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abelikoff's review against another edition
2.0
While this is probably the most comprehensive compendium of stories about Ithaqua/Wendigo. Most of the stories are quite amateurish (fully deserving the 'pulp fiction' moniker). The only redeeming aspect of the collection are the stories by Algernon Blackwood (the original "Wendigo" story) and a couple of stories by Derleth (sadly, not of the quality of say "The Lurker at the Threshold"). Other stories are basically paraphrases on the same theme, not showing much creativity. Overall, I can't recommend it - I wish the topic was picked by more talented authors (in my opinion, it would make a fabulous short story by Stephen King). Mr. Blackwood's story is already out of copyright and makes a decent read; I will not miss any other stories in this collection.
otterno11's review
adventurous
dark
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
1.5
One of Chaosium’s Call of Cthulhu fiction series, The Ithaqua Cycle is a short anthology of “Cthulhu Mythos” pastiches focused on August Derleth’s literary creation of “Ithaqua,” basically his way to draw the plot of Algernon Blackwood’s novella “The Wendigo” into the “Cthulhu Mythos” shared world he was attempting to codify from the work of his mentor H.P. Lovecraft. The collection was compiled by editor Robert M. Price, who introduces each work through some rather overbearing commentary, trying to imbue them with some sort of literary merit rather than just another rehash of the same ol’, same ol’. It is a hopeless task.
Opening the anthology with Blackwood’s classic 1910 tale may, it turns out, may have been a bit of a mistake to set up your collection of bland fan fiction. While perhaps not Blackwood’s best, “The Wendigo” is still an evocative, eerie, roaring campfire-like piece that delivers a lot of mood and ends up making the other pieces following it look much worse in comparison. Blackwood’s writing is elegant in his creation of the desolate and mysterious atmosphere of the Canadian Northwoods and the inexplicable presence of its titular force, dragging the poor, sensitive French Canadian Defago into the icy forest. The rote stereotypes and bald racism that also pepper the tale are sadly typical of the time Blackwood was writing in. The Algonquin mythology of the windigo has here been lifted by Blackwood to serve his own purposes and bears little resemblance to the actual indigenous legends, but has come into pop culture as the prototypical Native American mythical monster, as discussed in Shawn Smallman's work Dangerous Spirits: The Windigo in Myth in History (definitely a more interesting read).
Price mentions none of this, except that the wendigo represents “genuine North American Indian lore” and murky insinuations that indigenous Americans are not really “native” to North America anyway (yikes) but has a lot to say about how the Wendigo can be analogous to various Biblical beings and how Derleth added it to his roster of gotta catch ‘em all elemental Great Old Ones. To be honest, his commentary left a bad taste in my mouth but was also a little funny, so smug and self-serious about such astoundingly boring fiction.
For the most part, the thirteen other stories in The Ithaqua Cycle are simply tired retellings of the same motifs with much less atmosphere, pointless inclusion of Cthulhu Mythos references for the sake of references, and continued, unquestioning use of the same old racist tropes. Spanning a period of time from pulp writer George Allen England’s 1923 “The Thing from Outside,” three of Derleth’s own stories written in the ‘30s and ‘40s, and various other genre writers writing from the ‘70s to the ‘90s, the bulk of these works follow basically the same plot;
“a party of stock white characters has a tough time of it in the Canadian wilderness, ia ia Ithaqua Fatagn! Never trust the natives…”.
The legend of the windigo is so eerie and affecting, it’s disappointing that so little comes of it in these tedious so-called cosmic horror tales. Perhaps the fact that the whole lot of these writers are British or American white dudes doesn’t help them go anywhere more novel. While a couple of them try tackling a different setting (maybe Siberia during the Russian Civil War or a WWI flying ace) or even build into some dumb fun encountering a crazy cannibal rustic in a rotting swamp cabin, as a whole the collection is just bad.
All in all, the stories collected here do little but reinforce my view of “Lovecraftian” fiction at the end of the twentieth century as an ossified, creatively bankrupt exercise in rote referencing and cliched regurgitations, content to wallow in unquestioned racist tropes and cliches. None of the stories bring any surprises or really anything any reader of weird fiction or horror hasn’t already seen over and over again.
I discuss this and other works discussing the windigo legend in this entry of Harris' Tome Corner, https://spoonbridge.medium.com/folklore-studies-windigo-tales-3637c93ddad0 .
Opening the anthology with Blackwood’s classic 1910 tale may, it turns out, may have been a bit of a mistake to set up your collection of bland fan fiction. While perhaps not Blackwood’s best, “The Wendigo” is still an evocative, eerie, roaring campfire-like piece that delivers a lot of mood and ends up making the other pieces following it look much worse in comparison. Blackwood’s writing is elegant in his creation of the desolate and mysterious atmosphere of the Canadian Northwoods and the inexplicable presence of its titular force, dragging the poor, sensitive French Canadian Defago into the icy forest. The rote stereotypes and bald racism that also pepper the tale are sadly typical of the time Blackwood was writing in. The Algonquin mythology of the windigo has here been lifted by Blackwood to serve his own purposes and bears little resemblance to the actual indigenous legends, but has come into pop culture as the prototypical Native American mythical monster, as discussed in Shawn Smallman's work Dangerous Spirits: The Windigo in Myth in History (definitely a more interesting read).
Price mentions none of this, except that the wendigo represents “genuine North American Indian lore” and murky insinuations that indigenous Americans are not really “native” to North America anyway (yikes) but has a lot to say about how the Wendigo can be analogous to various Biblical beings and how Derleth added it to his roster of gotta catch ‘em all elemental Great Old Ones. To be honest, his commentary left a bad taste in my mouth but was also a little funny, so smug and self-serious about such astoundingly boring fiction.
For the most part, the thirteen other stories in The Ithaqua Cycle are simply tired retellings of the same motifs with much less atmosphere, pointless inclusion of Cthulhu Mythos references for the sake of references, and continued, unquestioning use of the same old racist tropes. Spanning a period of time from pulp writer George Allen England’s 1923 “The Thing from Outside,” three of Derleth’s own stories written in the ‘30s and ‘40s, and various other genre writers writing from the ‘70s to the ‘90s, the bulk of these works follow basically the same plot;
“a party of stock white characters has a tough time of it in the Canadian wilderness, ia ia Ithaqua Fatagn! Never trust the natives…”.
The legend of the windigo is so eerie and affecting, it’s disappointing that so little comes of it in these tedious so-called cosmic horror tales. Perhaps the fact that the whole lot of these writers are British or American white dudes doesn’t help them go anywhere more novel. While a couple of them try tackling a different setting (maybe Siberia during the Russian Civil War or a WWI flying ace) or even build into some dumb fun encountering a crazy cannibal rustic in a rotting swamp cabin, as a whole the collection is just bad.
All in all, the stories collected here do little but reinforce my view of “Lovecraftian” fiction at the end of the twentieth century as an ossified, creatively bankrupt exercise in rote referencing and cliched regurgitations, content to wallow in unquestioned racist tropes and cliches. None of the stories bring any surprises or really anything any reader of weird fiction or horror hasn’t already seen over and over again.
I discuss this and other works discussing the windigo legend in this entry of Harris' Tome Corner, https://spoonbridge.medium.com/folklore-studies-windigo-tales-3637c93ddad0 .
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racial slurs and Racism
Moderate: Death, Cannibalism, and Violence
More...