The Definitive H.P. Lovecraft: 67 Tales of Horror

by H.P. Lovecraft

This Halcyon Classics ebook contains sixty-seven of celebrated horror and occult writer H.P. Lovecraft's best works central to his 'Cthulhu mythos.'

The Nameless City
The Festival
The Colour out of Space
The Call of Cthulhu
The Dunwich Horror
The Whisperer in Darkness
Dreams in the Witch-house
The Haunter of the Dark
The Shadow over Innsmouth
The Shadow out of Time
At the Mountain of Madness
The Case of Charles Dexter Ward
Azathoth
Beyond the Wall of Sleep
Celephais
Cool Air
Dagon
Dream House
Ex Oblivione
Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family
From Beyond
He
Herbert West: Reanimator
Hypnos
Imprisoned with the Pharaohs
In the Vault
Medusa's Coil
Memory
Nyarlathotep
Pickman's Model
Poetry of the Gods
The Alchemist
The Beast in the Cave
The Book
The Cats of Ulthar
The Crawling Chaos
The Descendant
The Doom That Came to Sarnath
The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath
The Evil Clergyman
The Horror at Martin's Beach
The Horror at Red Hook
The Hound
The Lurking Fear
The Moon Bog
The Music of Erich Zann
The Other Gods
The Outsider
The Picture in the House
The Quest of Iranon
The Rats in the Walls
The Shunned House
The Silver Key
The Statement of Randolph Carter
The Strange High House in the Mist
The Street
The Temple
The Terrible Old Man
The Thing on the Doorstep
The Tomb
The Transition of Juan Romero
The Tree
The Unnamable
The White Ship
Through the Gates of the Silver Key
What the Moon Brings
Polaris
The Very Old Folk
Darkness

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

1449 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 19, 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

[Alejandro · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of the most influential writers of all time!
The general rating is an average sum result of the individual ratings given for each short story in the anthology.
The Nameless City
Rating: *** ( 3 stars )
The journey and finding of a mythical lost city, so ancient that even its name has been lost, but clearly was not built by men, since its inusual architecture wasn’t fit to harbor human beings.
The Festival
Rating: *** ( 3 stars )
It was the Yuletide, that men call Christmas though they know in their hearts it is older than Bethlehem and Babylon, older than Memphis and mankind.
A man comes to a town during Christmas time to visit an old family house and soon discovers that that time of year is ideal for festivities of more than one religion and quite diverse practices.
The Colour Out of Space
Rating: **** ( 4 stars )
An investigator is researching about an incident in Arkham, Mass., named “The Blasted Heath” but that none in the town is willing to talk about in specifics, until he is able to make contact with a farmer living way out of the town, along with his family.
The Call of Cthulhu
Rating: **** (4 stars)
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.
Through a series of “found documents” during three sections in the narrative, it’s slowy revealed how a secret cult, so ancient along with the dawn of men, it was founded to keep memories of some kind of species from the stars who walk the Earth before humankind, and that they retired themselves to the depths of the sea and the core of the planet, but before they pass to the first member of the cult, the promise that Cthulhu, its prophesied priest, someday will born and the cult is waiting, always waiting.
The Dunwich Horror
Rating: ***** ( 5 stars )
This story is set on the fictional town of Dunwich, Mass., near of the also fictional town of the infamous Arkham, Mass.. This is the sad tale of Wilbur Whateley that since his birth was clear that something was too strange about him, growing up in a scary speed, reaching adulthood in just 10 years, and discharging an awful smell around him. Wilbur’s grandfather is entitled to the education of him, both regular learning about the world as well obscure arcanic one. The Whateley Farm encloses a dark secret that nobody must know about if Dunwich may have any chance to keep existing.
The Whisperer in Darkness
Rating: ** ( 2 stars )
This the story about reports of strange things floating in a river, which after that a college professor from Miskatonic University, in Arkham, Mass., started to make a communication through letters with a farmer who claims to know what is happening.
The Dreams in the Witch-House
Rating: **** ( 4 stars )
A student from the Miskatonic University, goes to rent an attic room in a house named as “The Witch House” and known to be cursed. He started to have dreams about geometry, colors and sounds that can’t be described or named in human terms, along with interactions with a witch, compelled to participate in unholy rituals.
The Haunter of the Dark
Rating: *** ( 3 stars )
This tale is about the Church of Starry Wisdom, where a secret society came into the possession of an old item of impossible angles, which is able to show dark knowledge about places beyond imagination but to a too highly cost to pay.
The Shadow Over Innsmouth
Rating: ** ( 2 stars )
A man who is doing a personal research about the lore and architecture of New England’s towns ending at Innsmouth, feeling it as a kind of calling to go there, soon enough he founds that the town is strangely too deserted and those few inhabitants look just not right.
The Shadow Out of Time
Rating: ** ( 2 stars )
This is a novella about a man who doesn’t know if he is becoming mentally ill, since he constantly is having lapses where he watches places and beings totally alien.
At the Mountain of Madness
Rating: *** ( 3 stars )
A Geology Professor from Miskatonic University, leading an expedition to the Antartica where they will find the astonishing remnants of an ancient alien civilization.
The Case of Charles Dexter Ward
Rating: *** ( 3 stars )
Charles Dexter Ward, medically certified insane, who escaped from a mental asylum who is obsessed with an ancestor involved in dark practices.
Azathoth
Rating: ** ( 2 stars )
In a modern world where society doesn’t believe in the paranormal and magic anymore, a man dreams about the stars until a way to reach them it’s presented before him.
Beyond the Wall of Sleep
Rating: *** ( 3 stars )
An insane murderer, with none school formation, is sentenced to a mental institution, and there he is having violent seizures aloing with weird dreams about places and beings that it’s not likely he should even the capability to imagine about.
Celephais
Rating: ** ( 2 stars )
A man dreams about the “city of his dreams” named “Celephais”, where nothing changes unless he wishes to.
Cool Air
Rating: **** ( 4 stars )
This tale is about the peculiar friendship between a cranky person and a medical doctor, shaped up after the latter saved the life of the former.
Dagon
Rating: *** ( 3 stars )
A sailor after an accident at sea, he ended up in some kind of island where there is a monolith used to worship a “sea-god”.
Ex Oblivione
Rating: * ( 1 star)
A man travels through dreams to find the secrets of life and the universe.
Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family
Rating: **** ( 4 stars )
This tale is about Jermyn Family and how this family always felt a calling to visit Africa, specifically the mysterious area of the Belgian Congo about the legend of a lost city.


