Christopher Colton > Recent Status Updates

The Disinternment isn't a bad story, but it feels very similar to a lot of his other stories. Maybe I've just read too many of them now.

Through the Gate of the Silver Key was quite a good story. It builds well upon a lot of his previous work and delivers a more solid ending than some of his shorter pieces.

The end of book five really feels like it was meant to be the conclusion of the series, wrapping up pretty much every extant story thread and putting the characters in a state of "they lived more or less happily ever after." Since there are obviously still five books left, I'm curious where the series will go next.

I can't say I was entirely sold by the first book of Amber, but each successive volume has gripped me more and more. The climax of the fourth was absolutely riveting. So far I actually think it's good reading them all in one collected omnibus; they real feel more like parts of one long book than a series of separate stories.

Medusa's Coil really deserves a longer write-up than this, but in short: This story is extremely effective at building a mounting sense of dread in the background of a surprisingly human story about the relationships between a young man, his new wife, his best friend, and his father. This dread explodes into a shocking climax that then continues to build to a conclusion that can only be described as wildly racist.

Thus far, most of Lovecraft's poetry has been underwhelming. A lot of creepy language that says little, setting scenes and establishing horror in a manner that is simply inferior to his prose. Fact and Fancy, however, is quite good--possibly because it has a clear message and sticks to it.

On the one hand, The Beast in the Cave did an excellent job getting into the mindset of a man who has resolved himself to death (though the reveal at the end was kind of meh). On the other hand, as impressive as The Little Glass Bottle and The Mysterious Ship were for the age at which Lovecraft wrote them, they mostly made me want to just skip the rest of the juvenalia.

The Alchemist wasn't bad. A bit predictable, though not quite in the way I initially thought. I did want it to keep going after the big revelation, though.

What the Moon Brings and Polaris were pretty typical stories, though I favored the latter. The Very Old Folk was also good but made me wonder if Lovecraft had recently read a history of ancient Rome. I'm really not sure what the point of either Ibid or Sweet Ermengarde was. Old Bugs read like a typical Lovecraft story, only it was entirely mundane in nature.

Not much to say about The Unnamable. The White Ship, on the other hand, was an interesting parable about always seeking more that felt very much akin to the Dream Cycle works.

The Transition of Juan Romero is one of theose stories that starts with an interesting premise, builds to a suspenseful middle, and then completely fails to deliver on what it started.

The Tomb was a decent ghost story, if fairly rote compared to some of Lovecraft's other works.

One of the problems with anthologies is that mixed in with the interesting stories are some really dumb ones.

The Thing on the Doorstep was a very good read. Definitely the kind of story Lovecraft does best.

There's an interesting story here, but it's a bit difficult to get through. Much of the book is taken up describing the myriad enlightened philosophies that people live by in Earth's future, which honestly feels a bit pretentious.