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Reviews tagging 'Racial slurs'
Necronomicon: The Best Weird Tales by Les Edwards, Stephen Jones, H.P. Lovecraft
2 reviews
rmgmorrow's review against another edition
I've been trying to get a primer on the history of cosmic horror but this man's racism is making me hostile to the act of reading in general. I thought I was going to be able to get through it after I got past the cat, but the accumulated weight of idiocy broke me.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racism and Racial slurs
billyjepma's review against another edition
dark
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
I've loved "Lovecraftian" horror for a while, but until now have never waded into Lovecraft's original work, and I felt like it was time I do so. And it went about as well as I expected! Lovecraft is a horrible racist who paints POC as the villains almost as often as he does otherworldly creatures. His stories center around "otherness," and when it's framed around the unseen and untold horrors humanity skirts up against––often as a result of their own hubris––it's riveting, terrifying stuff. There's a gruesome underbelly to Lovecraft's characters and settings that are timelessly enticing, luring you in with dark secrets and shadowy horrors. It's not difficult to see why Lovecraft's work created a genre almost entirely its own.
But at least half of the 19 short stories in this collection are steeped in racist ideals, which unintentionally cast the protagonists as even fouler figures. I'm all for morally fucked up protagonists, but the level of racism was as bad as I expected and sometimes even worse. It made listening to these stories difficult, to say the least.
On top of that, Lovecraft's writing is often repetitive in theme, style, and language, and few of his stories come off as being well-written. The plots may be well-conceived, and Lovecraft's horrible imagination lived up to the legacy it's left behind, but the writing wavers. It's never downright "bad" and sometimes strikes gold, but more often than not, it's just unremarkable.
Honestly, the best part about these stories is that none of the "heroes" aren't heroes at all. Every narrator sounds nearly identical––they're all arrogant, privileged men (mostly academics with some semblance of fame or renown) with varying degrees of a god-complex that inevitably results in their exposure to terrors out of this world. It's gratifying to find that Lovecraft projects a lot of himself into these men, unintentionally outing himself as just as vile and self-obsessed as the victims of his stories are.
The production value and voice-work of this collection are superb, though. Having these stories read to me surely enhanced my experience with them, as it made me like I was seated around a campfire, partaking in some late-night spooky stories. I don't regret undertaking this 20+ hour audiobook, but I don't think I'd recommend it, either. There are good parts to Lovecraft's fiction, at least in the stories included here, but so many modern and contemporary writers have translated Lovecraft's ideas in far better and more effective ways than he ever did.
But at least half of the 19 short stories in this collection are steeped in racist ideals, which unintentionally cast the protagonists as even fouler figures. I'm all for morally fucked up protagonists, but the level of racism was as bad as I expected and sometimes even worse. It made listening to these stories difficult, to say the least.
On top of that, Lovecraft's writing is often repetitive in theme, style, and language, and few of his stories come off as being well-written. The plots may be well-conceived, and Lovecraft's horrible imagination lived up to the legacy it's left behind, but the writing wavers. It's never downright "bad" and sometimes strikes gold, but more often than not, it's just unremarkable.
Honestly, the best part about these stories is that none of the "heroes" aren't heroes at all. Every narrator sounds nearly identical––they're all arrogant, privileged men (mostly academics with some semblance of fame or renown) with varying degrees of a god-complex that inevitably results in their exposure to terrors out of this world. It's gratifying to find that Lovecraft projects a lot of himself into these men, unintentionally outing himself as just as vile and self-obsessed as the victims of his stories are.
The production value and voice-work of this collection are superb, though. Having these stories read to me surely enhanced my experience with them, as it made me like I was seated around a campfire, partaking in some late-night spooky stories. I don't regret undertaking this 20+ hour audiobook, but I don't think I'd recommend it, either. There are good parts to Lovecraft's fiction, at least in the stories included here, but so many modern and contemporary writers have translated Lovecraft's ideas in far better and more effective ways than he ever did.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racial slurs, Racism, and Xenophobia
Moderate: Ableism and Misogyny
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