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draiochta's review against another edition
challenging
dark
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
4.0
katieinca's review against another edition
3.0
4 stars for the selection here - if you've never read any Lovecraft and want a good primer in Lovecraft-y-ness, this covers a wide range of time, and has the stories you've heard people refer to most often. I could have used better supplementary material.
2 stars for the work itself. I am never going to be a Lovecraft fan. Maybe it's coming to it in 2013, familiar with different things than a reader of his time would have been. Maybe it's the casual racism. Maybe it's the overwrought prose. Maybe it's the feeling that he's getting paid by the word, and needs every penny. I trudged through most of these - The Shadow Over Innsmouth was my favorite and even that could have been half as long - and won't be looking for more.
Favorite part: an essay on writing at the end, from the man himself, including the instruction "Remove all possible superfluities - words, sentences, paragraphs, or whole episodes or elements." Right.
2 stars for the work itself. I am never going to be a Lovecraft fan. Maybe it's coming to it in 2013, familiar with different things than a reader of his time would have been. Maybe it's the casual racism. Maybe it's the overwrought prose. Maybe it's the feeling that he's getting paid by the word, and needs every penny. I trudged through most of these - The Shadow Over Innsmouth was my favorite and even that could have been half as long - and won't be looking for more.
Favorite part: an essay on writing at the end, from the man himself, including the instruction "Remove all possible superfluities - words, sentences, paragraphs, or whole episodes or elements." Right.
laureltree13's review against another edition
4.0
This isn’t a light read by any means, but if you take the time to read it slowly and savor Lovecraft’s well thought out stories, it can be pretty enjoyable read. He had one hell of a wicked imagination. I now know why he inspired so many of today’s writers— Steven King for one!
(P.S It took me over a year to read. Kept grabbing faster paced novels on the side.)
(P.S It took me over a year to read. Kept grabbing faster paced novels on the side.)
afua131's review against another edition
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
4.0
Fascinating concepts sullied by the author’s explicit racism.
giljule's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
4.25
josiebrown's review against another edition
3.0
Mostly interesting stories, the Cthulhu one was so overhyped, I didn't think it was that good honestly. Also, oh my goodness, he is so racist. The way he talked about people of color and the terms he used, while they were common in his time, were still extremely jarring to read.
dolby1117's review against another edition
challenging
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
1.25
I am sure some of this is amazing. My taste in American "horror", apparently not the same.
zach_collins's review against another edition
3.0
Lovecraft had some great thoughts on humanity's fragile, transient existence and the sheer size and complexity of the cosmos. Instead of ghosts, witches and vampires, Lovecraft's tales include entities that defy comprehension. There is a certain brilliance to this line of thought; we all fear what we don't know, but that fear vanishes instant we can label and name the unknown other.
However, Lovecraft's stories themselves are fairly bland and formulaic. Most of the stories end with a main character (who is invariably a dry, academic, white male) witnessing some sort of monstorous, indescribable horror that instantly drives him insane. While the idea is unique, it is quickly bludgeoned to death through endless repetition. After a while, the stories begin to blur together as they all have roughly the same plot and the same dry narrative voice. Lovecraft also repeats the same words incessantly; the first time he describes something as "eldritch" was kind of cool, as I had never seen or heard that word used before, but after its tenth use in the same story I started to grimace every time I came across it.
With the exception of The Outsider and The Music of Eric Zahn, the stories in this collection are bloated with minute details that quickly kill both the pacing of the story and the interest of the reader. I skipped whole pages of the "short" story At the Mountains of Madness after realizing I really don't care about the differences between Cambrian and Pre-Cambrian rocks.
Lovecraft had some interesting ideas, but most of his stories are a bit underwhelming. Out of this collection, I consider The Outsider, The Music of Eric Zahn and The Shunned House worth reading; these three stories are original and engaging. The rest are boring, overwritten tales that overstay their welcome.
However, Lovecraft's stories themselves are fairly bland and formulaic. Most of the stories end with a main character (who is invariably a dry, academic, white male) witnessing some sort of monstorous, indescribable horror that instantly drives him insane. While the idea is unique, it is quickly bludgeoned to death through endless repetition. After a while, the stories begin to blur together as they all have roughly the same plot and the same dry narrative voice. Lovecraft also repeats the same words incessantly; the first time he describes something as "eldritch" was kind of cool, as I had never seen or heard that word used before, but after its tenth use in the same story I started to grimace every time I came across it.
With the exception of The Outsider and The Music of Eric Zahn, the stories in this collection are bloated with minute details that quickly kill both the pacing of the story and the interest of the reader. I skipped whole pages of the "short" story At the Mountains of Madness after realizing I really don't care about the differences between Cambrian and Pre-Cambrian rocks.
Lovecraft had some interesting ideas, but most of his stories are a bit underwhelming. Out of this collection, I consider The Outsider, The Music of Eric Zahn and The Shunned House worth reading; these three stories are original and engaging. The rest are boring, overwritten tales that overstay their welcome.
yodisborg's review against another edition
3.0
An inconsistent collection filled with some truly great and different stories, Call of Cthulhu, Colournout of Space. Unfortunately some of the stories reaching for the occult and arcana read more like tropes. To be fair, Lovecraft was responsible for creatinine many of those tropes but reading a collection of stories you see too often some of his tools: a horror that cannot be described, the narrator fear that writing this truth will expose too much but keeping secret will be worse, a revelation in the last paragraph. Nonetheless, the mythos building by itself make Lovecraft worth reading and his tools while overused are effective in creating dread and fear in the reader.