Wonder and Glory Forever: Awe-Inspiring Lovecraftian Fiction

by Nick Mamatas (Editor), H.P. Lovecraft, Nadia Bulkin

Even though he passed over 80 years ago, H. P. Lovecraft maintains a visceral influence over a host of contemporary writers. Inspired by the Master of the Macabre's more optimistic writings, this unique collection spotlights the weird works of nine current horror and fantasy authors, including the award-winning Michael Cisco and Livia Llewellyn plus Victor LaValle, Molly Tanzer, and Masahiko Inoue. Also includes Clark Ashton Smith's 1931 "The City of the Singing Flame" and Lovecraft's own "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" as well as an extensive Introduction by leading Lovecraftian scholar Nick Mamatas.

Genres: Horror, Anthologies, Lovecraftian, Short Stories, Fiction

288 pages, Paperback

First published November 18, 2020

About the author

Nick Mamatas is the author of the Lovecraftian Beat road novel Move Under Ground, which was nominated for both the Bram Stoker and International Horror Guild awards, the Civil War ghost story Northern Gothic, also a Stoker nominee, the suburban nighmare novel Under My Roof, and over thirty short stories and hundreds of articles (some of which were collected in 3000 Miles Per Hour in Every Direction at Once). His work has appeared in Razor, Village Voice, Spex, Clamor, In These Times, Polyphony, several Disinformation and Ben Bella Books anthologies, and the books Corpse Blossoms, Poe's Lighthouse, Before & After: Stories from New York, and Short and Sweet.

Nick's forthcoming works include the collection You Might Sleep... (November 2008) and Haunted Legends, an anthology with Ellen Datlow (Tor Books 2009).

A native New Yorker, Nick now lives in the California Bay Area.

Reviews

[Lena · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bright Crown of Joy by Livia Llewellyn ★★★★★
That was gorgeous and I expected nothing less from Livia Llewellyn! Welcome the end of the world, watch the tide rise, and welcome the beginning of a new world.


You Will Never Be the Same by Erica L. Satifka ★★★★½
“The passengers knew—objectively—that traversing the galaxy meant skipping between dimensions. They knew that it was the job of the Go-captain… to keep them from the madness that surely awaited any human when exposed to whatever it was that dwelled between the stars.”

That should have been the first paragraph, it would have set the tone. As is, this was still a fast-paced chilling story in the vein of Event Horizon.


The City of the Singing Flame by Clark Ashton Smith ★★★★☆
Imitation is the greatest form of flattery. Smith’s story reads as if Lovecraft himself wrote it, if Lovecraft had written monster-less fantasy.


Go, Go, Go, Said the Byakee by Molley Tanzer ★★★½☆
A future-primitive story where coming-of-age means becoming a hybrid. Our MC pulls the short carrot… eh straw.


Seven Minutes in Heaven ★★★☆☆
“Christ the divine scarab... God bestows the gift of life unto those who have faith...”
Girl grows up in strange town with strange customs next to a dead town. This was set up to be great but just whimpered to nothing.

Night Voices, Night Journey by Masahiko Imoue ★★★☆☆
This story takes the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred and places him as a character derivative of Arabian Nights. Beyond that it’s an enslaved poison hooker story and, yes, that was the crude way to put it.

Farewell Performance by Nick Mamatas ★★★☆☆
An ode to an interesting renaissance man: Theodore Gottlieb.

Vastation by Laird Barron DNF
Nonsense in a blender.

Translation by Michael Cisco DNF
That was going nowhere.

Weird Tales by Fred Chappell DNF
Juvenile fan-fiction writing.

Ghost Story by Victor LaValle DNF
An early story by the author with an unfortunate rough draft style.

I finished 7/11 stories averaging 3.7 stars. Four DNFs seems too high to round up so 3 stars.

[Alex · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you only have one spot in your TO READ pile this year for a cosmic horror anthology that plays with the Cthulhu Mythos, this is the one.

I love this assemblage of deeply Weird stories. I love modern responses to cosmic horror and the Cthulhu mythos. I also love the focus here on the rapture and transcendences contained in both “City of the Singing Flame” by Clark Ashton Smith and “The Shadow Over Innsmouth.” The first has crowds of revelers jumping into the singing flame with religious fervor, and the closure of Innsmouth includes a scene of rapture as our protagonist joyfully joins his newly rediscovered family.

“Bright Crown of Joy” by Livia Llewllyn is one of the most beautiful stories about the apocalypse after the creatures from beyond time and space ruin everything before humans can. I will shelve it right next to “Venice Burning” and “We Are Not These Bodies, Strung Between the Stars” by A.C. Wise.

I really liked the inclusion of a translation in this book. “Night Voices, Night Journeys” by Masahiko Inoue translated by Edward Lipsett is different from a lot of stuff in the mythos, particularly the inclusion of creepy romance subplots. “Translation” by Michael Cisco is a deeply weird story that explores the dangers of translating an esoteric text from an old death cult. I love the academic closure, as well as the romance that is all too frequently absent from any response to pulp cosmic horror.

“Ghost Story” by Victor LaValle is engaging and full of voice, and really makes me want to consume more short fiction from Victor. Continuing with this excellent voice, “Farewell Performance” by Nick Mamatas is a bleak love letter to the spoken word of Brother Theodore.

I love the stories of Nadia Bulkin and Laird Barron. “You Will Never Be the Same” by Erica Satifka is an excellent extrapolation of “The Jaunt” and its ilk. I agree that “Weird Tales” by Fred Chappell is probably the best fanfic about Howie out there, and it fits both in amongst his correspondence and his fiction.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

This volume, by Lovecraftian aficionado and critic Nick Mamatas, promises "Awe-inspiring Lovecraftian fiction." Genuine awe, like genuine fear, is hard to evoke in a short story, and while none of these stories quite did it for me, I did get transported to the bizarre, surrealistic spaces of eldritch horror and unfathomable mystery by a few of these tales. Others just had me kind of appreciating the word-smithing while not being quite sure what the writer was saying. (Looking at you, Laird Barron and Masahiko Inoue.)

None of the stories are new for this volume (though most were new to me), so putting together a themed anthology in a rather crowded Lovecraftian market means you have to have a pretty solid lineup to stand out.

The opening story, of course, is one by HPL himself, The Shadow Over Innsmouth. The closing line of this novella provides the title of the anthology. The Shadow Over Innsmouth is Lovecraft's "Deep Ones" story, about an ordinary fellow with a mild interest in genealogical research visiting an insular old fishing town and discovering... things. I was struck by how much of the story consisted of minor characters narrating exposition at the protagonist for several pages, but when there is action, Lovecraft is quite detailed and meticulous about describing the surroundings and the events. And as Mamatas points out in his foreword, it's very evident that many of Lovecraft's protagonists were basically fictionalized versions of himself.

Closing the volume was another classic by one of Lovecraft's contemporaries, The City of the Singing Flame, by Clark Ashton Smith. Lovecraft gets a lot of criticism for his prose, but Smith's is purple and dense indeed. It is about a weird fiction writer (they didn't call it "science fiction" back then) stumbling through a gateway between dimensions and finding himself in a strange city inhabited by alien beings. Adventure and wonder and glory ensues.

Between these two early 20th century pieces is a collection by modern writers, ranging from Laird Barron's brutal and Lovecraftian Vastation to Nick Mamatas's own Farewell Performance, about a doomsday jester who, like many of the protagonists in this book, seems to have more than a bit of the author in him.

There are mysteries and endtimes and strange worlds and madness (lots of madness), but only a few tales that really stuck with me. I liked Molly Tanzer's post-apocalyptic Go, Go, Go, Said the Byakhee, was unsettled by Victor LaValle's Ghost Story (which isn't really a ghost story and is only by a stretch a Lovecraftian story, thought Michael Cisco's Translation had a properly weird ending, and Erica Satifka's You Will Never Be the Same pulled off a short space opera in Lovecraftian space.

The remaining stories — Seven Minutes in Heaven by Nadia Bulkin, Night Voices, Night Journeys, by Masahiko Inoue, Weird Tales, by Fred Chapell, and Bright Crown of Joy by Livia Llewellyn — were not bad at all, but while carrying the theme were not as memorable for me.

This isn't a classic "Lovecraft Mythos" book — there aren't many monsters, and no Great Old Ones rising. But they all convey the feeling of humans being small squishy gnats in a vast indifferent universe, full of mysteries that will destroy your mind if you're dumb enough to seek them out. It's not my favorite Lovecraftian collection ever, but Mamatas is a student of stories and of Lovecraft, and this anthology is giving proper due to the weird and wondrous, if occasionally ponderous, side of HPL's writing.

[Ryan Howse · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lovecraftian anthologies are extremely common, ranging from pulp action to comedy to horror. Wonder and Glory Forever, edited by Nick Mamatas, does something differently. In Mamatas’s words, “I…saw a thematic gap; most Lovecraftian fiction either cultivates dread or attempts some kind of goofy humour, but the stories I tend to prefer instead mine the undercurrent of awe and the sublime in Lovecraft’s own stories. There’s a strong trend in horror fiction and cinema to identify with the monstrous as opposed to the human element.” (from an interview with me which can be seen, here.

Wonder and Glory Forever, therefore, focuses its stories on the concept of vastation: the malice of the made or revealed cosmos. The idea isn’t to scare, though many stories have eerie elements. It’s aiming for that elastic moment when the mind reaches for and cannot quite hit what is being described.

The first story comes from H.P. Lovecraft himself, the novella that Wonder and Glory Forever takes its name from: The Shadow over Innsmouth. While it seems likely that many people reading the book will have read this popular story of his already, Mamatas points out in the epigraph that people will come to Lovecraft from all sorts of angles, and this might well be their first time actually reading his work directly, rather than seeing it second-hand through pop culture.

After Lovecraft, our first modern story in Wonder and Glory Forever is Nadia Bulkin’s Seven Minutes in Heaven, the kind of story that starts off reading like completely realistic fiction and just shifts ever-so-slightly several times throughout, until the solid ground you thought you were standing on has vanished.

Laird Barron’s Vastation takes a wildly different approach, getting us into the point of view of a superhuman with the ability to manipulate time and space. It is incredibly clever and well-written, with a fantastic point of view and narration. It feels rushed in the best sense of the term, that these images just keep flooding and cannot be stopped, and there is no slowing it.

Michael Cisco’s Translation is a stand-out short story, focusing on an attempt to translate an ancient tablet in a language that uses its tenses very differently than we do—and that strange tense usage infects the entire story. It shares DNA with Ted Chiang’s Time of Your Life (the story adapted into Villeneuve’s film Arrival) but is very much its own thing, and retains a more horror-tinged air.

Wonder and Glory Forever finishes with Clark Ashton Smith’s The City of Singing Flame. Smith was a contemporary and correspondent with both Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard, the author of Conan, Bran Mak Morn, and plenty more. The three of them often plucked concepts and terms from each other and used them in their own stories.

Wonder and Glory Forever has some utterly brilliant short fiction in it. In a subgenre of a subgenre, Lovecraftian fiction can become simple pastiche. But in the hands of authors like these, it excels and shows us vastation.

5/5

Originally reviewed here:
https://www.grimdarkmagazine.com/revi...

[Johan Haneveld · Rating 5 out of 5]

