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Tales of Terror
Barnes and Noble slipcover edition
384 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 2019
33 people are currently reading
230 people want to read
About the author
H.P. Lovecraft
6,110 books19.3k followersHoward 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
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
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
June 20, 2018
Honestly I was expecting super cheesy silliness. Think "The Blob" or "Godzilla". I've tried to get through Lovecrafts complete works as well, and his early writing was not pulling me in and was taking forever to read (or force myself to continue to read). However, upon reading this selected collection; I now have a large appreciation of Lovecraft and the monstrosities he conjured. I found myself afraid and intrigued more than once or twice. I also loved how the stories complimented and referenced each other. I would highly recommend.
January 5, 2024
DNF! Way too archaic for me to finish...
January 30, 2021
I'm guessing that the stories in this collection were presented in the chronological order. Ugly language and racist stereotypes that were exhibited in the first one or two stories faded away as the tales focused more and more on the Cthulhu Mythos and related intertwined preoccupations. This was much for the better. Often dense and self-referential, with a heavy nod towards Poe, once you get the wheels spinning, these tales take you for a real out-of-this-world ride. It took a minute before I realized I was enjoying these, so I advise patience; it's usually worth it.
December 21, 2023
3.5 stars. HOOO BOY this took me a while. Honestly once you scrub through the very tasteless racism, there is some interesting stories. The illustrations at the beginning of each chapter was nice in my edition. At the Mountains of Madness started realllly good but it kinda goofed around too long and lost momentum. I guess I liked The Whisper in Darkness and the Shadow over Innsmouth best. This collection shouldnt be read all at once, it is like reading 8+ Stephen King novellas in a row. Too much of them to take in, pick away at it.
July 10, 2023
The Call of Cthulhu: strangely I have been a huge fan of Cthulhu even though I had never read this short story. Having finally read it, I am even more thrilled to be a Cthulhu fan. Despite the racism found in HP Lovecraft's stories, I enjoyed the tale of madness. Cthulhu still slumbers in his house at R'lyeh and he sends his dreams to call on human-kinds madness
February 17, 2022
Great book for any fan of Lovecraft to have. Some great stories about cosmic horror and how insight and the knowing of these beings is the true terror. Favourite stories from the collection were Herbert West : Reanimator, At the mountains of madness and Shadow over Innsmouth
March 2, 2022
This is a nice collection of H.P. Lovecraft's greatest hits. If you want to introduce someone to H.P. Lovecraft, then this is a great gift. The stories are good and chilling from this master of horror.
February 26, 2021
A pretty standard collection of Lovecraft's novellas.
February 26, 2025
Lovecraft is too old-English for my brain
October 5, 2019
So one day I was sitting at home, minding my own business, when my brother walks in and tells me about this creature he heard about called Cthulhu. The name alone was enough to pique my interest – how do you say Cthulhu? Why is it spelled so weird? Is it “Ka-thoo-loo” or is the C silent? What about that second H?
I looked up this creature and the images that popped up blew my mind. I’ve always been afraid of the deepest parts of the ocean. It’s so far down that sunlight can’t reach it. The pressure is so great, a human would be flattened like a pancake. And yet there are creatures that live down there with great bulbous eyes, razor-thin teeth, and fluorescent body parts. It’s a weird and unholy place down there. If I was ever down there and I came up against some sort of monstrosity, I would be utterly helpless. You can’t swim away because they’re all way faster than you. You can scream because you can’t breathe in the first place. All you can do is watch as a tentacle wraps itself around your leg and pulls you towards a black, gaping beak. Oh yeah – giant squids have beaks. How messed up is that?! What a terrible, terrible way to go. It’s my worst nightmare. It’s the fear of drowning, claustrophobia, and being eaten – all at once.
Needless to say, Cthulhu seemed like the absolute personification of my greatest fear. Cthulhu is a monstrous being that exists in the realm between the physical and the supernatural. He’s got a squid-face, dragon wings, arms, legs, and eyes that would suck the soul right out of your body if you ever looked him in the eye. He’s a truly mythical creation. So that day as I looked at the horrific depictions online of the creature, I knew that some day I’d have to read the story that introduced him to the world.
Unfortunately, I was fairly disappointed. The collection of Lovecraftian tales that I purchased had 9 different stories within. I read 5 of them before giving up: Dagon, Herbert West – Reanimator, The Call of Cthulhu, The Dunwich Horror, and The Whisperer in Darkness. Dagon wasn’t so bad. It was a short read, and it did a good job of quickly setting the stage for a thoroughly weird horror story. The Call of Cthulhu was also interesting enough to keep me going. I liked how the narrative followed a man trying to piece things together in his study of this ‘Cthulhu Cult’. But for the rest of the stories, it just seemed so obvious to me how much the author was padding his narratives. His writing is jargonous – and by that I mean to give a precise example of how he wrote. ‘Jargon’ basically means ‘too wordy’, and ‘jargonous’ is a made-up extension of that word. Most of his writing is like that. He packs all these dense words in when he could just as easily use simpler language. I’m all for using the English language to the fullest, but when you’re using a fancy word, it should make things clearer for the reader. More often than not, Lovecraft’s writing serves only to confuse me – and his stories are already about confusing and weird subjects. And man, you would not believe how much he drags things out. Evidently these stories were published in chunks for a magazine. So for Herbert West – Reanimator, each chapter begins with a lengthy summary of what I just read five minutes ago. Honestly, I must have read six times how one character has blue eyes. Who cares? Just get to the point. Either write a new story for each issue, or trust your readers enough to remember important plot points. For The Whisperer In Darkness, a guy corresponds with another guy through letters. The second guy is scared of aliens in the woods. First of all, there’s nothing scary to me about aliens, partly because I don’t believe in them. I suppose fear of a sea monster like Cthulhu is just as irrational, but hey, at least we’ve seen weird deep-sea animals. Secondly, these two guys correspond back and forth over and over again, and each time you think something is exciting is going to happen. Nothing exciting ever happens. At one point the first guy makes the drive down to the woods to find the other guy, and there’s a whole chapter where he’s just driving. I don’t care about the driving! Put this guy in front of some aliens already!
I don’t like walking away from books before I’ve finished them, but it’s October 5th and I have plenty of other horror stories on my shelf to read before the Christmas season rolls around. In short, I love Lovecraft’s monsters – and his shared narrative universe is kind of interesting – but on the whole, it’s his style of writing that pushed me away. Sorry, Cthulhu. Your author is as convoluted as your name.
I looked up this creature and the images that popped up blew my mind. I’ve always been afraid of the deepest parts of the ocean. It’s so far down that sunlight can’t reach it. The pressure is so great, a human would be flattened like a pancake. And yet there are creatures that live down there with great bulbous eyes, razor-thin teeth, and fluorescent body parts. It’s a weird and unholy place down there. If I was ever down there and I came up against some sort of monstrosity, I would be utterly helpless. You can’t swim away because they’re all way faster than you. You can scream because you can’t breathe in the first place. All you can do is watch as a tentacle wraps itself around your leg and pulls you towards a black, gaping beak. Oh yeah – giant squids have beaks. How messed up is that?! What a terrible, terrible way to go. It’s my worst nightmare. It’s the fear of drowning, claustrophobia, and being eaten – all at once.
Needless to say, Cthulhu seemed like the absolute personification of my greatest fear. Cthulhu is a monstrous being that exists in the realm between the physical and the supernatural. He’s got a squid-face, dragon wings, arms, legs, and eyes that would suck the soul right out of your body if you ever looked him in the eye. He’s a truly mythical creation. So that day as I looked at the horrific depictions online of the creature, I knew that some day I’d have to read the story that introduced him to the world.
Unfortunately, I was fairly disappointed. The collection of Lovecraftian tales that I purchased had 9 different stories within. I read 5 of them before giving up: Dagon, Herbert West – Reanimator, The Call of Cthulhu, The Dunwich Horror, and The Whisperer in Darkness. Dagon wasn’t so bad. It was a short read, and it did a good job of quickly setting the stage for a thoroughly weird horror story. The Call of Cthulhu was also interesting enough to keep me going. I liked how the narrative followed a man trying to piece things together in his study of this ‘Cthulhu Cult’. But for the rest of the stories, it just seemed so obvious to me how much the author was padding his narratives. His writing is jargonous – and by that I mean to give a precise example of how he wrote. ‘Jargon’ basically means ‘too wordy’, and ‘jargonous’ is a made-up extension of that word. Most of his writing is like that. He packs all these dense words in when he could just as easily use simpler language. I’m all for using the English language to the fullest, but when you’re using a fancy word, it should make things clearer for the reader. More often than not, Lovecraft’s writing serves only to confuse me – and his stories are already about confusing and weird subjects. And man, you would not believe how much he drags things out. Evidently these stories were published in chunks for a magazine. So for Herbert West – Reanimator, each chapter begins with a lengthy summary of what I just read five minutes ago. Honestly, I must have read six times how one character has blue eyes. Who cares? Just get to the point. Either write a new story for each issue, or trust your readers enough to remember important plot points. For The Whisperer In Darkness, a guy corresponds with another guy through letters. The second guy is scared of aliens in the woods. First of all, there’s nothing scary to me about aliens, partly because I don’t believe in them. I suppose fear of a sea monster like Cthulhu is just as irrational, but hey, at least we’ve seen weird deep-sea animals. Secondly, these two guys correspond back and forth over and over again, and each time you think something is exciting is going to happen. Nothing exciting ever happens. At one point the first guy makes the drive down to the woods to find the other guy, and there’s a whole chapter where he’s just driving. I don’t care about the driving! Put this guy in front of some aliens already!
I don’t like walking away from books before I’ve finished them, but it’s October 5th and I have plenty of other horror stories on my shelf to read before the Christmas season rolls around. In short, I love Lovecraft’s monsters – and his shared narrative universe is kind of interesting – but on the whole, it’s his style of writing that pushed me away. Sorry, Cthulhu. Your author is as convoluted as your name.
March 31, 2020
I have love Lovecraft’s work. He’s an incredible writer. His detailing is always so vivid and it makes you feel like you’re in the story with the characters. His ability to turn unimaginable creatures into a fully realized picturesque form is an incredibly ability that many writers do not have. I love how he is able to always bring that chilling element to a story that keeps you wanting more and more.
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July 21, 2018Finally finished this book. The Dunwich Horror, At the Mountains of Madness and the Innsmouth story were creepy good.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews