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A review by blackthirteen
A Mountain Walked: Great Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos by Donald Tyson, Michael Shea, T.E.D. Klein, Jason V. Brock, James Wade, Rhys Hughes, Joseph S. Pulver, Sr., S.T. Joshi, Stanley C. Sargent, Robert Barbour Johnson, Mearle Prout, Gemma Files, Lois H. Gresh, Walter C. DeBill Jr., Ramsey Campbell, David Ho, W.H. Pugmire, Thomas Ligotti, Cody Goodfellow, Caitlín R. Kiernan, C. Hall Thompson, Neil Gaiman, Mark Samuels, Patrick McGrath, Jonathan Thomas
adventurous
dark
tense
medium-paced
I found that the most interesting stories in this anthology were in the latter half; "The House of the Worm" was a strong opener, but the following six stories were more in the vein of a direct Lovecraft pastiche, which might suit the fan of Lovecraft's tropes (epistolary fiction, "it came from beneath the sea", "these people in this secluded town are different from me and I don't like it so I'm going to dig around in their personal business until something bites me", etc) but didn't suit me. there's also one story ("Black Man With a Horn") where the protagonist used to be friends with HPL and didn't like that he got all the posthumous accolades, which was temporarily amusing but the story itself ended up annoying me.
I feel that the anthology picks up at around "The Last Feast of Harlequin" and starts to exhibit more unique voices -- even the obvious callbacks to HPL tales ("Only the End of the World", "The Black Brat of Dunwich", "... Hungry ... Rats", "Beneath the Beardmore") feel fresh here instead of just plain derivative. "Mandebröt Moldrot" is fun if you like funky maths; "In the Shadow of Swords" is as tense as an action movie with a payoff that had my imagination whirring; beleaguered retail workers might relate to "Mobymart After Midnight"; "John Four" is both bleak and lush in its descriptions of an Earth mired in a depthless and devouring darkness; and "[Anasazi]" really packs a lot of punches (literally!) -- it's the one story that stuck with me long after my first read-through of this anthology a few years ago.
it's hard to rate this as a whole when it has such a dichotomous effect on me (I was insufferably bored through the first half and then riveted through most of the second), so I refrained from giving it a star rating.
I feel that the anthology picks up at around "The Last Feast of Harlequin" and starts to exhibit more unique voices -- even the obvious callbacks to HPL tales ("Only the End of the World", "The Black Brat of Dunwich", "... Hungry ... Rats", "Beneath the Beardmore") feel fresh here instead of just plain derivative. "Mandebröt Moldrot" is fun if you like funky maths; "In the Shadow of Swords" is as tense as an action movie with a payoff that had my imagination whirring; beleaguered retail workers might relate to "Mobymart After Midnight"; "John Four" is both bleak and lush in its descriptions of an Earth mired in a depthless and devouring darkness; and "[Anasazi]" really packs a lot of punches (literally!) -- it's the one story that stuck with me long after my first read-through of this anthology a few years ago.
it's hard to rate this as a whole when it has such a dichotomous effect on me (I was insufferably bored through the first half and then riveted through most of the second), so I refrained from giving it a star rating.