9As a reader and writer of short stories I am always on the lookout for collections, wanting to get to know new authors, and be inspired by new concepts and techniques. The innovation and ideas that you experience by reading a good collection cannot be replicated in any other way. it's a roller coaster ride when with each new story some new vista is opened up to you. Still, in most collections there ar a few five star stories but also a few clunkers. Stories that are just not to your taste, or where the anthologist had another goal in mind in collecting the stories than you have in reading them. Anyway, even though I love short fiction, I hardly even can give a collection an unqualified five stars. I read the collections for the gems contained within, that stay with me, long after the mediocre stories have left my memory. All that to say that this was one of the collections I read recently that I thoroughly enjoyed from the first to the last page. The concept is right up my alley. It takes the cosmic vista's, the deep time, deep space and wondrous revelations of Lovecraftian fiction well known to the reader of cosmic horror. But where Lovecraft et al mostly used these ideas to inspire fear in their readers, the idea of these stories isn’t to scare, but to invoke wonder, even awe. That's not to say they don't contain eerie elements and leave the reader sometimes with uncomfortable thoughts, but there's always an element of transportation, of enlightenment even. A comment I read a while ago on cosmic horror wondered that when the idea of the Lovecraftian mythos is that there's a larger universe beyond our comprehension, where our human distictions between meaning and randomness, beauty and ugliness, good and evil are no longer relevant, why is the effect of this universe shown in fiction always that of randomness, ugliness and evil? The conception of this grander universe as 'cosmic horror' manages to place it in a human category (that of horror) that the author wants to convince us it transcends. When Cthulhu wakes from his slumber and he tortures and consumes all human beings without a thought for their individuality, he's simply another evil demon. It's easy to see why other writers like Dernleth cast the old gods of Lovecraft in a Christian dichotomy of good and evil. The stories in this collection manage to inspire real awe by suggesting fates that are really incomprehensible, that promise rapture and transformation that we are too small to fully appreciate, that being confronted with a universe that is stranger and larger than we ever imagined it to be we may not lose our minds, but be lifted above them to another realm of being. That is in itself a scary experience, and may be described as madnesss by an outside observer, so these stories could still be described as horror, if you want to read them that way. Any way, they all lead to an experience of awe. Some are hard to grasp, as the authors try to invoke awe by weird descriptions and obscure words, the plots sometimes teetering on the edge of comprehensibility. But they all reward reading and even rereading. All except the opening story by Lovecraft himself. The Shadow over Innsmouth does suggest that suffering the fate of the population of Innsmouth may not be all bad for the protagonist, but during the story his xenofobia and racism is for me as a modern reader nauseating. Even though I enjoyed Lovecrafts gift with language and his capability of cranking up the tension, this aspect made me disconnect with the story. The final story in the collection is also by a more classic author, Clark Ashton Smith, but that one I could enjoy wholeheartedly. It was really awe-inspiring, with alien landscapes, inscrutable beings, world within worlds, and a sense of loss at the end. Well written too. In between are modern stories by different authors. All Worthwile. 'Vastation' by Laird Barron was hard to understand, and maybe a bit too obscure. 'You will never be the same' by Erica L. Satifka seemed like a riff on The Jaunt by Stephen King. The atmosphere in 'Night Voices, Noght Journeys' by Masahiko Inoue managed to pull me in. 'Translation' by Michael Cisco made me empathize by the characters that are absorbed by the task of translating an old manuscript. 'Bright Crown of Joy' by Livia Llewelly was maybe the best of the bunch, an interesting far future tale, that combines Cthulhu and climate change, and memory and purpose, that asked questions of cosmic importance while managing to stay connected with the human level. I didn't really like 'Ghost Story' by Victor LaValle. But it was well written, no doubt about it. Molly Tanzers 'Go, go, go, said the Byakhee' was another great story, one of the best, that manages to evoke estrangement, suggest the wonder of transformation, but still containing a very human core. A sad ending though. Most of these stories left me in awe, not just by their content, but also by their style, and made me wonder if I can learn to write this way. And if that is not a sign of a good collection, I wonder what is... If you have any love for the cosmic horror genre, this is absolutely recommended.

[Caleb Likes Books · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a solid collection! I love Lovecraftian stories so one that seemingly tackled those themes from an angle more akin to Lovecraftian wonder was intriguing to me. Unfortunately, as with most short fiction collections, this was a mixed bag—however, there were a good few gems throughout. I took brief notes on each story, so I will leave those below:

The Shadow Over Innsmouth - H. P. Lovecraft
A Lovecraft classic, and one I’ve enjoyed in the past during the two or three other times I’ve read it. Admittedly, I don’t think I liked it as much this time, but a lot of it still works for me. Vivid prose, great sense of history and worldbuilding, and strong setting work. Definitely gets across Lovecraft’s strengths when it comes to building strange mysteries and unsettling atmosphere. It does feel a little overly-long to me, but I’m not sure it could’ve been done another way.
8/10

Seven Minutes in Heaven - Nadia Bulkin
A very brief story with some intriguing elements, but a little unsatisfying. I really liked the sense of ambiguity to it, and combining that pseudo-cosmic dread with a Christian cult was fascinating. It easily could have been excellent, but ultimately is some very interesting ideas that don’t quite reach their potential. Could have made a very interesting novella or full novel if it had been expanded.
6/10

Vastation - Laird Barron
A weird one. This one seems to take place in a version of the Cthulhu Mythos, and follows some kind of time-traveling, supernatural being; as such, it bounces from one time, place, and thought to another quite often. It’s a bit confusing but I enjoyed some of the little vignettes, and seeing things from the perspective of a character like this is quite interesting.
7/10

