The Call of Cthulhu and Other Dark Tales

by H.P. Lovecraft, Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock (Introduction)

“The twentieth century’s greatest practitioner of the classic horror tale” – Stephen King about H. P. Lovecraft

H. P. Lovecraft’s fiction reveals a universe that is vaster, darker, and stranger than anything previously imagined. His “cosmic horror” reflects a peculiarly modern philosophical belief system in which human beings are regarded as insignificant in light of the vastness of time and space. The especially Lovecraftian twist on this apocalyptic premise is that it is alien forces and powers at work in the universe that possess the potential for the ultimate destruction of mankind. 


Reprinted here are many of Lovecraft’s most famous works, including “The Call of Cthulhu” (1928), “The Dunwich Horror” (1929), and “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” (1936).  These stories will introduce readers to Lovecraft’s pantheon of “gods,” his characteristic themes, his fictitious New England geography and, of course, the Necronomicon, Lovecraft’s famous invented book of occult secrets.

Genres: Horror, Fiction, Fantasy, Classics, Short Stories, Science Fiction Fantasy, Paranormal

459 pages, Paperback

Published May 18, 2009

About the author

Howard 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

Reviews

[Colin Gooding · Rating 2 out of 5]

Marked as Did Not Finish

I picked three short stories by HP Lovecraft to read in book club this week, so I took those ebook out from the library thinking I would start with at least those stories and read maybe more.

I made it through The Shadow Over Innsmouth and The Call of Cthulhu, and I started The Dunwich Horror, but early into that one I gave up.

I feel similar about reading this as I do with something like Tolkien. I respect the influence of the work and I think the broad stories/worlds and some specific moments are great, but I just can't get into the writing.

This is all aside from Lovecraft himself being a garbage person that certainly comes through in at least the casual racism throughout these stories, though I actually found it interesting to think about whether certain tropes that are prevalent throughout horror (fear of the other/the unknown being the big one) is inherently racist, or if just combining that with this writer makes it feel worse (though there often is clear racist terminology used in the writing, though not always directed at the monsters).

Anyways, glad I tried this out even if it's not for me.

[Nate · Rating 3 out of 5]

Last month (September 2013) I had an idea that I'd journey back to two of the true originals in two of my favorite genres; horror and fantasy. The other author I read was Robert Howard, who wrote the original Conan stories. I enjoyed both authors, but I think I had a better overall time with Howard. I'm not sure why, but reviewing Lovecraft is kind of daunting and complicated, which is probably why I bitched out and made this introduction half about Howard.

This collects many of Lovecraft's famous short stories, poems, and novellas (with the mystifying exception of At the Mountains of Madness) and was an easy way to get into his work. His style is a bit stuffy and archaic, which will surely turn off many people but I thought it fell into the whole "academics facing cosmic impossibilities" theme that he had going. Seriously, it seemed like every protagonist in these stories is a rich professor or student of some kind. In one way it's nice because it lends these stories an air of scientific qualification but it gets repetitive pretty quickly.

So, how scared was I by these stories? There were definitely moments where I got this horrible feeling of bone-chilling dread in the stories, particularly when Lovecraft pulled his weird, shocking twists. Lovecraft even managed to profoundly disturb me in some of the stories, which was pleasant as I'm probably a bit jaded. Funnily enough, the stories I responded to the most had nothing to do with the Cthulhu mythos (even though I did enjoy that stuff). It just seemed like when Lovecraft focused on creating terrestrial horrors rather than the whole gigantic immortal space octopus type of thing it seemed more real and horrible.

The problem with Lovecraft's traditional "cosmic horror" is that it really is hard to comprehend some of this shit, and it's supposed to be. Too many times the story devolved to stuff like "And then I saw it and I went insane from its indescribable intracosmic amorphous likeness" or something like that and I just couldn't connect to it. I don't know, the fault could be on me for being an imagination-less pleb or something like that. Still, stuff like The Call of Cthulhu, The Colour out of Space and Dagon are unquestionably cool. I just didn't connect when them as much as the stuff like Arthur Jermyn, The Rats in the Walls or The Shadow Over Innsmouth. I did find Charles Dexter Ward interminably boring, the only story in the collection I really disliked.

All in all, a pleasant if a bit underwhelming experience for me. Don't get me wrong, even with all the complaints these stories still have the power to summon dread, terror, and horrible, overwhelming curiosity. Anyone who has an interest in horror probably owes it to themselves to at least check out one or two of Mr. Lovecraft's stories. If I remember correctly some of them might even be in the public domain at this point and easy to acquire as such.

