki and Holmes tales. Good stuff.
January 31, 2019
Dark and rich
Steampunk, H.P. Lovecraft, Sherlock Holmes and the kind of scary campfire stories you wish you had been able to tell back then
Steampunk, H.P. Lovecraft, Sherlock Holmes and the kind of scary campfire stories you wish you had been able to tell back then
February 15, 2019
A solid collection of lovecraftian tales spanning several different times and settings, but firmly tied together in theme. A darkly fun read.
March 21, 2019
A journeyman set of Lovecraftian tales but they do lack that spark.
June 13, 2019
A GREAT MURDER OF TALES IT IS.....
Hello, there is some great stuff in here. Good, solid stories. Very well written and entertaining to read. Thank you.
Hello, there is some great stuff in here. Good, solid stories. Very well written and entertaining to read. Thank you.
November 8, 2019
:)
Really enjoyed these stories! I've read many many lovecraftian short stories, these were defiantly among of the better ones i have read.
Really enjoyed these stories! I've read many many lovecraftian short stories, these were defiantly among of the better ones i have read.
December 10, 2020
"Clearly it's some kind of space poo," he said. "Shed eating space poo. There, does naming it make it any better, any more understandable?"
March 14, 2023
audible:I enjoyed a lot of the stories in this book.Narration by Mike Cuellar was well done.I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.
June 23, 2023
A selection of Lovecraftian tales by one of the best modern writers of Mythos horror. The stories are set mostly in the early to mid-late 20th century and have a gloriously pulp-ish quality I really enjoy. Throughout this book I was reminded of old British SF/horror movies from the 50s and 60s: Quatermass, Village of the Damned, Island of Terror and the like where you have a stalwart intelligent hero, a bevy of upper class and at times unhelpful military types and then your Sam Kydd, Michael Ripper inspired everyman characters. For variety there's also stories featuring Meikle's reimagining of William Hope Hodgson's Holmesian occult detective character, Carnacki, and his take on Conan Doyle's Professor Challenger. This is a strong collection, well worth your time.
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews