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The Call of Poohthulhu

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An imaginative amalgamation of two beloved literary genres, the whimsical early stories of Winnie-The-Pooh and the Mythos tales of H.P. Lovecraft! Ten amazing authors have created stories that take place in, or are inspired by, the 100 Acre Wood, and added a Lovecraftian twist to ruffle the feathers of an Owl, or shock the tail off a donkey!

Old Ones, New Ones and Dark Voids cause a bit of bother with our favourite stuffed friends, and the whole anthology is crammed full to bursting with Very Dark Ideas and Perilously Sticky Expotitions.
Reader Beware!

Contents:
• Introduction / Neil Baker
• The Celery at the Threshold / John Linwood Grant
• The Very Black Goat / Christine Morgan
• Back to the Black Bog / Lee Clark Zumpe
• Where Howls the Edgog / Pete Rawlik
• Head Like A Jar / Edward M. Erdelac
• In Which We Discover the 101st Acre / Robert P. Ottone
• Eeyore Makes a Friend / Jackson Parker
• When She Was Very Tired / Lisa Cunningham
• The Statement Of Eeyore Carter / Kevin Wetmore
• Acrewood / Jude Reid

228 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 31, 2022

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109 people want to read

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Neil Baker

26 books6 followers

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5 stars
18 (37%)
4 stars
15 (31%)
3 stars
11 (22%)
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3 (6%)
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1 (2%)
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
Profile Image for Dan Schwent.
3,197 reviews10.8k followers
May 17, 2022
The Call of Poothulhu is a collection of ten dark Winnie the Pooh tales.

Since my son was born, I haven't taken on many ARCs. When Edward Erdelac mentioned this one on Facebook, I knew I had to message the publisher.

Reviewing a collection is tough but here we go. All the tales are well crafted. The first, The Celery at the Threshold, is even written in A.A. Milne's voice. The tales are of varying strengths of Lovecraftian flavor but most of them are pretty dark. A couple have little to no Lovecraftian elements. Some link the 100 Acre Wood to HPL's Dreamlands. Sometimes Eeyore is the one with knowledge of the Mythos, sometimes Owl, sometimes Piglet. Some feature Christopher Robin grown up. One even reminded me of Cabin in the Woods.

If I had to pick favorites, I'd probably go with The Celery at the Threshold by John Linwood Grant and The Very Black Goat by Christine Morgan. In a lot of ways, The Call of Poothulhu is the spiritual successor to Scream for Jeeves. Four out of five Small Elder Things.
Profile Image for Stewart Tame.
2,469 reviews118 followers
June 15, 2022
I will admit to having low expectations going into this. Don't get me wrong: my inner geek squees at the thought of combining Lovecraft and Milne. Upon learning that this existed, my entire thought process was, "Must! Have!" But my inner cynic figured that was exactly the publisher's intention: crank out a quick book to cash in on the classic Pooh stories entering the public domain. Anyway, I was expecting the mere fact of the book's existence to be the most interesting thing about it. Happily, I was wrong.

As the title implies, this is a book of short stories that merge the aesthetics of H.P. Lovecraft and A.A. Milne in various entertaining ways. There are also illustrations, all in a lovely pastiche of the style used in the original Winnie the Pooh books. Yes, it looks different from the Disney cartoons. There are good, sufficient, and easily Google-able reasons for that.

(That said, I was incapable of reading Kevin Wetmore's "The Statement of Eeyore Carter" without hearing the Disney voices in my head. Made it even funnier.)

Best way to proceed from here is to probably single out some individual stories.

"The Celery At the Threshold" by John Linwood Grant does a wonderful job of evoking Milne's style, and manages to bring Lovecraftian concepts fully into the Hundred Acre Wood universe. It's somewhat "At the Mountains of Madness" as written by Milne. Very fun!

There's a reference to The Wind In the Willows in "Back to the Black Bog" by Lee Clark Zumpe that made me laugh out loud.

"Head Like A Jar" by Edward M. Erdelac is the story that made me start taking the entire book more seriously. This is a fine story, throwing in some real world elements–references to the Milne family biography, I think–that push everything to another level.

"Acrewood" by Jude Reid is also quite good. It also shows the least trace of Lovecraft or Milne. In fact, were you to encounter it in a different anthology, its origins as a Lovecraft/Milne tale might even escape notice.

As I said, this project definitely rises above mere novelty value. I am not well-versed in Milne fandom, but Lovecraft fans at least–provided they don't mind a bit of tongue-in-cheek–should definitely get a kick out of this. Recommended!
Profile Image for Rod Brown.
7,284 reviews278 followers
February 11, 2023
A mashup of A. A. Milne's jolly Winnie-the-Pooh with H. P. Lovecraft's gloomy universe of Elder Gods? MUST HAVE IT!! MUST READ IT!!

This is just the sort of thing I was hoping to see when Pooh went into public domain: something wild and imaginative.


The Celery at the Threshold / John Linwood Grant ~ 3 stars

Christopher Robin, Pooh, and a handful of their friends set off on an expedition to find the South Pole, having successfully found the North Pole in the past. On the journey they come across a lost little creature that looks like walking celery, and they agree to help it find its way home. Then they meet a little girl named Dorothy Jane who is playing at archeologist and quite eager to help them explore the bottomless rabbit warren that might hold the celery's home.

While there are ominous tickles here and there, the story unfolds more like Milne than Lovecraft. It could almost be an episode of The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh cartoon series.

The Very Black Goat / Christine Morgan ~ 3 stars

Once again, Christopher Robin and Pooh set out for a day of adventure and meet an out-of-place girl in the Hundred-Acre Wood. (I've not read a lot of Lovecraft, but did he also find girls scarier than any of his elder gods?) Even worse, she has a Very Black Goat with a Very Bad Attitude, and before you know it we have the first known instance of fisticuffs in the Poohniverse. Oh dear!


Back to the Black Bog / Lee Clark Zumpe ~ 2 stars

A meteorite lands in the Hundred-Acre Wood and begins to spread its evil taint. The predictable story could have been half as long if Eeyore didn't half-ass his efforts and dawdle so. Giddy-up, donkey! Pick up the pace!


Where Howls the Edgog / Pete Rawlik ~ 2 stars

Two big missteps here.

First, the author doesn't play fair with the characters, giving Piglet a personality transplant so he becomes one of Lovecraft's nervous and erudite accidental adventurers who yammers on and on with an excess of adjectives and SAT-prep vocabulary words. Owl, with his bluster and empty soul would have been much better in the role, though that wouldn't have worked as well, I suppose, with the next problem with the story:

We're supposed to believe hedgehogs are scary? Ain't gonna happen, sorry.


Head Like A Jar / Edward M. Erdelac ~ 5 stars

My favorite story in the collection! And perhaps my favorite Pooh story by an author other than Milne. Erdelac takes the mission statement of mixing Pooh with Lovecraft and creates a tale that is clever and moving and true to Milne's characters. He throws in a father and son theme to really drive home the emotional core.

A grimoire has been stolen from Billy Moon's little bookshop, but when he tries to retrieve it he interrupts a dark ritual that sends him to the Hundred-Acre Wood where a giant Heth-Fhah-Loomf'th has been unleashed to suck the forest and its inhabitants into its powerful trunk. Piglet gathers with Eeyore, Owl, Rabbit and Kanga, wondering what to do or how to escape. But the answer lies with the one who is not there, the one who only doesn't know and only doesn't care about a silly ol' looming apocalypse.

Yeah, Lovecraft’s dark old gods are always trying to come back and take over the world, but they had best beware of the new gods mankind has made in their absence . . . especially one whose power to see the bright side is as limitless as his appetite.

I laughed, cried, and cheered.


In Which We Discover the 101st Acre / Robert P. Ottone ~ 2 stars

This story has the unfortunate luck to follow the best story in the book while doing something very similar much less successfully. Here a dark, consuming fog is the menace overwhelming the Hundred-Acre Wood, driving the Pooh friends to a final refuge and a connection to the world outside the forest. It really doesn't help that the story is told mostly from Owl's point of view; I'm not fond of that bird, and this story does little to change my opinion.


Eeyore Makes a Friend / Jackson Parker ~ 3 stars

Oh, bother, another meteorite has landed near Eeyore's Gloomy Place. At least this one is having different effects than the last.

Eeyore finds himself in a psychological thriller that's a little too long and a little too predictable. And I really didn't appreciate that a dark turn Eeyore takes involves running Kanga through the virgin-mother-whore complex and ignores the canon timeline of the Milne books that has Kanga and Roo arriving together. Still the story manages to work thanks to the chill of its closing sentences.


When She Was Very Tired / Lisa Cunningham ~ 2 stars

Kanga takes center stage in this depressing metafiction about characters enslaved to their story. The grimmest story in the book so far.


The Statement Of Eeyore Carter / Kevin Wetmore ~ 3 stars

Eeyore drones on in a monologue recounting what happened to Pooh when a family grimoire passed down to him sets him exploring a dark stairwell under a tomb in a graveyard in a far corner of the Hundred-Acre Wood. The Lovecraftian bits are dull and leaden, and the characters are out of character with Pooh being an academic of sorts and Eeyore being quite loquacious, but the dialogue exchanges and a running joke about lunch amused me.

Acrewood / Jude Reid ~ 3 stars

In a tale that leans more toward Lovecraft than Milne, the Robbins' family vacation in the country goes awry when they find that the farm where their guest cottage sits is harboring a dark and deadly secret. It's a slow, satisfying build to a gruesome end for the holiday.