From Beyond
Rating: *** ( 3 stars )
A scientist made a machine that allows to people to access to a different plane of existence, but the catch is that it works in both ways.
He
Rating: *** ( 3 stars )
A man who was original from the New England country moved to New York City and while he isn’t enjoying there, he meets a strange fellow who talks to him about ancient Native American rituals.
Herbert West: Reanimator
Rating: ***** ( 5 stars )
Herbert West believes that human body is not other than an “organic machine” and therefore, there has to be a way of “re-starting” it when it passed away. Since he was a medical student at Miskatonic University, he allied with the story’s narrator, another fellow medical student, to make secret experiments to make possible the reanimation of a dead person, and those experiments continued once both get their medical degrees and began their private medical practice, and even during their military medical service on World War I. During all those years, having different morbid results on their sinister experiments.
Hypnos
Rating: * ( 1 star )
A man counts his experiences with a stranger that becomes his friend in instant and their travels together in dreams.
Imprisoned with the Pharaohs
Rating: *** ( 3 stars )
This is unusual tale about a trip to Egypt where the character was subjected to be kidnapped and imprisoned inside of a pyramid.
In the Vault
Rating: ***** ( 5 stars )
An undertaker got trapped by accident in the vault assigned to keep the coffins of the deceased ones at winter that due the ground got too hard to cave in, they need to be stored and to wait until spring.
Medusa's Coil
Rating: ** ( 2 stars )
A man is doing some touring in the south of US and ended in a plantation where an old man tells him the sad story of his son and the wife that he brought to there.
Memory
Rating: *** ( 3 stars )
This is a tale set in a non disclosed but evident future, of a place known as the Valley of Nis, where two powerful entities, the Genie that haunts the moonbeams and the Daemon of the Valley, are engaged in a conversation about the identity of those who lived there many time ago.
Nyarlathotep
Rating: * ( 1 star )
A powerful pharaoh returns to life in modern world and he’s showing off his paranormal abilities that the populace consider as mere tricks of some kind.
Pickman's Model
Rating: ***** ( 5 stars )
This tale is about a gifted painter, from Boston, whose paintings possess masterful detailing and astonishing technique, but due the paintings’ topics are about too gruesome and gore scenes, the painter has been expelled from the Boston Art Club, nevertheless a friend of him visit his art studio in lugubrious part of the city.
Poetry of the Gods
Rating: *** ( 3 stars )
Marcia dreams about the Greek gods and there she meets many famous writers and where the Greek gods explained to her the revelant role of poets.
The Alchemist
Rating: *** ( 3 stars )
A family line is cursed by the son of a powerful wizard whom died at hands of an ancestor of that family, since then all member diez when they reached the age of 32 years old, and now the current member of the family is soon to reach that fateful age.
The Beast in the Cave
Rating: *** ( 3 stars )
A man joined a guided tour into a system of caves in the depths of a montain and in a moment, he got lost, soon his torch extinguished and he is all alone in the pitch black ambiance but isn’t so alone as he’d think.
The Book
Rating: ** ( 2 stars )
A man got a strange book from a strange bookseller, and you can bet that strange things started to happen. The story began quite good but it’s hard to give a better rating to something that it was left unfinished.
The Cats of Ulthar
Rating: ***** ( 5 stars )
In town of Ulthar, which is found in the alternate dimension of the Dreamlands, it’s forbidden by law to kill any cat, however, the story tells us why.
The Crawling Chaos
Rating: ** ( 2 stars )
A man went deep in a drug-induced trip, having a pseudo-apocalyptical experience with Heaven’s messengers-like included.
The Descendant
Rating: * ( 1 star )
Three intersected stories having London as common scenario where each mentioned place has a secret meaning or intention.
The Doom That Came to Sarnath
Rating: **** ( 4 stars )
At the great land of Mnar, separated by the river Ai, there were two cities. The inhabitants of those two cities couldn’t be more different, and they will get to know that revenge is one that it’s best served cold.
The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath
Rating: ** ( 2 stars )
Randolph Carter and his quest, taking him through the several places in the Dreamlands, for the mythical city of Kadath that nobody else has been there.
The Evil Clergyman
Rating: **** ( 4 stars )
A man is exploring an ancient house and his guide warns him of staying after dark or touching anything there.
The Horror at Martin's Beach
Rating: **** ( 4 stars )
A fishing boat crew have the battle of their lives against a powerful sea creature, finally killing it. Later, the crucial discovery by marine biologist about the creature will result into something terrible.
The Horror at Red Hook
Rating: ** ( 2 stars )
A police detective accounts the strange case of Robert Suydam and its connection with the neighborhood of Red Hook, Brooklyn.
The Hound
Rating: ***** ( 5 stars )
A creepy team of grave robbers customized their own “grave robber exhibit” and they naively think that the missing piece for their “secret morbid museum” was to go over to the cemetery where was supposedly buried a “famous” grave robber of old times.
The Lurking Fear
Rating: **** ( 4 stars )
A journalist/monster hunter is doing a research about the infamous Martense Family and the rumours about a “lurking fear” in the mountain terrains around the property of the said family.
The Moon-Bog
Rating: ** ( 2 stars )
An Irish-American man goes over Ireland since he inherited an old house in the fictional town of Kilderry. The property includes a mysterious bog.
The Music of Erich Zann
Rating: *** ( 3 stars )
A college student rents an apartment in a strange and creepy part of the city. There, he befriends with Erich Zann, a mute musician, who works in a local orchestra. Each night, Zann plays his strange and quite unique music.
The Other Gods
Rating: *** ( 3 stars )
A prophet, in the company of his apprentice, makes a difficult journey scaling a mountain where is said that the gods of Earth live at the peak of it, however they aren’t alone.
The Outsider
Rating: **** ( 4 stars )
Tthe main character has been living all alone, once he decides to venture into the outer world, soon enough he is face to face with the most hideous monster.
The Picture in the House
Rating: **** ( 4 stars )
A man looks for refuge from an incoming storm in what it seems a deserted house, but it’s indeed inhabited by an old man.
The Quest of Iranon
Rating: *** ( 3 stars )
This is a surreal tale about Iranon, who is a prince looking for his native city of Aira. This is an interesting excercise of mind over matter and the limitless power of the will of believing.
The Rats in the Walls
Rating: **** ( 4 stars )
This a very creepy tale where the last man of the De la Poer Family goes back to England to inherit their ancestral home, Exham Priory, and his bad decision to try to repair it.
The Shunned House
Rating: ***** ( 5 stars )
A man and his uncle, are doing a paranormal research of a house with a very long history of unexplained deaths and illness for the unlucky inhabitants of that house. After doing all the paperwork about the incidents, they are left with no other path than actually go there and pass the night over there.
The Silver Key
Rating: *** ( 3 stars )
Randolph Carter is realizing how while he is growing old, he is beginning to lose his skill to access to the Dreamlands as easy as was before on his youth.
The Statement of Randolph Carter
Rating: **** ( 4 stars )
Once again, Randolph Carter appears in this other story, now with the companionship of Harley Warren, an occultist who seems to have a copy of the infamous Necronomicon. They are investigating the location of paranormal gates supposed to be used by demons to access other dimensions.
The Strange High House in the Mist
Rating: *** ( 3 stars )
There is a strange house at Kingsport, Mass., and while it’s quite difficult to access since it was built in a very high and steep place and the townsfolk are affraid of the house.
The Street
Rating: * ( 1 star )
In this openly racist and paranoid tale, it’s described the fall of certain street of, most likely, Boston, that it was a crucial path for centuries since the foundation of the United States until after World War I where hosted several Russian inmigrant families.
The Temple
Rating: ** ( 2 stars )
This is a tale about an Imperial German Navy U-boat in WWI when its captain and crew meet with the unlucky situation of finding an arcane item.
The Terrible Old Man
Rating: *** ( 3 stars )
The Terrible Old Man is a man so old that nobody remembers him how he looked like when he was young or even what his name is, but everybody at Kingsport know that it’s better to leave him alone. However, a trio of robbers thought that it could be profitable to assault the house.
The Thing on the Doorstep
Rating: ***** ( 5 stars )
Daniel Upton and Edward Derby were best friends, but Upton will have to make hard call for saving Derby.
The Tomb
Rating: * ( 1 star )
An odd tale about a man who becomes obssessed with the mausoleum of a nearby property, where dreams and reality intersect into an uncertain scenario.
The Transition of Juan Romero
Rating: *** ( 3 stars )
Two men, an anonymous narrator and a Mexican named Juan Romero, find an abyss in the depths of a mine where they work.
The Tree
Rating: * ( 1 star )
An odd tale set many centuries in the past at Arcadia, Greece, where the Tyrant of Syracuse organized a contest between two famous sculptors of the región.
The Unnamable
Rating: ** ( 2 stars )
Two men, Carter and Manton are discussing about an entity called “The Unnamable” which is supposed to be impossible to describe, therefore the name, however, they chose poorly to engage into this discussion in a cemetery.
The White Ship
Rating: **** ( 4 stars )
Basil Elton, a lighthouse keeper, engages into a surreal experience where he aboards a white ship, captained by a mysterious bearded man in robes, and following a mysterious bird.
Through the Gates of the Silver Key
Rating: *** ( 3 stars )
It’s organized a meeting to discuss what to do with the estate of Randolph Carter since he dissapeared since quite a while ago. In the middle of the meeting, a mysterious man arrives to inform in detail about the astonishing whereabouts of Randolph Carter.
What the Moon Brings
Rating: ** ( 2 stars )
An unnamed narrator describes his feverish and surreal walk through his garden leading him to impossible places and terrifying creatures.
Polaris
Rating: ** ( 2 stars )
A man, who lives in a swamp, has a recurring dream about a mysterious city where the Polaris star shines above it, but after a while of having the same dream, he begins to wonder about all of it.
The Very Old Folk
Rating: ** ( 2 stars )
Two civilizations, Romans and “The Hill People” have a conflict that involves several deaths around the Sabbath.

