Reviews

An H.P. Lovecraft Collection: Hideous Tales of Horror and the Macabre - by H.P. Lovecraft

marmarci's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? N/A
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

4.0

Nos encontramos ante una cantidad importante de relatos de Lovecraft, ordenados cronológicamente, lo que me ha parecido particularmente interesante, ya que veremos como se va fraguando su estilo y asomando el universo de dioses primigenios y horror cósmico que crea. 

Entre los primeros relatos, resalto particularmente "El Alqimista" (muy atmosférico) y "La dulce Ermengarde" (una sátira a historias de amor campestre en clave de humor que es de lo más divertida).

Los siguientes relatos que me encantaron (sin desmerecer a los que hay de por medias, pero quiero ser breve con esta reseña) fueron, sin lugar a dudas, "La maldición que cayó sobre Sarnath", "El testimonio de Randolph Carter" (en general el ciclo de este personaje me está gustando mucho) y "El viejo terrible". 

Mención especial a "Los gatos de Ulthar" (porque: gatos), "La ciudad sin nombre" y "Herbert West, reanimador". 

En el último tirón del libro, destaco sobradamente "El sabueso" (muy, muy bueno), "Él" (ídem), "En la cripta" (con un toque de humor negro muy bien llevado). 

Para la recta final: "La llamada de Cthulhu" (Cómo no), "El modelo de Pickman", "La extraña casa elevada entre la niebla" (me encantó, pero mucho).

Y ya para rematar, un libro corto más que relato largo: "La búsqueda en sueños de la ignota Kadath". En este caso, lo que más me llamó la atención es que estamos ante una historia de fantasía oscura, con protagonismo onírico, con la estructura de "la misión del héroe" o "quest". Acompañaremos a Randolph Carter en su búsqueda, durante la cual nos encontraremos con viejos conocidos de otros relatos de Lovecraft (incluidos los gatos de Ulthar, lo que me hizo muy feliz), creando así un hilo conductor entre relatos antiguos y el presente, dando una forma más definida (dentro de lo que se puede definir el mundo de horror cósmico de Lovecraft) al universo que nos presenta el autor con sus monstruos de pesadilla. Es una aventura, pero en un mundo lleno de monstruos, peligros, secretos, dioses y abismos. 

Lo he alargado en el tiempo, leyendo un relato aquí otro allá, y creo que la experiencia merece la pena. Del segundo volumen habré leído unos cuantos ya en otras ocasiones, pero también lo leeré para terminar con la narrativa completa del autor. 

abogges1's review against another edition

challenging dark mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.25

krobart's review against another edition

3.0

See my review here:

https://whatmeread.wordpress.com/2020/07/20/review-1531-the-new-annotated-h-p-lovecraft-beyond-arkham/

williamthekilpatrick's review against another edition

5.0

Ignore the chronologically early stuff, most of it isn’t that entertaining. The way I recommend to read this book is to skip to stories you’ve heard of or are interested in and only read those. Not even story is interesting, frankly.

ishara's review against another edition

I just can't anymore, the writing is not for me.

mandarinis's review against another edition

dark slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

2.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Misogyny, Slavery, Racism, Sexism, Murder, Death, Classism, Islamophobia, Racial slurs, Violence, Vomit, Xenophobia, and War

candid_ape's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional informative mysterious tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.75

weechito's review against another edition

4.0

Don’t get me wrong: there are some great stories here. The Cthulhu Mythos is one of the great supernatural concepts I literature. And when Lovecraft does a story well, he REALLY does it well. But then there are the hundreds of pages of stories that feel like they’re just recycling plots and ideas from other stories. Four stars feels fair: I acknowledge the importance to horror fiction but recognize that this isn’t a flawless body of work.

jellygh0st's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious reflective sad tense

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.75

See, it's hard to review because it's mostly pure aesthetic. Not from its writing, no, the act of reading it is purely aesthetic. There's something to be gained from it, for sure, but most of us approaching this work already know the vast majority of what there is to know about it - and that is its aesthetic. Actually reading it is gratuitous, even when it's valuable, just so you can make a check mark in your mind and recall that you did, in fact, read the classic horror thing. That's not to say it's bad, often it's inspiring and I still take influences from many of the stories in my own work, but it's not like... substantial in the way you'd want it to be when compared to other important works of horror.

klbailey's review against another edition

dark mysterious slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.0

If you can stand to read over a thousand pages of blatant racism you’ll realize there’s mainly boredom surrounding the mystery and horror…he left a lot of the stories as cliff hangers but none of them made me want to listen to more, honestly it was hard to get through and I only did it out of stubborn determination and I wish I hadn’t wasted the time it took. Why he’s a literary classic and constantly talked about is beyond me but hey if you like a dozen different ways to poorly describe poc have at it