As a final caveat which I funnily enough had to insert into my review of Howard's stuff; if antiquated and misguided views on race/gender/sexuality and stuff like that really bother you, you might avoid this one. I definitely got a mild but noticeable flavor of racism from Lovecraft, which was irritating but didn't bother me too much. It shows itself in stuff like a character's cat being named "Nigger-Man", not really in overt comments on race or anything like that. I wouldn't have enjoyed that and it would have been a shame to have such obnoxious bullshit marring the legacy of one of America's originals.

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

Introduction by Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock - 4 Stars
Dagon - 5 Stars
The Terrible Old Man - 5 Stars
Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family - 4 Stars
Nyarlathotep - 3 Stars
The Picture in the House -5 Stars
Herbert West—Reanimator -5 Stars
The Rats in the Walls - 5 Stars
The Call of Cthulhu - 5 Stars
The Case of Charles Dexter Ward - 5 Stars
The Colour Out of Space - 5 Stars
The Dunwich Horror - 5 Stars
The Whisperer in Darkness - 4.5 Stars
The Shadow Over Innsmouth - 5 Stars
The Dreams in the Witch House - 5 Stars
The Haunter of the Dark- 5 Stars

[Ed Holden · Rating 3 out of 5]

I give this volume three stars, though it perhaps deserves better. The collection is weighed down by Lovecraft's early tales, as well as by some predictable twists in his later ones. But though a reader will surely go mad if he or she delves too deeply into the author's crabbed scribblings, many are worth reading: in particular I enjoyed "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward" and the flawed but genuinely scary "The Shadow Over Innsmouth."

Lovecraft has a "tell, don't show" narrative style, and in his early works this hinders his storytelling immensely. His often enjoyable prose is the only mitigating factor in stories that have little or no dialogue. I found the first few offerings in this collection repetitive and boring, albeit quaint in a Victorian/Edwardian fashion. It was not until I reached "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward" that the story rose above the prose and I found myself hooked. Still, even many of the good stories get bogged down in dragging prose and predictable endings. Yet the more I read them, the more I enjoy them.

I first learned about Lovecraft via a reference in Professor Wilmington's "Mysteries of the Occult," itself principally an exposition on that vile tome the Necronomicon by the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred. Of Wilmington himself there's little to say that has not already been written in the local periodicals of Arkham and Boston during the years since his disappearance. Except, that is, that I managed to follow in his footsteps some time later. Of that there is no record, until this review.

Wilmington's investigation of Lovecraft began half a decade hence, with hours of tedious but often surprising reading in the library at Miskatonic University. His notes indicate that he went in search of further writings in locations as varied as Vermont, Providence RI, the darkest regions of eastern Europe, and ultimately the foul city of Innsmouth, where I decided to pick up his tracks. Innsmouth is just south of Newburyport, which is a short MBTA Commuter Rail ride from Porter Square station. There is no direct train to Innsmouth, sadly, so I had to take a lonely green bus from the outskirts of Newburyport. As I rode, with the silent bus driver as my only feller traveler, I discovered that my Android phone lost 3G data a few miles south of Newburyport, and lost voice coverage entirely a few minutes later. I was overcome with mounting dread, and my spirits fell precipitously when I saw the worm-eaten city itself, with its decrepit gambrel roofs and peaked gables silhouetted against a dusky evening sky.

I briefly walked to the malodorous river to gaze into its curious murkiness, then checked myself into the ancient Gilman House inn for a mere thirty dollars. I learned from the wizened gray innkeeper that Wilmington himself had stayed there, and he even gave me Wilmington's room. It was not until I had set my bags on the musty bed that I realized this was the very room where Wilmington stayed on the night he disappeared.

I'd like to say that I escaped, that I snapped up my valise and made haste for the bus, but alas a check at the cracked window revealed that the bus had long departed, and I was trapped for the night in that rotting city - trapped forever, in fact, for once darkness fell I was introduced to the trancelike, misshapen denizens of the town, who converged on my room like rock concert-goers, groping for me, dragging me off toward the Old Ones at the harbor. Yes, forever am I theirs.

"Yog-Sothoth! Nyarlathoep! Ia! R'lyeh - Cthulhu ftagn!"

[Thaisa Meyka · Rating 4 out of 5]

⭐⭐⭐⭐½
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Este livro, com 15 famosos contos de H. P. Lovecraft, é uma coletânea que busca reunir os trabalhos mais essenciais escritos pelo autor. E, nesse aspecto, a edição cumpre sua promessa: encontramos contos como "O Chamado de Cthulhu", "A Sombra Sobre Innsmouth", "O Horror de Dunwich", alguns dos mais conhecidos de Lovecraft, usados sempre como referência quando citamos o escritor e o horror cósmico como um todo.
Ele agrupa narrativas que são extremamente interessantes e que, em sua maioria, traz os maiores nomes da mitologia criada por Lovecraft, tal como Cthulhu, Dagon e Nyarlathotep, e personagens icônicos como a bruxa Keziah Mason, o cientista Herbert West, o estudante Charles Dexter Ward - todos loucos, cada um em sua maneira e por um motivo, enquanto as criaturas que nos são apresentadas são as maiores responsáveis pela insanidade que circula na vida de cada protagonista.
Mas exatamente por conter contos tão conhecidos e importantes para a construção desse mundo terrível inventado pelo autor, os preconceitos do próprio aparecem na maioria dessas histórias: muitos deixam transparecer xenofobia e elitismo, enquanto uma boa parte acaba transbordando visões racistas do escritor (como "A Sombra Sobre Innsmouth", "Herbert West: Reanimator", "O Chamado de Cthulhu", "Os Ratos nas Paredes" e "A Verdade Sobre o Falecido Arthur Jermyn e Sua Família").
Apesar de adorar a escrita do autor, sua estilística e os mitos aterrorizantes e intrigantes que ele desenvolveu, não tem como apreciar 100%, porque é difícil ler frases e estereótipos completamente errados e dolorosos.
Por fim, o que o leitor mais absorve na obra de Lovecraft é isso: a mistura do horror sobrenatural e cósmico e, em contrapartida, o horror de conhecer o Lovecraft como ele era - genial e terrível no mesmo nível.

Mais resenhas no instagram literário @livre_em_livros

[Caitlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Phew! I'm finally done!

I'm glad I've officially read Lovecraft-- there's a lot of great material here and it's super cool to see his influence in literature and movies. Some of these stories suffered from being too long, and the formulaic plots could be a little monotonous, especially with the "show-don't-tell" writing about going insane. It took me a while to really "get" the love for Lovecraft, but once you get a feel for the writing and the universe, it's a fun ride.

[Austin Wright · Rating 1 out of 5]

The Barnes and Noble edition of this series is absolutely horrendous.

The font is bafflingly small, there are no annotations (if you have an opportunity to read the annotations of S.T.Joshi or Leslie Klinger, please do!). There are several other editions which have about 50 pages of additional information which will help the reader further appreciate Lovecraft's work.

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

H. P. Lovecraft is a master of atmosphere. If you over-think it, it might not appeal so much, but if you sit back and enjoy the ride, he will creep you out with his worlds beyond the one we know - just beyond.

[Kelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Points lost for gratuitous racism and "tell, don't show." But still - tentacles!

[Paul Mackie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Can H.P. Lovecraft compare with Edgar Allan Poe?

https://popculturelunchbox.substack.c...

As a lifelong Edgar Allan Poe fanatic, it seems logical for me to give H.P. Lovecraft a try. Really, could the 256,000 people in the Lovecraft sub-Reddit be wrong? (And how is it that there are only 11,000 in Poe’s sub-Reddit by comparison?)

But I digress. Let’s start by telling Lovecraft’s story, courtesy of Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, an American literature professor at Central Michigan University who wrote the introduction to The Call of Cthulhu and Other Dark Tales.

Lovecraft was largely unknown during his lifetime, but major authors like Stephen King, Clive Barker, and Neil Gaiman now extol his greatness. Robert Bloch, author of the book Psycho, said “Lovecraft may have had more influence on contemporary authors than anyone except Ernest Hemingway.” Hmm. He is known as the pioneer of cosmic horror, which involves a belief that there is no controlling God in charge of the universe but rather some kind of aliens from afar who are pushing our human buttons. And of course, as I suspected, Howard Phillips Lovecraft, who was born in 1890 and lived in Providence, Rhode Island, was hugely influenced by Poe when he discovered the legend’s writings at the age of eight. This was also about the same time the sickly child suffered his first “near breakdown.”

He continued to move into the world of writing but it wouldn’t be until he was in his 30s that most of the tales still well known to us today began being published in the pulp magazine Weird Tales.

In his personal life, his one failed marriage was to a Russian Jewish immigrant. But very much complicating his legacy is the fact that Lovecraft was a known anti-Semite who also wrote terrible things regarding his suspicions of “foreigners,” writing, for example, in “The Horror at Red Hook” that “foreigners have taken New York away from white people to whom it presumably belongs.” Sadly, perhaps it’s no wonder that Lovecraft continues to find sympathetic audiences in the still overly racist United States (that said, the kinds of racisists that exist in this country probably don’t read much Lovecraft, and probably don’t read much at all other than what they find at online message boards). Anyway, he died of intestinal cancer at age 47.

Lovecraft’s stories are simply divided into three categories. His Poe-inspired horror stories came first, his dream cycle stories next, and then his most well-known Cthulhu Mythos tales set mostly in contemporary New England with scary alien forces at work. In the later stories, he returns again and again to the theme that “human beings are not the center of the universe and it is only our ignorance of our true insignificance that keeps us from going mad.”

I became most interested in exploring how his Poe phase stacked up to Poe, and various recommendations led me to start with “The Terrible Old Man” and “Dagon.”

In 1917’s “Dagon,” the narrator is running out of morphine and about to fling himself out his “garret window into the squalid street below.” He is recalling when, at the very start of World War I, his crew was captured in an isolated part of the ocean by a German ship. But he escaped five days later in a small boat. While sleeping, he woke up capsized on a large slimy expanse of black mire. There he saw what appeared to be some kind of mysterious monstrous creature that drove him mad, and the next thing he remembered, he was waking up at a San Francisco hospital. He eventually believes he encountered Dagon, the ancient Philistine Fish-God, possibly belched up from the sea bottom up onto that black layer. The terror in this story could put Jaws to shame—not that it does that to one of my very favorite movies of all-time—with lines like, “I cannot think of the deep sea without shuddering at the nameless things … crawling and floundering on its slimy bed. I dream of a day when they may rise … to drag down … the remnants of puny, war-exhausted mankind … the end is near.” I found the story a bit melodramatic and, while suspenseful and interesting, nowhere near Poe’s level.

3.5 out of 5 stars

Trying 1920’s “The Terrible Old Man,” it is also a curious little (and very short) story. Three robbers of Italian, Portuguese, and Polish origin—reflecting the incoming immigrants of Providence at the time—plan to rip off an old feeble man who keeps to himself in his house, talking to bottles at his table that seem to remind him of his mates in his younger days aboard clipper ships. The old man slashes the robbers to bits with seemingly unforeseen strength, at least unforeseen to the robbers. He doesn’t care or get caught and the rest of the village discusses the horrid sounds and three unidentifiable bodies with simple “idle gossip.” It’s kind of an awful tale with no good guys or much of a moral.

2.5 out of 5 stars

I think I’ll need to move on and perhaps try Lovecraft’s most famous story “The Call of Cthulhu” some other time. Or maybe just read some Poe instead.

[Cristi Ivan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Probably going against the general flow here, but I think Lovecraft’s stories are highly overrated.

Ok, I’ll give him credit for being a pioneer of the genre, but thank God, the genre has come a long way since his days, in much more fruitful directions. The collection I read included several stories and I couldn’t help myself but notice how each and every one of them followed the same framework. It was like seeing some Marvel movies over and over again. The narrator discovers something strange, usually something that is detailed in the Necronomicon, so he goes to investigate. While he investigates, things must be too horrifying to be told and when they are told, they’re not that horrifying. The general space is described by some megaliths, with hieroglyphs carved all over them or odd buildings of “cyclopean” size. At the end, the narrator isn’t sure if everything really happened or it was just a dream. The resolution of the story – the narrator goes mad or he kills himself, no longer able to deal with the cosmic horrors he had just discovered.

I still have the same comments I had after I read At the Mountains of Madness - the storytelling is boring, using big words, usually multiple times. And I mean it. At some point I counted five uses of “sepulchral” in a couple of pages and it becomes so annoying, because it actually pulls you out of the story. Of course, there are several words that are used repeatedly enough to become annoying – eldritch, cyclopean, antiquarian, antediluvian and the list could go on.

The collection included several short stories, but also, it included four famous (longer) stories:

1. The Call of Cthulhu - some sailors discover an uncharted island full of cyclopean buildings, that defy Euclidian geometry. Of course, some eldritch horrors are waiting in the dark, in the form of antediluvian monsters that precede the human race. I had high expectations with this one, but it didn’t impress me that much. ** stars

2. The Colour Out of Space - clearly, this was my favorite in the collection, mainly because it was the only one that was different enough from the classic framework. Shortly, it’s a story about a farm where a meteorite crashed. After the crash, everything goes awfully awry, with something killing everything at the site, in horrific ways. This story was surely an inspiration for recent novels like Annihilation, Dreamcatcher, The Tommyknockers. **** stars

3. The Whisperer in Darkness - we’re back to the general framework with this one. The story talks about some odd crustaceous beings that haunt the hills and forests of Vermont, killing people and having a dark agenda. ** stars

4. The Shadow over Innsmouth - this one was a little bit better, completing some of the Dagon/Cthulhu mythos, with some stinky underwater creatures that terrorize a small fishing village. ** ½ stars.

[Matthew Dombrowski · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ultimately, I gave the collection 3 stars. It’s front loaded with some of the earlier works that aren’t really that great. And even when the stories start to get a little good some of the endings are predictable. I tried to be forgiving about this since I’m aware how influential he has been to other modern horror writers, but I think reading all these stories back to back to his style is very repetitive. Most of the stories have the same framing device which is “I found all these documents and I have to write down this tale before I too go mad,” and when it works you really get hooked but I think it worked best for me when the story was so long I forgot the framing device.

The Call of Cthulhu is largely underwhelming. I don’t know if this is because it’s been overhyped or the most known but it isn’t the best. I was a little disappointed.

Of the family degeneration stories, most are boring and repetitive. The Case of Charles Dexter Ward is the best for the family degeneration section. It was sort of an occult mystery meets Picture of Dorian Grey.

Highlights include: The Dunwich Horror, The Whisperer in Darkness, The Shadow over Innsmouth, and The Dreams in the Witch House.

Ranking them: The Shadow over Innsmouth is my favorite. This seemed to be the culmination of his style and all of the motifs. It was action packed, imaginative and had the most unexpected twist. I was unaware where this was going which was a cool feeling after much of the predictable endings. Second, The Whisperer in the Darkness was the scariest. Third, The Dunwich Horror. Pretty scary but not overly. And fourth, The Dreams in the Witch House(idk I just thought it was neat). It leaned towards a science-y occult with references to calculus and geometry that was at least different.

Hebert West - Reanimator was painfully bad and why I put this book down last October. I had to force my way throw it. A little forgiveness given since it was originally published serially but by the end it’s just like a page and a half of summary with an unsatisfying ending to wrap any of it up.

[Leah Rachel von Essen · Rating 3 out of 5]

So I can't diss Lovecraft's writing because no one in their right mind would diss Lovecraft's writing. It's gorgeous and suspenseful and sooo well done. So here's the issue I guess: Lovecraft is the basis for classic horror, right? That's probably why as good as these stories are, I was able to predict the endings to basically all of them. So while I enjoyed them a lot, what made them great was also what made them a little less enjoyable for me. It turned into a "well yeah obviously they're related" and "well obviously that's real."

All are still worth reading however, particularly "Nyarlathotep" because it's pretty, "The Rats in the Walls" which did actually truly get me in a way the others couldn't quite, and "The Colour Out of Space." The others were good but I must say those were the best.

Another great thing about Lovecraft is the universe in which he tells his tales and how he'll throw references into other stories. One tale is all about the town of Innsmouth while another, later in the anthology, mentions how the main character walked past the road to creepy Innsmouth about which there were so many stories. Things like that really tie his world together, as well as mentions of his mysterious Old Ones and the dark magics that always lie beneath us ready to threaten our world. I loved the Lovecraftian universe as formed by all the stories together a lot more than the specific stories I read.

[Anders · Rating 4 out of 5]

After reading "The Colour Out of Space" and being enticed by several other friends to read more Lovecraft AND staring at an untouched copy of some random collection of his shorts I had picked up at a used book store, I resolved to slake my dreadful curiosity and read this one (recommended and borrowed from a friend).

I liked them for the most part. Predictably, the shadow over innsmouth and the call of Cthulhu were my favorites, but I also liked the whisperer in darkness just because it had so many weird elements in it and the haunter of the dark because it was nice and contained.

I wasn't a huge fan of the "family degeneration" stories or the rats in the walls (Oh the rats drive the dude crazy, whoa ho!). I'm so-so about the witch house one.