[BlackOxford · Rating 4 out of 5]

Down and Out in Lovecraft & Borges

At some point (but not today) I intend to do a review of Borges and Lovecroft together. Not to say anything important but merely to understand how they depend on one another.

I think it is clear that Borges borrowed from Lovecraft. And I think it is just as clear that we read Lovecroft in light of what Borges did with the genre of fantasy/horror. At least a half dozen stories have been identified by readers as ‘cross-overs’ as it were from Lovecroft to Borges.

And it is difficult to conceive of an interpretation of the genre that doesn’t presume the philosophical challenges put by Borges. But I think the influences may be much more widely seen in the detail of the stories.

One obvious connection is the way both authors use the Arabic world, and Islam especially, as a focus for spiritual mystery. Borges admitted to trying to write in the Arabic tradition during a seminar in the 1970's. Lovecraft flirted with Islam in his young adulthood and clearly is familiar with Islamic, particularly Sufi, mythology.

Another connection between the two authors is their use of space in a story to represent spiritual awakening, often in an inverted form: Lovecraft tends downward, inward into the earth and to the South when he enters the realm of the soul, hell, and fear. Perhaps this reflects his New England upbringing and the remnants of Puritan myth. Borges also goes downward but then typically rises upwards and puts his most primitive worlds in the North. Could the swamps and relative wildness of Uruguay and the Ibera Wetlands be a sort of gnostic symbol of earthly chaos directly opposed to Protestant certainties?

Who knows, maybe in my twilight years something will emerge.

