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franchescanado's review against another edition
adventurous
lighthearted
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.5
muffinadorable's review against another edition
3.0
Malditas expectativas. Han creado una barrera entre el libro y yo, las cosas como son. Los primeros relatos me han parecido un timo, para que nos vamos a engañar. Yo no he venido aquí a leer Scooby Doo. Yo esperaba algo más... Constantine. Y hasta mediados de libro, no se ha producido. En el último relato, el más largo de todos, ha hecho una explicación "científica" que me ha interesado mucho, pero me ha costado muchísimo permanecer atenta a todas las explicaciones. No sé si es porque el tipo de narrador en primera persona me ha parecido aleccionante en demasía, o que le falta cierto encanto, cierto hueco para el lector. Está bien escrito, pero no lo he disfrutado tanto como esperaba viniendo de un detective paranormal.
yanina_daniele's review against another edition
3.0
Había leído los tres primeros relatos de este libro y me habían gustado bastante, sobre todo el primero y el tercero, lo que generó grandes expectativas pero luego ... me terminé decepcionando, ya que al final los cuentos o tenían una explicación totalmente racional o bien quedaban en que "algo" ocurrió, terminó y a otra cosa mariposa ... esperaba más situaciones paranormales, en lugar del terror psicológico que experimenta Carnacki muchas veces, son sus propios miedos ante lo que ve, que lo que realmente pasaba. En fin, quizás estoy acostumbrada a otro tipo de "terror", "horror" y "fantasmas".
bothwell's review against another edition
adventurous
mysterious
reflective
tense
fast-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
5.0
roshreviews's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
slow-paced
3.5
Carnacki can be described as the Sherlock of the occult world. This collection of 9 stories brings us tales of weird supernatural phenomena, some of which are genuinely perplexing while the rest are a result of devious human enterprise. All these stories were published in The Idler Magazine between 1910-1912.
The stories are decently engrossing, though a little repetitive in style. You will find quite an odd assortment of tools being used by Carnacki to detect/fight the ghostly phenomena: pentacles, chalk and garlic circles, human hair barriers, vacuum tubes, cameras,... Some arcane references he makes include vowel-intensive names such as Aeiirii, Saiitii, and the Saaamaaa Ritual. These make the reading experience quite different from modern horror stories. The combination of supposedly traditional rituals along with modern scientific methods is quite unique considering the time period in which these stories were published.
The stories follow a preset format.
- Carnacki sends notes of invitation to four friends, asking them to come to dinner.
- After dinner, Carnacki lights his pipe, everyone settles into their favourite chairs, and he tells the tale without interruption.
- Each of Carnacki's tales tells of an investigation into an unusual haunting, which Carnacki is charged to identify and to end.
- He always uses evidence to draw his final conclusions, so that in some stories he decides the haunting is real, while in others it is staged or faked by an adversary for various reasons. So you won't know till the end if the haunting was genuine or man-made or sometimes, a combination.
- After the tale is complete, Carnacki answers a few questions from his guests and then dismisses them with the phrase, "Out you go!"
Every story is written in first person. One of the four invited friends, Dodgson, serves the actual narrator of the story, though his role is quite minimal as Carnacki soon takes centre-stage and begins his own narration. You might equate this with Watson's recounting of Sherlock's adventures but there are two crucial differences.
1. Watson was a part of Sherlock's adventures. Dogdson merely narrates what Carnacki recounted and has no direct role to play in the paranormal adventures.
2. Unlike in Sherlock where Watson is the narrator and Sherlock the 3rd party, here Carnacki himself recounts his adventures. So the stories have more of a personal touch but sometimes sound pompous and abrupt.
If this were written in the modern era, I might have rated it a 3 because of the repetitive tropes and the simplistic writing. But keeping in mind that this would have been a trendsetter a century ago, and that I can't use modern sensibilities to judge old fiction, I'll go with a 4 star rating. Do give it a try if you want to try out a really different kind of horror anthology.
Trigger warnings: brutal animal cruelty in a couple of the tales. 😢
The stories are decently engrossing, though a little repetitive in style. You will find quite an odd assortment of tools being used by Carnacki to detect/fight the ghostly phenomena: pentacles, chalk and garlic circles, human hair barriers, vacuum tubes, cameras,... Some arcane references he makes include vowel-intensive names such as Aeiirii, Saiitii, and the Saaamaaa Ritual. These make the reading experience quite different from modern horror stories. The combination of supposedly traditional rituals along with modern scientific methods is quite unique considering the time period in which these stories were published.
The stories follow a preset format.
- Carnacki sends notes of invitation to four friends, asking them to come to dinner.
- After dinner, Carnacki lights his pipe, everyone settles into their favourite chairs, and he tells the tale without interruption.
- Each of Carnacki's tales tells of an investigation into an unusual haunting, which Carnacki is charged to identify and to end.
