Bobby Luke’s Reviews > The Complete Cthulhu Mythos Tales > Status Update

“The Haunter in the Dark” - Pretty good way to end this collection. Short, scary, and interesting.

“The Shadow out of Time” - It was interesting, but overly long for what happens and what is revealed. The ending was gripping, but ultimately didn’t pay off as much as I would have liked.

“The Tree on the Hill” - Short, doesn’t reveal very much. Interesting, but pales in comparison to the other stories that came before it, especially the fantastic ones that I have just previously read.

“Out of the Aeons” - Great story, but found myself frustrated that all of the cultists that attempted things in the museum were foreigners. Giving HPL a bit of the benefit of the doubt in that these stories were written in a different time, and he has bordered on racism in some of the other tales, but this one felt much more blatant and outright. I also wish they would have tried giving it the true scroll.

“The Thing on the Doorstep” - Very scary. Also glad that this collection had us read The Shadow Over Innsmouth prior to this, helped immensely to understand what was going on and how it was connected to the larger mythos. I did find myself wishing there was more at the end of the story - lot of things left up in the air.

“The Horror in the Museum” - A bit more classical horror, centered around a Lovecraftian entity. Rhan-Tegoth was scary! Interestingly, this story came out the same year that “Mystery of the Wax Museum” hit theaters (1933), making it one of the two earliest “wax museum” horror stories (at least according to the bit of digging that I have done).

“The Man of Stone” - Fun little story (as fun as Lovecraftian horror gets anyway), I enjoyed it - especially that the one character gets revenge in the end.

“The Dreams in the Witch House” - For some reason the title alone of this one had me scared, though it didn’t turn out near as scary as where my imagination had taken me. The character of Brown Jenkins was a little weird to me, but I did enjoy the story tying the Cthulhu Mythos to witchcraft from the 1600s, and also that there was an obvious effect of the crucifix on the evil characters.

“At the Mountains of Madness” - Ended well, and I enjoyed all of the history and detail of Lovecraft’s world that the story gives us. That being said - this story drug out unnecessarily (narrator just needed to get to the point instead of constantly telling us how bad what he was going to tell us was)and because of that thus far it is my least favorite of the stories.

“The Mound” - like a spooky version of the lost city of El Dorado, with a little Pocahontas mixed in. Was a nice change of pace.