FOR REFERENCE

Contents:
• Introduction / Neil Baker
• The Celery at the Threshold / John Linwood Grant
• The Very Black Goat / Christine Morgan
• Back to the Black Bog / Lee Clark Zumpe
• Where Howls the Edgog / Pete Rawlik
• Head Like A Jar / Edward M. Erdelac
• In Which We Discover the 101st Acre / Robert P. Ottone
• Eeyore Makes a Friend / Jackson Parker
• When She Was Very Tired / Lisa Cunningham
• The Statement Of Eeyore Carter / Kevin Wetmore
• Acrewood / Jude Reid


(My Pooh Project: I love Winnie the Pooh, and so does my wife. Having a daughter gave us a chance to indoctrinate her into the cult by buying and reading her every Pooh book we came across. How many is that? I’m going to count them this year by reading and reviewing one every day and seeing which month I finally run out. Track my progress here:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/list... )
Profile Image for Theofilos .
149 reviews7 followers
November 14, 2022
One of the best Cthulhu Mythos anthologies I have read so far this year...

I will be honest here, I thought that this book was nothing more than a "gimmick", a novelty, maybe even a joke. Fortunately I have followed some of authors here in, Christine Morgan, and Edward Erdelac for example, so in the end I was pleasantly surprised. This is really good!
3,153 reviews
June 2, 2024
A collection of short stories that mash together Milne's Pooh with Lovecraft's creations

I enjoyed every one of these even though I'm not a fan of short stories in general. I realized a few stories in that I get tense thinking of real harm coming to Winnie the Pooh and his companions. Most authors stayed in the 'weirdness with a hint of danger' zone while some just went there.

Listed in order from my favorite story it is:

- The Celery at the Threshold: Pooh and friends help a small Elder One (who bears a striking resemblance to sentient celery) who is lost from its home

- Eeyore Makes a Friend: Eeyore makes a donkey from sticks and pieces of something that had crashed from the sky so he won't be alone and it does not go well

- Where Howls the Edgog: When Pooh finds Piglet barricaded in his home, the two of them must use family hairwombs that shoot to defend themselves

- Head Like a Jar: Hefth-Fah-Loomf'th (Heffalump, in the vernacular) begins to drain off the Hundred Acre Wood

- Back to the Black Bog: Eeyore saves the Hundred Acre Woods when a Cosmic Lump crashes down from outer space

- When She Was Very Tired: Kanga is depressed at having to play out the Stories as a Character but finds it can get worse

- In Which We Discover the 101st Acre: a terrible fog with hissing noises and lightning strikes begins to destroy the Hundred Acre Woods and Private Christopher Robin finds some things he had forgotten

- The Very Black Goat: Pooh must protect Christopher Robin from a strange girl and her even stranger goat

- Acrewood: The Robbins family find that an Airbnb is not what they expect (this one was a little too far afield from 'Pooh' for me)

- The Statement of Eeyore Carter: Eeyore speaks to a Detective about the disappearance of Edward Bear
Profile Image for The Smoog.
479 reviews1 follower
June 7, 2023
I went into this book with no expectations whatsoever. It turned out to be the best anthology I’ve read in a long time. There are no stories here which are bad, which can quite often be the case with multi-author collections, but there are some which are genuinely terrifying, and one - "In Which We Discover the 101st Acre" by Robert P. Ottone - that is really quite heartbreaking. I’d recommend this to anyone who’s a fan of horror, it’s well worth a read, but just be warned: you’ll probably want to go and re-read A. A. Milne's originals straight afterwards!
Profile Image for BookMoss.
163 reviews42 followers
August 23, 2022
I thought this book was a charming idea, but it suffered from lackluster execution
Profile Image for Chris Boutin.
5 reviews
April 25, 2023
Awesome childhood stories with a Lovecraftian twist. Feels like Pooh and friends fell into a cosmic horror hole. Brilliant.
Profile Image for Tiffany Lynn Kramer.
1,946 reviews10 followers
September 4, 2023
2.5
The idea behind this anthology was so fun but for one reason or another I found myself only caring for the final tale by Jude Reid, Acrewood.
Profile Image for Charlie Anne Tovey.
33 reviews1 follower
June 9, 2022
I really enjoyed 3 stories
The Celery at the Threshold
The Very Black Goat
and
Acrewood

The rest ranged from okay to didn't really enjoy.
Some of the stories, Winnie the Pooh and Friends, didn't feel like them. Some of the stories had very little Call of Cthulhu involvement.
'The Celery at the Threshold' was my favorite and really made me feel like I was reading an actual Winnie the Pooh story and I loved how the Call of Cthulhu was brought into the story.
'The Very Black Goat' was fun to read and was on the darker side.
'Acrewood' had a unique way of using some of the characters from Winnie the Pooh and was definitely on the much darker side.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews

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