- He always uses evidence to draw his final conclusions, so that in some stories he decides the haunting is real, while in others it is staged or faked by an adversary for various reasons. So you won't know till the end if the haunting was genuine or man-made or sometimes, a combination.
- After the tale is complete, Carnacki answers a few questions from his guests and then dismisses them with the phrase, "Out you go!"
Every story is written in first person. One of the four invited friends, Dodgson, serves the actual narrator of the story, though his role is quite minimal as Carnacki soon takes centre-stage and begins his own narration. You might equate this with Watson's recounting of Sherlock's adventures but there are two crucial differences.
1. Watson was a part of Sherlock's adventures. Dogdson merely narrates what Carnacki recounted and has no direct role to play in the paranormal adventures.
2. Unlike in Sherlock where Watson is the narrator and Sherlock the 3rd party, here Carnacki himself recounts his adventures. So the stories have more of a personal touch but sometimes sound pompous and abrupt.
If this were written in the modern era, I might have rated it a 3 because of the repetitive tropes and the simplistic writing. But keeping in mind that this would have been a trendsetter a century ago, and that I can't use modern sensibilities to judge old fiction, I'll go with a 4 star rating. Do give it a try if you want to try out a really different kind of horror anthology.
Trigger warnings: brutal animal cruelty in a couple of the tales. 😢
jgkeely's review against another edition
2.0
Another paranormal investigator in the tradition of Van Helsing, Dr. Hesselius, and John Silence, I was curious to see what Hodgson would do with the idea, especially after reading his House on the Borderland and finding it to be refreshingly uncanny. Unfortunately, the Carnacki stories are so flat and formulaic that they add very little to the subgenre.
Every case follows the same pattern: a group of men gather at Carnacki's house and sit around for a bit before he suddenly launches into his story: he's called out to investigate some occurrence, he describes some incident as giving him the 'creep', he refers to a number of other cases 'which you fellows certainly remember' (but which are never, themselves, described), he piles on a lot of colloquialisms, follows this with some goofy made-up terms ('Second Sign of the Saaamaaa Ritual'), mentions someone 'lacking pluck', describes a vague feeling and insists 'we must know what he means', eventually blinds himself with a camera flash, sets up his 'electric pentacle', then explains the whole matter (barring a few mysterious details), and sends his friends out into the night.
Sometimes, the cases are supernatural, while other times we get a full 'gothic explique' that tries to account for the apparently supernatural elements as mere tricks. So, there is some variation in the subject matter, but not very much, especially when compared to the John Silence tales.
Worse than that is the fact that Carnacki himself is a very flat character, somewhat unflappable and matter-of-fact, but otherwise entirely unremarkable and without much sense of interior personality, despite all his friendly colloquial expressions. In Silence, for example, we get a figure who actually seems affected by the cases in which he takes part, who has an investment in the people involved, and in what those cases suggest about the reality of the world. Silence has a perspective, a sort of bias which makes him feel like an actual person caught up in a lot of strangeness.
Carnacki, on the other hand, is so matter-of-fact about everything that there is very little unique about his approach. He's not a figure who must deal with the implications of the supernatural, of the long-term effects they have on a human mind, but an implacable force that solves whatever is before him. Certainly, sometimes he has a fright, but the horror in these tales is all of a very physical variety.
There is always some menacing thing, some murderous force which is acting upon him, which must be fought and overcome. The force is never dangerous to the mind, or the perception of the world, only to the physical body. As such, the Carnacki stories form a prototype of the jump-scare movies which are popular today: there are always half seen things in the shadow of the corner of the room, lurking around every corner, malicious and violent and only held off by Carnacki's magic circles.
I do have to say that I find the idea of his 'electric pentacle', a vacuum tube ring which protects him from supernatural forces to be terribly amusing. Again, it somewhat negates from the supernatural aspect, turning the thing into a physical scientific investigation, but its such a wacky, Ghostbusters idea--I only wish he'd been able to do more with it, that the stories had been odd enough and psychologically intriguing enough to make of the pentacle more than a mere plot object.
There's also an odd continuation of the pig-based horror that Hodgson explored in House on the Borderland, which illustrates just how lucky Lovecraft was to base supernatural monsters on his intense distaste for seafood, since kosher law seems not to translate as well into the disturbing and horrific.
Every case follows the same pattern: a group of men gather at Carnacki's house and sit around for a bit before he suddenly launches into his story: he's called out to investigate some occurrence, he describes some incident as giving him the 'creep', he refers to a number of other cases 'which you fellows certainly remember' (but which are never, themselves, described), he piles on a lot of colloquialisms, follows this with some goofy made-up terms ('Second Sign of the Saaamaaa Ritual'), mentions someone 'lacking pluck', describes a vague feeling and insists 'we must know what he means', eventually blinds himself with a camera flash, sets up his 'electric pentacle', then explains the whole matter (barring a few mysterious details), and sends his friends out into the night.