You Will Never Be the Same - Eric L. Satifka
A straight-up Lovecraftian story! A bit too short for my liking, but it’s good. Essentially follows a space crew traveling between planets, as something goes wrong and they end up witnessing the horrors between the stars. It’s simple and straightforward—probably would’ve been better if it were fleshed out more, maybe novella length—but a solid story.
7.5/10

Night Voices, Night Journey - Masahiko Imoue (Translated by Edward Lipsett)
Some cool Mythos inclusions but overall never really drew me in. Found it a little confusing and boring.
5/10

Farewell Performance - Nick Mamatas
Good sense of character voice, and a little bit of intriguing worldbuilding given through the main character’s dialogue. A bit short and not terribly exciting, but okay.
6/10

Translation - Michael Cisco
A pretty interesting story about two people translating an ancient Egyptian text, borrowed from Lovecraft’s stories. Strong sense of maddening, incomprehensible knowledge and desire to understand it. Deals with a character heavily implied to be Nyarlathotep. The basic story was interesting, and the ending which tells the Egyptian story was great—would’ve loved it to be a bit longer.
9/10

Weird Tales - Frank Chappell
A story which features Lovecraft and other (fictional?) writers as characters. Presents a story where greater beings and horrors similar to those Lovecraft wrote about actually exist, and shows one of the writers’ descent into madness after witnessing an event. Pretty interesting, with a couple amusing moments about Lovecraft himself.
8/10

Bright Crown of Joy - Livia Llewellyn
This one was really interesting. Told in first person, sort of a virtual journal entry style (seemingly digital recordings of a person’s experience?), set in a post-transformation Earth. A little confusing at times, but does a good job of emphasizing the strangeness of this setting and encountering the incomprehensible, plus has an interesting style.
9/10

Ghost Story - Victor LaValle
Strong sense of setting and character, as I’d expect from LaValle. A few good character moments but overall nothing that really hooked me.
6/10

Go, Go, Go, Said the Byakee - Molly Tanzer
Another one that didn’t really hook me, but it was a bit interesting. Unique writing style and an interesting take on cosmic horror. A bit too out-there for me but a decent one.
6.5/10

The City of the Singing Flame - Clark Ashton Smith
Likely my favorite story in this collection. While this one didn’t quite capture a lot of horror, it absolutely captured the sense of Lovecraftian bliss—the “wonder and glory”—which the book’s introduction discussed. Fascinating worldbuilding, a story that felt very reminiscent of my favorite of Lovecraft’s, and a strong sense of awe. Some bits towards the end lost me a little but not too much. Great story!
9.5/10

Overall, a mixed bag of a collection but one with a wide variety of stories, styles, and approaches to the collection’s primary theme. I would recommend it to fans of Lovecraftian stories, with the understanding that you’ll almost like some of these more than others.

Rating: 7/10

[Denice Langley · Rating 5 out of 5]

It has been awhile since I last read a Lovecraftian story. I forgot that one of the most defining qualities is the descriptive manner of writing. Everyone of your senses engages thanks to the skillful writing. When describing the town of Innsmouth, you see the "creepy" residents, you smell the fishy order of decay, you hear the waterfalls, you taste the dismal air on your tongue and you feel all of the emotions brought up quickly when you first see the bus....and this is part of that reading experience in every story. These authors pay tribute to Lovecraft the best way they can, but writing their versions of a story in his very distinctive style. Loved it!

[Richard Gough · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is inside me now. The seed has burrowed deep and I feel it beginning to sprout. My transformation cannot be far away. I tremble, though I know not if it is in fear or anticipation.



As soon as I heard about this collection I knew I had to read it. As a lifelong cosmic horror fan, a collection which focuses on the element of the sublime in horror - the sense of encountering something vast, unknowable, alien - was an easy sell. The wondrous can be much more chilling than the base or more overtly grotesque, exposing as it does the absurdity of existence and the irrelevance of the human, of humanity, in a vast and limitless universe. This collection takes that idea as a focus, and it's a fantastic theme.



Too easily did I allow myself to be led on that path. For so long had I searched for something more, something greater, than this existence, and it was so tantalisingly close.



The first thing that stands out to the reader is Mamatas' confident and nuanced understanding of the tales within and cosmic horror as a genre. His brief introduction compresses a lot of food for thought into a couple of pages, and he has a paragraph before each story which all effectively prime the reader for what is to come. That mastery is evident in the selection of the stories too - this is a collection more diverse than perhaps the heavy theming would suggest, from classics of the genre to more recent fare, yet each story is well-chosen and adds to a cohesive whole.



