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twicomb's review against another edition
3.0
A mixed-bag of a book
5 stars for the opening essays, which are fascinating and quite extensive.
…but only 2 stars for the annotations themselves. They are quite sparse and often are simply explanations of what real-world street, building, or town Lovecraft may have used as inspiration for a location in a story. Once in a while this can be interesting, but when it forms the basis of the annotations, it becomes pretty dull. To be fair, the annotator himself notes at the start that he has generally avoided annotations about influences on the stories, since there is another book out there where someone else has already done that. Fair enough, but then was this book necessary after all? I give the annotations 2 stars because they do seem well-researched and will certainly be interesting to some people. But I think most readers may prefer the other book. I will be searching that one out.
Final rating - 3 stars, since I don’t think this is the best way for the vast majority of readers to experience Lovecraft, even those already familiar with his work. But a good addition to the Lovecraft completionist’s bookshelf. (And those intro essays are definitely worth reading!)
How I rate books:
1: awful, terribly written, and/or inexcusable story issues
2: dull, unenjoyable, and/or poorly written
3: decent, possibly a good “airplane read” but I won’t be recommending it, an average book experience
4: quite good, engaging, and/or well-written
5: top-notch, fascinating story/content, wonderful writing
5 stars for the opening essays, which are fascinating and quite extensive.
…but only 2 stars for the annotations themselves. They are quite sparse and often are simply explanations of what real-world street, building, or town Lovecraft may have used as inspiration for a location in a story. Once in a while this can be interesting, but when it forms the basis of the annotations, it becomes pretty dull. To be fair, the annotator himself notes at the start that he has generally avoided annotations about influences on the stories, since there is another book out there where someone else has already done that. Fair enough, but then was this book necessary after all? I give the annotations 2 stars because they do seem well-researched and will certainly be interesting to some people. But I think most readers may prefer the other book. I will be searching that one out.
Final rating - 3 stars, since I don’t think this is the best way for the vast majority of readers to experience Lovecraft, even those already familiar with his work. But a good addition to the Lovecraft completionist’s bookshelf. (And those intro essays are definitely worth reading!)
How I rate books:
1: awful, terribly written, and/or inexcusable story issues
2: dull, unenjoyable, and/or poorly written
3: decent, possibly a good “airplane read” but I won’t be recommending it, an average book experience
4: quite good, engaging, and/or well-written
5: top-notch, fascinating story/content, wonderful writing
larkspire's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
3.75
mike_brough's review
4.0
Whew! It's taken me months to read. Did I enjoy the experience? Yes. And no. Some of the stories were really hard going but they all stay with you. Nothing is ever very scary - unless you sit back and think on it. Nothing in-your-face, everything in-your-mind.
The annotations were interesting but a) there weren't enough of them and b) they focused too much on explaining facts and not enough on critical discussions.
Worth a read.
The annotations were interesting but a) there weren't enough of them and b) they focused too much on explaining facts and not enough on critical discussions.
Worth a read.
wchorak'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? Yes
4.75
jtkeenan's review
4.0
Klinger does a fabulous job, as always, with his annotations and appendices, and having all of Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos stories in one volume is nice. Post “Lovecraft Country,” though, the reading experience loses something (as the reader can’t help but see the implicit racism in some of the work, something I completely missed when reading Lovecraft as a teen). And reading everything back-to-back, while you can only marvel at Lovecraft’s imagination, his actual writing can be a tough slog at times.
mattheww98's review
challenging
dark
mysterious
sad
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? No
4.0
shadowspinner's review against another edition
dark
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0