[Mala · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kuranes was not modern, and did not think like others who wrote. Whilst they strove to strip from life its embroidered robes of myth and to show in naked ugliness the foul thing that is reality, Kuranes sought for beauty alone. When truth and experience failed to reveal it, he sought it in fancy and illusion, and found it on his very doorstep, amid the nebulous memories of childhood tales and dreams.
– 'Celephais' (562)

So far my only familiarity with H.P. Lovecraft had been via the two Metallica numbers: The Call of Ktulu, & The Thing That Should Not Be. Ktulu & Led Zep's Kashmir had often provided background music to our long summer nights ghost stories sessions back in Calcutta, so I really looked forward to that particular story-- impressive in how convincingly Lovecraft created this mythical world without sounding cheesy/over-the-top! There are here other impressive stories too, 'The Colour Out of Space', for instance; gave me goosebumps with its chilling fatalism & despair. 'The Shadow Over Innsmouth', 'The Strange High House in the Mist', & 'The Dunwich Horror', etc, are some of the outstanding stories here involving myths & dreamscapes.

This collection is for a very specific type of readership: the one hooked on horror & that too classic horror. Familiarity with Poe would help--(Poe was a huge influence on Lovecraft both in terms of style & thematic concerns & is name dropped in the famous 'At the Mountain of Madness', inspired by his only novel Arthur Gordon Pym, in fact, many stories here read like they were written by the earlier master which is not to belittle Lovecraft rather to emphasise the refined nature of his writing - horror enjoying a very low status in terms of genre literature.
Like Poe, Lovecraft's manic energy gives that tightly wound tension that slowly uncoils towards horror & madness & there's the melancholic lyricism & love of the fantastical far off places to carry you through, what's missing is the sexual tension. There's a total absence of sexual content here (no wonder people don't read him!), the stories are so chaste as if they were written by a monk. I looked up his biography--a really sad life.
Lovecraft's fiction is demanding in that the horror is not often spelt out in clear cut terms—it's amorphous & threatening & often emanating from the natural world & the extraterrestrial entities, and the readers are required to bring forth their imagination for filling the gaps. His myth-making is exhaustive ( & exhausting!). The imagery is very striking & would look great in a visual medium. His characters shrink away from "emptiness and horror of reality", & seek refuge in the fantastical. The protagonists are almost always intellectuals: professors, writers, & artists keenly interested in the occult & the paranormal & though I'm no expert on horror & sci-fi, I can confidently say that popular notions of aliens & primeval cults are hugely derivative of Lovecraftian mythos & if they seem beaten to death it's 'cause they are now part & parcel of the regular horror machinery.

My advice to prospective readers is to read these stories really slowly because Lovecraft mainly focuses on mood building & atmospherics, all of which should be savoured in slow doses. I overdosed on them in nearly 11 days but they really need to be read weeks if not months apart. Also, I noticed a recycling of a certain New England setting & a preoccupation with certain themes that is common to many stories here so leads to a sense of déjà vu - spacing the read would help in avoiding that.
This is a fat book - 1113 pages in my reader! At times I wondered should I really continue! but Lovecraft's name frequently came up wrt Vollmann's Last Stories so then I had to check him out.

Here's the breakdown :
Out of the 67 stories, I could only finish reading 57 so far & most of them managed to get 4/3.5/3 stars from me, very few got 2.5 stars. Not a bad average!
Earlier stories are long, sometimes even novella length. From the midpoint, short stories make their appearance - they are good for sampling.
Well then, don't wait till next Halloween to read Lovecraft!
****************
Worth a look:
Fear of the Unknown: Lovecraft Documentary
http://youtu.be/Spoz_1KyZiA

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Nameless City - 5/5
The Festival - 5/5
The Colour out of Space - 5/5
The Call of Cthulhu - 5/5
The Dunwich Horror - 5/3
The Whisperer in Darkness - 5/5
Dreams in the Witch-house - 5/4
The Haunter of the Dark - 5/5
The Shadow over Innsmouth - 5/5
The Shadow out of Time - 5/4
At the Mountains of Madness - 5/4
The Case of Charles Dexter Ward - The last few %s are decent, Lovecraftian stuff (altho not his best), the previous 80% should be cut or seriously compressed. His worst yet. 5/2
Azathoth - Loved it to pieces 5/5
Beyond the Wall of Sleep - 5/4
Celephais - "Whilst they strove to strip from life its embroidered robes of myth and to show in naked ugliness the foul thing that is reality, Kuranes sought for beauty alone." For this sentence alone it deserves an 5/5. Beautiful. Almost like an Oscar Wilde tale.
Cool Air - 5/5
Dagon - 5/5
• Dream House - not in my collection
Ex Oblivione - 5/5
Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family - Funny. 5/3
From Beyond - 5/5
He - 5/4
Herbert West: Reanimator - Reminds me of King's Revival. 5/3
Hypnos - 5/4
Imprisoned with the Pharaohs - 5/3
In the Vault - 5/3
Medusa's Coil - Funny. 5/3
Memory - 5/5
Nyarlathotep - 5/5
Pickman's Model - 5/4
Poetry of the Gods - A female protagonist. That's a first. Not a public transport read. 5/5
The Alchemist - 5/3
The Beast in the Cave - 5/2
The Book - 5/5
The Cats of Ulthar - 5/5
The Crawling Chaos - 5/5
The Descendant - 5/5
The Doom That Came to Sarnath - 5/5
The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath - An old favorite. 5/5
The Evil Clergyman - 5/5
The Horror at Martin's Beach - 5/3
The Horror at Red Hook - 5/4
The Hound - 5/4
The Lurking Fear - 5/3
The Moon Bog - 5/4
The Music of Erich Zann - 5/4
The Other Gods - 5/5
The Outsider - 5/5
The Picture in the House - 5/4
The Quest of Iranon - A thing of beauty and sadness. 5/5
The Rats in the Walls - 5/4
The Shunned House - Rather on the boring side. 5/2
The Silver Key - 5/5
The Statement of Randolph Carter - 5/5
The Strange High House in the Mist - 5/5
The Street - 5/5
The Temple - 5/2
The Terrible Old Man - 5/3
The Thing on the Doorstep - 5/2
The Tomb - 5/3
The Transition of Juan Romero - 5/3
The Tree - 5/3
The Unnamable - 5/3
The White Ship - Another great favorite; so much beauty! 5/5
Through the Gates of the Silver Key - 5/3
What the Moon Brings - 5/4
Polaris - 5/5
The Very Old Folk - Verbose, boring. 5/2
• Darkness - not in my collection

Been a long trip. Loved it (his poetic stories more so than his horror stories), but after almost 2 years and almost 1000 pages I can't help but feel a little
image:

[Fred Warren · Rating 4 out of 5]

Howard Phillips Lovecraft is universally acknowledged as a seminal force in the horror genre—an inspiration for thousands of authors and spinner of nightmares for many more thousands of readers. Every so often, popular culture rediscovers him, and we’re inundated with novels and movies adapted from his mythos—not to mention roleplaying games and plush toys. Horrors from beyond space, demon-spawn, malign antiquarian gods, unspeakable mutations, mad science, lost civilizations (best kept lost), and forbidden tomes of mind-twisting arcana all find their place within Lovecraft’s nightmares. There are slime, gore, and odors most foul, but the well of terror he taps is driven by an overwhelming sense of foreboding—the ponderous weight of doom, the certainty that something awful is about to happen. He’s a master of immersive stage-setting and mood-weaving.