Now I began to see the world in a new light. As the new truths which had been revealed to me shook the scales from my eyes, even what had once been known and familiar took on wondrous, terrible new weight.



The collection is bookended by two classic stories - HP Lovecraft's The Shadow Over Innsmouth, from whose ominous closing words the book's title is taken, and Clark Ashton Smith's The City of the Singing Flame. Of course I've read The Shadow Over Innsmouth before, but to read it again with a focus on the wonder of the transformations taking place was an interesting experience and it acts as a solid opening to the collection. I confess I've not read as much of Clark Ashton Smith as I should, and this story was new to me, but I'm glad I got the chance to read it here. It effectively blends encounters with the bizarre, unaccountable compulsion, and explorations of new horizons both external and internal, and this is a compelling coda to the preceding tales.



Wherever I looked, I could now see the blossom of the seed inside me, wheeling through the mundane world, transforming what it touched, creating the new and reconfiguring the old into wondrous forms.



Either Nadia Bulkin or Laird Barron would sell me a collection on the strength of their name alone, and to have both in these pages is a real treat. I'd actually read both of their stories in this volume previously - in fact, this is the third time I've read Barron's Vastation this year alone - but I certainly didn't regret reading them again, especially looking at them specifically through the lens of this collection and Mamatas' thoughts.

Erica Satifka's You Will Never Be The Same, despite its brevity, brilliantly conjures a bleakly terrifying vision of humanity journeying out into that vast universe, and other, stranger realms beside. Night Voices, Night Journeys by Masahiko Inoue is playful and haunting, yet meditative. This leads us in to Mamatas' own story, Farewell Performance, an ichor-dark evocation of futility and collapse.

Michael Cisco is another author I'm not as well-acquainted with as I'd like to be, and his urgently compelling Translation makes me kick myself for what I've been missing. It's hard to pick stand out stories in such a well-curated collection but this burnt into me (and put my thus far untouched copy of The Narrator straight to the top of my reading list).

Fred Chappell's Weird Tales is a horror story about Lovecraft himself, but only in a sense. While this could easily be distasteful, as Mamatas discusses, it avoids the pulp trappings it could easily fall prey to in favour of something less definable. Livia Llewellyn's Bright Crown of Joy is a vision of collapse and the end of the world that juxtaposes the supernatural with the environmental brilliantly, showing us the absurdity as well as the dark wonders of the end times and the times after the end times. It's just excellent.

Victor LaValle's Ghost Story is a fascinating addition, a 'Lovecraftian' story with nothing supernatural, only the cosmic horror of human existence, and ably demonstrating that that's what we're really scared of anyway. Last before we close with The City of the Singing Flame is Molly Tanzer's Go,Go, Go, Said the Byakhee, which shares themes of transformation with several other stories in this volume but runs with them in a way that is completely unique and horribly joyous.


I will never escape it now. It is within me and without, and all is touched by that seed and forever will be.



This collection did not disappoint. If you're looking for horror that invokes awe, that provokes you to gaze, for better or for worse, with new eyes at the world around you, that touches what is - dare I say it - numinous, then pick up this book, await your transformation, and prepare to dwell in wonder and glory forever.

[S.M.M. Lindström · Rating 4 out of 5]

A horrifyingly enjoyable collection of short cosmic horror stories!

Well, most of them at least. The Shadow over Innsmouth goes on for 71 pages. Having the collection both start and end with a classic weird tale highlights the evolution of the genre's writing style in a way I do appreciate, even if the classics themselves weren't quite for me. I've read all of Lovecraft's works, and I can appreciate them (though not the author himself) for the part they've played in cosmic horror even being a thing, but the plot of Innsmouth isn't truly a horror one for me. And Clark Ashton Smith's The City of the Singing Flame really wasn't my cup of tea. Quite a downer to end on, with 44 pages of Not My Kinda Horror. I shouldn't have read these stories in order.

The rest of the stories are 10-20-ish pages in length and got me far more hooked. Favorites were:
- Seven Minutes in Heaven: The source of the horror in this story came as a bit of a surprise to me, in a good way.
- You Will Never Be the Same: Always fun when people imagine exactly how horrific space travel can become~
- Translation: I am a sucker for translation stories and stories that play around with linguistics in general. The long sentences in this really fits the dream-like and eerie premise, and is a welcome contrast to the second half's "clearer" language.
- Bright Crown of Joy: An almost peaceful look at the end of the world and humanity as we know it.
- Go, Go, Go, Said the Byakhee: A story about wanting to grow up too fast that packs a punch!

