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A review by howaverage
Urban Temples of Cthulhu - Modern Mythos Anthology by James Pratt, Steven a. Roman, Brian H. Seitzman
4.0
Another case of a collection of short stories being mostly okay with some good and bad mixed in.
I felt like this collection had way more mediocre to downright awful stories than it did good ones. I wish this site had a 1-10 scale rating system instead of 1-5 so I could give this book a 7. Even though I felt there were only a few good stories here, I enjoyed them enough to keep the rating on the higher side.
"Uncle Lovecraft" was a neat read. It felt like something one might find on a message board somewhere. Like a creepypasta type thing. I don't mean that in any sort of negative way. It was entertaining and the story's format was unique to the rest of the book.
"Along the Shore of Old Ridge" was by far my favorite tale from this collection. It felt like true Lovecraft work and this is the type of thing I sought for with this book and will continue to seek out from other collections. This story had everything I could want from a contemporary work of Cthulhu mythos. Had this book only been about this particular story it would have earned five stars from this reader.
"The Black Metal of Derek Zann" was another one I enjoyed. Obviously influenced by "The Music of Erich Zann" this story did a good job of coming off as a truly modern take of a classic Lovecraft story.
"Saturday Night at the EOD" had to be the biggest let down of this collection. You could tell which stories were going to be trash almost immediately but this one had hope. It started off good. I was hooked from the beginning and I was thrilled to see it was one of the more lengthier ones. I enjoyed it up until the end when it took at 360 and just became something that was not for me. I actually considered looking up more of this author's work until the ending.
The rest of the stories really weren't cutting it. A few were complete nonsense, other were absolutely boring, and one or two were bad enough that I almost didn't finish them. It was as if some of these writers had never read any of H.P. Lovecraft's work, and that's the biggest shame of them all. Looking at pictures of tentacles on Google isn't enough to write about this stuff.
I felt like this collection had way more mediocre to downright awful stories than it did good ones. I wish this site had a 1-10 scale rating system instead of 1-5 so I could give this book a 7. Even though I felt there were only a few good stories here, I enjoyed them enough to keep the rating on the higher side.
"Uncle Lovecraft" was a neat read. It felt like something one might find on a message board somewhere. Like a creepypasta type thing. I don't mean that in any sort of negative way. It was entertaining and the story's format was unique to the rest of the book.
"Along the Shore of Old Ridge" was by far my favorite tale from this collection. It felt like true Lovecraft work and this is the type of thing I sought for with this book and will continue to seek out from other collections. This story had everything I could want from a contemporary work of Cthulhu mythos. Had this book only been about this particular story it would have earned five stars from this reader.
"The Black Metal of Derek Zann" was another one I enjoyed. Obviously influenced by "The Music of Erich Zann" this story did a good job of coming off as a truly modern take of a classic Lovecraft story.
"Saturday Night at the EOD" had to be the biggest let down of this collection. You could tell which stories were going to be trash almost immediately but this one had hope. It started off good. I was hooked from the beginning and I was thrilled to see it was one of the more lengthier ones. I enjoyed it up until the end when it took at 360 and just became something that was not for me. I actually considered looking up more of this author's work until the ending.
The rest of the stories really weren't cutting it. A few were complete nonsense, other were absolutely boring, and one or two were bad enough that I almost didn't finish them. It was as if some of these writers had never read any of H.P. Lovecraft's work, and that's the biggest shame of them all. Looking at pictures of tentacles on Google isn't enough to write about this stuff.