Otherwise I liked the style Lovecraft went for, but towards the end I did find my interest waning. I think reading them all in succession was a mistake because they have such obvious similarities.

Overall worth reading, I think. (Oh and I skipped the one about Charles Dexter Ward)

[Brandon · Rating 5 out of 5]

My own personal discovery of H.P. Lovecraft's writing has truly been a blessing to me. I've started to consume Lovecraft's oeuvre with great gusto. This volume was a wonderful introduction into his dark world. There is great melancholy to be found in these pages. There's also some wonderful horror here. Since discovering the writer in January 2010, I've started to pick up on just how influential this guy really is on horror and weird fiction. The comic books I so cherish owe a heaping amount of respect to Lovecraft's vision of the world. Lovecraft can at times be laboriously verbose, and I am annoyed by the fact that almost every horror faced in his stories is "unmentionable" or "indescribable." I see all of that, and yet his writing crackles with an eerie electricity. I'm glad I still have a pile of his stuff to read. It's going to be a fun ride.

[intrepideddie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a good, representative collection of the works of HP Lovecraft. Note that this is not a complete collection, and (for you Cthulhu aficionados) it's not a collection of his works on the Cthulhu mythos. Rather, it is a selection of his works representing the various "phases" of his writing. The introduction to the book, as well as the short introductions to each chapter, provide fascinating insight into the author and the background behind some of the stories.

This is a great introduction to HP Lovecraft for new readers -- and overall just brilliant, classic, gothic horror. Read it alone, at night, for the best experience!

[H.Walker29 · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this after playing Bloodborne the game, and I wanted more of the “cosmic horror”. This was definitely the right choice. Lovecraft is indeed a master of horror. These stories are so dark and very detailed in the setting. My only complaint is that Lovecraft’s writing style is a bit difficult to read, and he used many obscure words that I had to Google. I would recommend it, though, to any horror fans or, like me, Bloodborne players.

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed it. It's weird, because there's virtually no characterization in his work, his narrative structure nearly always hews very closely to the junior high school essay "tell me what you're going to tell me, tell me, tell me what you just told me" paradigm, and the horrifying twists are easy to see coming from miles away, but his writing is atmospheric enough to make up for all that.

[Jazmyne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Besides Lovecraft's overt racism, the stories are usually pretty well done. Most have that touch of otherworldly terror he is so well known for, and the presence of suspense is spectacular. Some of the stories were okay. Read it over the course of a year so my memories of some of the stories are a little foggy (I admit to skimming some of the stories I wasn't interested in).

[Emily Rose · Rating 4 out of 5]

Never read Lovecraft one story after another. While I totally dig his stories they are rather monotonous when you read so many. The main characters are pretty much all the same person, all doing pretty much the same stuff in one way or another.
It was tedious to finish, but I did and I'm glad.

Lovecraft is good in moderation, not in fifteen stories one after the other :(

[Josh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lovercraft is truly one of the foremost writers of the classic horror stories. He masterfully sets the mood and builds up the tension. Through all of the stories in this book, either my brow or hands perspired. The story telling was so vivid, that I could feel the dread,angst and terror the protagonist of the tales felt. Most certainly will avoid reading before going to bed

[Heather · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection of short stories was very hit or miss. Some of them gripped you and didn't let go until the end, while others just seemed to drag on forever. However, the common element of the cult of Cthulhu was a great one. Definitely worth reading for anyone with a love of sci fi and fantasy.

[Katherine Kingma · Rating 3 out of 5]

CORONAVIRUS READ-A-THON BOOK #1

I am holed up in my aunt and uncle's house for the duration of this thing without much to read, so I've had to consider reading things that I never would have read before. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

[Mystfromthesea · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love the dark places Lovecraft takes the reader. Brilliant writing, and the tales Stay with you. Any true horror fan must read his stories! So many authors have been influenced by his writing.

[Keith]

Having never read any Lovecraft, this book was recommended and loaned to me by a friend. I didn't read the whole book, but read quite a few of the stories to get a good taste of Lovecraft's craft.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

WOW! Why have I never read Lovecraft before?

[Dana · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great collection of marvellous chilling stories.

[Kayleigh · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 Stars

[Juan Albán · Rating 5 out of 5]

terminando de releer uno de mis viejos favoritos.

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lovecraft is an excellent writer, but some of the stories are just too weird. As opposed to the rest which are just the right amount of weird.