Sometimes, the cases are supernatural, while other times we get a full 'gothic explique' that tries to account for the apparently supernatural elements as mere tricks. So, there is some variation in the subject matter, but not very much, especially when compared to the John Silence tales.
Worse than that is the fact that Carnacki himself is a very flat character, somewhat unflappable and matter-of-fact, but otherwise entirely unremarkable and without much sense of interior personality, despite all his friendly colloquial expressions. In Silence, for example, we get a figure who actually seems affected by the cases in which he takes part, who has an investment in the people involved, and in what those cases suggest about the reality of the world. Silence has a perspective, a sort of bias which makes him feel like an actual person caught up in a lot of strangeness.
Carnacki, on the other hand, is so matter-of-fact about everything that there is very little unique about his approach. He's not a figure who must deal with the implications of the supernatural, of the long-term effects they have on a human mind, but an implacable force that solves whatever is before him. Certainly, sometimes he has a fright, but the horror in these tales is all of a very physical variety.
There is always some menacing thing, some murderous force which is acting upon him, which must be fought and overcome. The force is never dangerous to the mind, or the perception of the world, only to the physical body. As such, the Carnacki stories form a prototype of the jump-scare movies which are popular today: there are always half seen things in the shadow of the corner of the room, lurking around every corner, malicious and violent and only held off by Carnacki's magic circles.
I do have to say that I find the idea of his 'electric pentacle', a vacuum tube ring which protects him from supernatural forces to be terribly amusing. Again, it somewhat negates from the supernatural aspect, turning the thing into a physical scientific investigation, but its such a wacky, Ghostbusters idea--I only wish he'd been able to do more with it, that the stories had been odd enough and psychologically intriguing enough to make of the pentacle more than a mere plot object.
There's also an odd continuation of the pig-based horror that Hodgson explored in House on the Borderland, which illustrates just how lucky Lovecraft was to base supernatural monsters on his intense distaste for seafood, since kosher law seems not to translate as well into the disturbing and horrific.
silver_valkyrie_reads's review against another edition
The first few pages I thought I might really enjoy this as it felt like Sherlock Holmes, but with ghosts. By the end of the first story though, it was not just too creepy, but really too occult for me, with detailed explanations of the pentagrams and other such that Carnacki used to protect himself from the ghosts.
The quest for Dracula-like classic horror continues!
The quest for Dracula-like classic horror continues!
Content Warnings
Minor: Death
vulcanzaddy's review against another edition
3.0
I read and listened to this book. I stand at a very neutral place with this book. It was not a, "bad book". Not at all. It did not resonate with me and I found myself reading the Wikipedia article on it. For the first time, I agree with H.P. Lovecraft. "Without question, "Carnacki" must be his very poorest work." - Lovecraft
fanruning's review against another edition
3.0
Actual rate: 3.25 stars
This was a collection of six stories about an occult detective dealing with both paranormal and "human-caused" investigations.
It was a nice read, but sometimes the writing style really annoyed me.
Here are some brief comments about each story:
1. The gateway of the monster
Well, the plot and the haunting were interesting but the writing style and some names and the techniques used were very very confusing.
2.The house among the laurels
This was also interesting and the end was quite the plot twist. I didn't understand anything that the author wrote with an Irish accent, though.
3. The whistling room
I don't have much to say about this one, it didn't impress me but the discovery at the end was quite exciting.
4. The horse of the invisible
This was the best of the collection. It was absolutely intriguing, and I love how the ending is open to both a human and supernatural explanation.
5. The searcher of the end house
I liked this one a lot too. Not much happened, but it closed with a mysteriously open ending and that's definitely something I was looking for.
6. The thing invisible
Not as great as the precedent two, but not as bad as the first three. Overall it was an interesting story.
This was a collection of six stories about an occult detective dealing with both paranormal and "human-caused" investigations.
It was a nice read, but sometimes the writing style really annoyed me.
Here are some brief comments about each story:
1. The gateway of the monster
Well, the plot and the haunting were interesting but the writing style and some names and the techniques used were very very confusing.
2.The house among the laurels
This was also interesting and the end was quite the plot twist. I didn't understand anything that the author wrote with an Irish accent, though.
3. The whistling room
I don't have much to say about this one, it didn't impress me but the discovery at the end was quite exciting.
4. The horse of the invisible
This was the best of the collection. It was absolutely intriguing, and I love how the ending is open to both a human and supernatural explanation.
5. The searcher of the end house
I liked this one a lot too. Not much happened, but it closed with a mysteriously open ending and that's definitely something I was looking for.
6. The thing invisible
Not as great as the precedent two, but not as bad as the first three. Overall it was an interesting story.