[Morgan · Rating 3 out of 5]

The theme is definitely cosmic horror. Most of the writing is very Lovecraftian in style, long winded passages, long descriptions, uncertainty in thought. I myself am not a big fan of Lovecraft's writing style, though I love the concepts. I found his writing very baroque. If you like his style, then these stories echo that very much. Of the stories in this collection, I liked moments in: "Seven Minutes in Heaven" (when you realize Hatbury isn't normal), "Night Voices, Night Journeys" (when you realize She is something more), "Translation" (the whole obsessive concept is great), "Ghost Story" (when you realize it's an unreliable narrator), "Go, Go, Go, Said the Byakhee" (unique viewpoint character), "The City of the Singing Flame" (Why would you even go in there? But you do.). Overall, some nice concepts, but you have to slog through the writing styles.

[Larry · Rating 3 out of 5]

A few good stories. Translation by Michael Cisco was my favorite. But I thought several of these stories were pretty weak. Also, the editor included The City of the Singing Flame and The Shadow over Innsmouth, both classics of course but I've read them many times.

[Joshua Dysart · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sweet! Outstanding collection of short cosmic horror stories. A lot more hits than misses. 50% of these stories are utterly perfect, another 20% are just super good. Nice ratio. And 10% are transcendent. Livia Llewellyn fucking slayed. Michael Cisco's "Translation" is humbling to a writer like me who's constantly wrestling with finding the right tone. I had already read Laird Barron's "Vastation", but you have to read that story like thirty times just to catch 70% of its genius, so that's cool. Nadia Bulkin's story is fantastic. It's just a very strong collection. I checked it out from the library, but I'm going to buy my own copy, because a lot of these stories demand to be reread.

[Otto Hahaa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tykkäsin tästä. Kun on mahdollisuus valita kaikista maailman tarinoista ne parhaimmat ja sopivimmat, niin miksei näin tehtäisi? Ja koska HPL-kirjastoni ei ole missään nimessä täydellinen, niin ainoastaan Lovecraftin tarina oli minulla jo ennestään. Tarinoissa etsitään HPL:n ”kunnioitusta herättävää” (parempaa suomennosta etsiessä tämä käynee tässä) puolta, joka näissä tarinoissa usein tarkoittaa aikaa Suurten muinaisten organisaatiouudistuksen jälkeen. Tätä ”pelonsekaista kunnioitusta” (parempi suomennos?) tunnelmaa yleensä itse etsinkin, joten tämä oli oikein mainio kokoelma.

[Dana Barlow · Rating 5 out of 5]

The stories chosen for this book were excellent. This is the first chance I had to read the 2nd part of CAS's City of the Singing Flame - I hadn't even known there was a second part until this volume. Some of the stories were accidently optimistic, but generally speaking the stories were selected either for new takes on Lovecraft, like Inoue's "Night Voices, Night Journeys" or, like "Farewell Performance", for their ability to just you the creeps as thoroughly as having a stranger stand behind you and breathe on your neck

[Jon · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's an excellent collection, with the stories reprinted from other venues. I think that makes it stronger than most, as the editor's not restricted to what submissions they can get by invitation or supplication. I hadn't read any of these before (except the Lovecraft and the Smith), and that makes it even more pleasing. In short: yay.

[Lyn Remmers · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic selection of short stories with a strong running theme! Every story got me sucked in and I especially adored the one by Masahiko Inoue! Would recommend for everyone who loves the strange and surreal!

[Christopher Pate · Rating 4 out of 5]

A haunting and evocative collection of lovecraftian tales leaning toward the sublime side rather than dripping with the typical dread and cosmic insignificance. Quite entertaining and bookended by tales from Lovecraft and Ashton Smith.

[Corvus · Rating 3 out of 5]

An anthology with a handful of good stories. Unfortunately, those can be found in other collections and are likely ones many Lovecraftian fans are already familiar with. The rest are middling, at best, and don't live up to the book's theme of "Wonder & Glory."

[Mark Gartland · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think the few stories portraying the world *after* a great change are exploring the most creative ideas.