Before picking up this book, I’d read bits and pieces of H.P. Lovecraft’s work, but had never delved into his portfolio of stories in any depth. It took a few months to traverse the serpentine path through the haunted alleyways of Arkham, past shadowed Innsmouth, across the desolate plateau of Leng, into the cursed city of R’yleh and back again, with all manner of strange interludes along the way, but it was well worth it.

There are plenty of Lovecraft compendiums available for bargain prices, but I thought this one, simple and unadorned, was fine, and it was one of the largest collections available in a single volume. 67 stories, nothing but the text, straight to my e-reader, with everything else supplied by the author’s ornate prose and my imagination. Believe me, that was more than enough.

Halcyon Classics e-book for Nook, published June, 2009. 1096 pages.

[Ryan Jung · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'll give three stars to the stories themselves, which range in quality from very boring to eerie and frightening. Lovecraft clearly works best in the short story format. Once a story starts exceeding 50 pages or so, he waxes masturbatory, describing things in such florid detail that it becomes boring to read. Nobody wants to read 30 straight pages of someone deciphering murals. On the other hand, his extremely short fiction (some stories run only 2-3 pages) really showcases the deficit in character, dialogue, and plot that most of his stories suffer from.

In all of these stories, I never once felt personally connected to any of the characters. They're all very flat, static people with almost no personality. They could all be Lovecraft himself, as far as I'm concerned. And so I don't particularly care when they get mauled by monsters. The monsters are less scary for this.

Still, it's clear to see where other (better) horror writers like Stephen King and Clive Barker get some of their inspiration. King's small towns read a lot like fleshed out versions of Lovecraft's New England hamlets. Barker's monsters feel like more manifest versions of Lovecraft's horrors from the infinite.

Lovecraft's mythos is still pretty great, and he even offers us as close to a scientific explanation as we'll ever get for it at the tail end of his Randolph Carter tract, the story "Through the Gates of the Silver Key". Despite not exactly loving this material, I can definitely understand the inspiration to build other things out of this mythos. In addition to the writings of those so inspired, there's also a tabletop roleplaying game, "Call of Cthulu," that revolves around investigators discovering the secrets of the occult, and this is just about the perfect application of Lovecraft's work.

I could have done without the rampant racism, which goes a bit beyond what you could cover with an excuse like "It was a different time..." It's just not cool with me, and he rather frequently exposed his own white nationalism through his writings in very blatant, jarring ways.

In the end, I also have to take a point away because this collection itself and the ebook format of it is really poorly done. I suspect this book was thrown together to try and make a quick buck off Lovecraft's public domain works. The stories are mostly in alphabetical order, which is not the right way to present this kind of material that builds on itself. "The Silver Key" absolutely should be presented before "The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath" since they center around the same protagonist, but "Dream Quest" assumes you're familiar with the Randolph Carter character who is described better in "Key". "Key" also establishes the notion of dream travel, which "Dream Quest" also assumes you've got some understanding of. Furthermore, the table of contents is incomplete, not listing about 15 or so stories, and there are a number of apparent OCR errors. Sometimes hyphens are used to offset narrative interjections, and sometimes it's a double-dash. Sometimes double-dashes are used mid--word where a hyphen would be appropriate. Misspellings abound. Really poor, cheap production.

[Joseph Rodgers · Rating 5 out of 5]

You can buy Lovecraft's complete works through Barne's and Noble's for 12 dollars! Don't buy a more expensive edition.

Inspired by Edgar Allan Poe and a few "weird fiction" H.P Lovecraft created a body of work that would turn out to be one of the most influential in the horror genre if not popular fiction. Throughout his extensive collection of short stories Lovecraft creates cerebral tales of terror that contain both subtle and graphic horror (The Horror at Red Hook).

These stories are an absolute must for any horror or pulp fan. Most often the narrator of his stories is a middle-upper class white who is well educated. This creates an interesting bias, but it also creates an excuse for the main protagonist to be digging through dusty tomes of magic rites as they are so often found doing.

Although Lovecraft's work does not read formulaic there are certain elements that tie most of his stories together. Amongst these themes are the search for forbidden knowledge, and the fragility of the human psyche. Another theme is that cosmic or otherwise incomprehensible entities often times shatter the psyches of fragile humans who find forbidden knowledge.

Lovecraft's stories have a logical narrative, but other than the stories with Randolph Carter there is very little human drama or character development.

Even in the 1920's Lovecraft knew his market however and his stories are chock-full of the genre's money-maker... monsters! These monsters are cool! Really, really cool! In such stories as "the Shunned House" (vampire), and "Under the Pyramids" (the Sphinx) Lovecraft twists classical monsters into his own strange vision.

More often than not these stories have creatures that first appeared in these pages and have appeared in many more since then. Lovecraft created a template for a form of creature than can be described mildly as having an aberrant anatomy/physiology. Usually these creatures are either space aliens, extra-dimensional beings, or creatures spawned in the world of dreams.

Lovecraft's abominations are very surreal, the human senses can comprehend them in a sane state of mind. It is usually through contact with forbidden lore, or forbidden science that the helpless antagonists first get a taste of what exists beyond. After having received a taste the characters become obsessed by the energy or beings, a common theme dating back to Medieval mythology.

H.P Lovecraft never trade-marked any of his creatures and he encouraged his friends to use any of his entities by name or appearance in their personal writing. Since then many have written about Lovecraft's characters. Some of Lovecraft's fans organized pantheons and mythologies for the more powerful and godlike beasts after Lovecraft's death. These entities such as Cthulhu, Azathoth, and Nyarlathotep have made appearances in everything from Stephen King stories to the cartoon South Park.

[Rob Mason]

R = read

R• The Nameless City
R The Festival
R• The Colour out of Space
R• The Call of Cthulhu
R• The Dunwich Horror
R The Whisperer in Darkness
• Dreams in the Witch-house
• The Haunter of the Dark
• The Shadow over Innsmouth
• The Shadow out of Time
• At the Mountain of Madness
• The Case of Charles Dexter Ward
• Azathoth
• Beyond the Wall of Sleep
• Celephais
• Cool Air
• Dagon
• Dream House
• Ex Oblivione
• Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family
• From Beyond
• He
• Herbert West: Reanimator
• Hypnos
• Imprisoned with the Pharaohs
• In the Vault
• Medusa's Coil
• Memory
• Nyarlathotep
• Pickman's Model
• Poetry of the Gods
• The Alchemist
• The Beast in the Cave
• The Book
• The Cats of Ulthar
• The Crawling Chaos
• The Descendant
• The Doom That Came to Sarnath
• The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath
• The Evil Clergyman
• The Horror at Martin's Beach
• The Horror at Red Hook
• The Hound
• The Lurking Fear
• The Moon Bog
• The Music of Erich Zann
• The Other Gods
• The Outsider
• The Picture in the House
• The Quest of Iranon
• The Rats in the Walls
• The Shunned House
• The Silver Key
• The Statement of Randolph Carter
• The Strange High House in the Mist
• The Street
• The Temple
• The Terrible Old Man
• The Thing on the Doorstep
• The Tomb
• The Transition of Juan Romero
• The Tree
• The Unnamable
• The White Ship
• Through the Gates of the Silver Key
• What the Moon Brings
• Polaris
• The Very Old Folk
• Darkness

On The Colour Out Of Space - Just a fantastic story. It gives a good feel for the contrast of thinking those people are crazy versus something evil is out there. It becomes clear to me how much of standard horror/suspense settings and themes are descended from Lovecraft. I must have seen a hundred movies in which the thing from outer space is glowing with a mysterious phosphorous color. I also liked how Lovecraft specifically dealt with the issue of "why didn't they just leave?" One thought question, is the "organism" evil or is it just surviving? Is it aware of the cost of earthly life (or mental ability?)?

[Fabian Scherschel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book cover-to-cover which is probably not advisable since the alphabetic layout of the stories suggests one should rather pick one story at the time. However, it is not clear what criteria would be best to use in that case and I would've enjoyed this book much more if the works were layed out in chronological order. That being said, this seems to be a very representative collection of Lovecraft's works and I've enjoyed reading them very much. As can be expected with such a prolific writer, quality, content and also length of the stories varies greatly and since almost all of them were written to be published separately in magazines, there's also some repetition of themes, names etc. -- this generally doesn't diminish the literary quality, though.

As I've mentioned before, I do not regard Lovecraft as a horror writer, his stories are actually much more of the fantastic adventure story genre, some I'd even categorise as investigative fiction (albeit with a macabre touch, of course). I read most of this book at night before going to bed and it very rarely gave me more than those very slight creeps that are actually quite enjoyable. I think you will enjoy this book, no matter if you've read and enjoyed Lovecraft before or if you're just wondering what all the fuss is about. In either case, it provides a comprehensive collection of the man's best stories including all the classics like Call of Cthulhu -- and Lovecraft is such a staple of modern pop and especially geek culture that everyone should have read at least some of his best stories.

[Caseyazalea · Rating 3 out of 5]

Took over a year of reading this off and on to get through all these stories. Rolling my eyes at the wordiness at times, hissing and cringing at the racism frequently, but I did enjoy a lot of the stories. I especially like the way H.P. manages to describe the indescribable, the shifting, slippery, sensory confusion of dreams and dream-worlds. And as a native New Englander myself, I appreciate his love of our quaint and odd little corner of the world. The shocking twists often didn't live up to the build up within the stories, but there's a lot of good, creepy atmosphere to make up for that.

I'm actually not a big fan of horror. After many years of being confused by references to Cthulu and Herbert West and other Lovecraftian lore in popular culture, I finally decided to read Lovecraft because of Jordan L. Hawk's Whyborne & Griffin series. She refers to a lot of Loveraftian lore and tropes in the Widdershins books - taking some of his horrors to a whole new level in some cases, and subverting them beautifully in others. And I have to say, I like her take on Lovecraft better than I like a lot of Lovecraft himself. I'm glad I finally read all these stories, though and there are one or two I might actually read again someday.

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

HP Lovecraft is not a writer for everyone. His tales are rightly described as horror stories, but they are often quite obtuse in their language, and in many respects this lessens the horror aspects of the stories being told.

If you want to read a whole collection of stories that talk obliquely about nameless horrors who are indescribable in their appearance and beyond comprehension, then Lovecraft is your man. And reading on a Kindle means that when he throws in some arcane word which fell out of use in the 1800s you can look it up easily.

A whole compendium of stories is perhaps a bit much. It also underlines the fact that many of the stories are very similar in nature. But there are some real treasures in this collection, and if you open yourself up to enjoying these stories and engage your full imaginative engine then the stories are interesting and will stay with you into the future.

Just don't expect a James Herbert or Stephen King.

[Reid · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lovecraft's prose is masterful, though at times repetitive with his (albeit vast) word choices. Sometimes he cops out with "unimaginable" things to avoid describing them, or things "unable to comprehend." But his situations are truly horrific, and highlight occurrences or beasts or people that could rightly drive one to madness. Great study in creating atmosphere and horror situations.

His dialogue is, in general, awful. And there are a few racist overtones that crop up in random places. Luckily there is very little dialogue in his pieces (which is a very odd thing for me to praise).

As most of his pieces are short, they are great to take bites of as time allows. Quite enjoyable on the whole.

[Andy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this on and off for more than two years and really was hoping to finish it by Halloween. H.P. Lovecraft is like The Velvet Underground of horror and fantasy fiction - not necessarily commercially successful but influenced countless others, including Stephen King and George RR Martin not to mention filmmakers like John Carpenter and James Cameron. This collection is a mixed bag to say the least but at 67 stories is incredibly comprehensive. Purchased for $.99 on my Kindle, I would highly recommend if you are interested even in sampling Lovecraft's work.

[Jess Lane · Rating 2 out of 5]

The rating I am giving isn't for the whole book but for the single story At The Mountain of Madness which I read because it was on the list 1001 books to read before you die.

[Daniel DeLappe · Rating 5 out of 5]

At the Mountain of Madness. The Dunwich Horror. Herbert West Reanimator. To many great stories to name. This is a great collection of Lovecraft at his best.

[K.S. Trenten · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve often contemplated that science fiction and horror struck me as being sides of the same coin. Both ask a question, the same question, when confronting the unknown.

What is that?

Science fiction asks it with a voice hushed with wonder. Horror cries it in a tone trembling with terror.

H.P. Lovecraft falls into the latter, although the reader can detect traces of the wonder (in some stories more than others) Fear dominates 99% of his tales. This fear increases with the madness of the source of the narrator’s fear coming closer and closer.

99% of the time this narrator is male. Only was she female and she stood out in being one of the few who discovered wonder rather than terror in her narrative.

In this collection of Lovecraft’s works, readers will find the mythos which made him famous, spawning a roleplaying game and other forms of entertainment. You can also find a dark anti-romance which Lovecrafts tells in varied forms, Boy Meets House.

A boy or a young man of peculiar and/or melancholy temperament finds himself drawn to an ancient, sinister dwelling. Often he has a family or some mysterious connection to the place. The young man finds himself consumed by a fearful fascination for the dwelling in question, which is equal parts revulsion. The young man can sense the house is evil, yet he cannot stay away. He comes back to the building, again and again, its mystery and horror consuming his entire existence. Eventually, he confronts the source of the mystery, the heart of the house. The young man reaches the climax of his terror. He goes mad, hanging to the scraps of his sanity as best he can. How much of an escape he makes varies. He never gets away completely. He’s never completely sane again (not that he was usually completely sane to begin with) He lives in a violated state of knowing what’s waiting for him in that dwelling, not knowing when it will catch him or someone else again.

This particular story played out again and again in varied tales by Lovecraft. I now find myself looking for it in other people’s stories, elements of this particular theme. One of the reasons I find Stephen King’s ‘Salem’s Lot so fascinating is the Lovecraftian element of Boy Meets House in Ben Mears’s relationship with the Marsten House. Take a look at David Soul’s face at the beginning of the 1970s movie version of ‘Salem’s Lot. You can see the emotions of the many Lovecraftian narrators playing across his face when he looks up at Marsten House in the scene right after the credits roll.

Lovecraft created a horror archetype in Boy Meets House along with his own mythos. He channeled these into many of the compelling stories gather here, allowing us to peer into the nightmare landscapes of his narrator’s minds or those close to them.

It can be a narrow, limited picture. Diverse segments of humanity are neglected, misunderstood, or kept at a distance from this picture. When they’re mentioned, the way in which they were addressed often bothered me. At the same time, these narratives were highly focused perspectives into the mental state of those who related them. Telling words were frequently used, muddying the picture readers might have formed of what was happening. The same telling words, however, increased the mystery, allowing the readers’s own imaginations to supply whatever terror they wished to fill the blanks.

For breaking new ground in horror, creating a mythos, and pouring countless narratives into an archetype which took different shapes, checked by the limitations which sometimes held these stories back, this gets four stars.

[Jeremy Schofield · Rating 5 out of 5]

About once a year, I take a reading tour through the "founders" of the genres I write in. For Fantasy I tend to re-read The Lord of the Rings. For Science Fiction I will work my way through a few works by Heinlein or Asimov. (Though I will occasionally read Anne McCaffery's "Pern" novels in place of either Fantasy or Sci-Fi.)

And, for Horror, I read H.P. Lovecraft.

I tended to avoid horror when I was younger, simply because I had no taste for "splatter" - descriptive violence in place of thoughtful writing. Then, in my Junior year in High School, I was introduced to a short story by an English Teacher. I read "The Rats In The Walls" for the first time, and my whole outlook on horror was changed forever.

After that, (and every year since) I devoured every piece of fiction that Lovecraft created. Here there were no chainsaw massacres, no knife-fingered demons, no hockey-mask-clad mass murderers. Instead, these were stories of normal human minds being slowly deconstructed as they were exposed to horrible truths about themselves and their place in the cosmos. It was from Lovecraft that I first learned the inklings of mental atmosphere as a valid component of horror writing.

One did not require a haunted house or a foggy abandoned moor to be terrified. One could be terrified by the perceptions of things that no one else could perceive ("The Thing On The Doorstep" is a perfect example.)

But Lovecraft could also create a terrifying physical atmosphere as well. From the crumbling farmlands of "The Colour Out of Space" to the all-time creepiest-cities-ever of Innsmouth and Arkham, his characters were not waiting for something to jump out from behind the bushes or between the buildings to frighten them. No, the bushes and buildings themselves were terrifying: vistas of wrongness, harboring ancient dark secrets leading only to madness. The Universe was a dark and forbidding place, not to be explored by frail and tiny minds such as our own.

Though literary analysis has not been kind to Lovecraft's personal racist and misogynist beliefs, his writing still remains beyond par for those who have any interest in Horror, and his "Cthulhu Mythos" generates excellent stories by world-class authors to this day. Anyone with the slightest interest in psychological horror, or curious about one of the founding fathers of the field of Horror writing, should take the time to read this compendium of Lovecraft's best works.

Just be prepared to sleep poorly, with the lights on, after putting the book down.

[Carter · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection took me on a thrilling journey. Some stories immersed me so deeply that I felt like I was experiencing the horrors alongside the characters, while others compelled me to set down the book from sheer boredom.

Lovecraft's storytelling is unlike anything I've encountered in horror literature before. His vivid portrayal of unimaginable terrors and pervasive sense of dread simultaneously piqued my curiosity, repulsed me, and kept me entertained—an intriguing blend of emotions indeed. I would recommend this read to those who enjoy prolonged suspense and an overall sombre and unsettling atmosphere.

I will be rereading this at some later date with a copy of
The New Annotated H. P. Lovecraft at my side as I feel that there are many aspects of Lovecraft's tales that I failed to understand.

[Lesley Anne · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm glad the title wasn't "The Definitive H.P Lovecraft: 67 GREAT Tales of Horror", because that would be false. Amongst this tome, there are a solid 8 great stories, the rest are a mixed bag of very good, good and downright terrible. But, that does not change my admiration for this collection of works. The great stories are epic and classic, and you will find a lot of modern horror tales will take inspiration from Lovecraft. People don't lift from a hack. His best is quite literally The Best.

P.S This read took me 7 years to complete, on and off. Take from this what you will.

[Delvina Greig · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pros: Lovecraft creates a world full of Elder Gods, dreams, and creatures that most of humanity isn't aware of. Not as lyrical as Poe but still in the same gothic style. Cons: Immensely racist. Some would argue that it was the time he lived in but he's far more overt about this than many authors of his time. So if you can grit your teeth, I say read the highlights and skip the rest.

[Gary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading this collection gave me a deeper perspective on the range and peculiarities of Lovecraft's interests (such as architecture and tectonics). The collection would have been better arranged chronologically. Nonetheless, was both sad and satisfied to read all of these weird tales from a weird pioneer.

[Alex Hughes · Rating 5 out of 5]

HP Lovecraft at his best.

Give it a read, sometimes the English is hard but worth sticking with too the end. It is worth it.

[Long Williams · Rating 3 out of 5]

67 Stories, some good, most average, some meh. Author was definitely fixated on aliens on Earth before mankind and contact via dreams. Got very repetitive after the 50th story.

[Craig Morland · Rating 4 out of 5]

His best stories are unbelievably good, the worst very meh. But I cannot get enough weird fiction

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must read for those who enjoy the horror genre.

[Samantha · Rating 1 out of 5]

I've always wanted to read H.P. Lovecraft having heard so many references to his work over the years, and I know his stories have influenced countless authors and filmmakers.

The stories are often set in remote rural areas or villages where the structures are archaic the countryside slowly encroaching and the presence of hideous malevolent creatures interconnects with the narrator's ancestors, ancient folklore and alien visitations. Efforts are often made to investigate via scholarly study the phenomena but the evidence often mysteriously disappears (how X-Files like) . Or long journeys are undertaken in dreams. Many of the stories feature the same characters and places and depict man's dissatisfaction and insatiable curiosity for the unknown and a better life.

Unfortunately what often came across was that Lovecraft was quite clearly a racist which is shown in his physical and cultural descriptions of any people's who are of a different ethnic background or appearance which does make it an uncomfortable read at times.

For me I feel the stories have not stood the test of time, aside from the racism, the archaic language and sentence structure is difficult to read and understand at times. The stories are often too similar, hard to relate to and lose yourself in and, therefore, to feel the horror he is trying to evoke. I wondered if Lovecraft smoked a lot of weed but apparently he suffered from vivid nightmares as so many of his narratives are truly bizarre, disturbing and other worldly.

Lovecraft is not for the casual reader more now for those studying literature or have an interest in Lovecraft's influence.

[Jon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading stories from this collection between other books.

I'll review as I go:

"The Colour out of Space" brings to mind many a Stephen King story and book as you can certainly tell how King was influenced by Lovecraft. It's the unexplainable in the most banal settings or the tales of monsters from the deepest, uncharted forests.

"The Call of Cthulhu" was epic as I had been led to expect from the Metallica songs written about it ("The Thing That Should Not Be" and "The Call of Kthulu").

It occurs to me that the plot of the "The Dunwich Horror," plays out a little like "Jaws." The first part of the story is more horror as the narrattor details the strange and horrifying tale of the Whateley family. Then the second part of the story is more action-adventure as a band hunts down the creature.

The "Whisperer in Darkness" started with a bang for me with the opening lines: "Bear in mind closely that I did not see any actual visual horror at the end. To say that a mental shock was the cause of what I inferred—that last straw which sent me racing out of the lonely Akeley farmhouse and through the wild domed hills of Vermont in a commandeered motor at night—is to ignore the plainest facts of my final experience." -- What a way to start a story. Pulled me in. Then the letters format for filling in the backstory is great. But the ending was kind of a letdown. Not bad, just not as slam bang as the start.

[Shawn · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's Lovecraft. If you read horror, that's enough, you know what I'm talking about. If you don't, then you probably won't like it anyway. I don't know what I can add to a review of Lovecraft that could possibly be original, except what I, personally like. I like his mythology. I like his subtle way of warping the normal to make you uncomfortable. I like how he mentions things in passing that are ominous as all hell but rarely elaborates, instead leaving it up to your imagination to fill in the gaps. And, even if I hated everything else about the man, I love his names for things.
The man has had a direct influence on anyone who ever wanted to tell a spooky story, and their's a reason for that. He was one of the best. If, someway, somehow, you've decided to write spook stories but haven't read any Lovecraft, then stop. Stop right now, get this book, and read it from beginning to end. It can't hurt and it will probably help.

[Yury · Rating 1 out of 5]

It's well written and perhaps it's a classic and in some places it is scary indeed, a bit on disgusting side of scary. But it all seems pointless.

Perhaps Stephen Kings learned something from Lovecraft, but he also learned one important thing elsewhere. Literature must be about people.

In King's stories the evil nearly always comes from the people. Even the nameless monsters feed on people's evil deeds. And then there are King's heroes, people who fight this evil.

In Lovecraft's stories the evil comes from another world, it has nothing to do with the people. And there isn't 'good' as no one really fights the evil. People just die or live to tell their stories.

I put it down after reading 4 or 5 stories. Ctulhu was actually the most disappointing.

[Clay Scott Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read these stories one by one for about 7 or 8 months. I'd read Lovecraft in high school but had never read all of his work. I sure was happy to read them all, I didn't realize the scope of his talent until I did so.

I saw right away that you'd have to actually read all of Lovecraft to really understand where 'he was coming from' if those are the right words. I don't think he is recognized on a larger scale... I see that even his admirers are reading from a perspective that is the usual.

Essential reading are these.