Reviews

The Annotated H.P. Lovecraft by H.P. Lovecraft

alukemartin's review

adventurous challenging dark informative mysterious sad tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.25

veleda_k's review

3.0

I'm judging this book on two levels: the writing and annotations. As for the writing, Lovecraft is Lovecraft. His ideas are brilliant, though I think his writing is less so. He does have some excellent phrases, but his prose creates new shades of purple.

The annotations are a mixed bag. Some are interesting and informative, while others are unnecessary or worse. I was rather disgusted when Joshi claimed that "nigger" was an inoffensive word in Lovecraft's time. (Commonplace is not the same as inoffensive.) It doesn't help that Joshi derides the other writers who have contributed to the Cthulhu Mythos as a "legion of hacks" writing "half-baked imitations." Seeing that I believe that Lovecraft's ideas were better than his writing, I'm quite glad that other writers have played in the HPL sandbox.

Worth reading, all in all, but I don't feel that I gained any remarkable new insight.

piratequeen's review

4.0

This volume was my introduction to Lovecraft. It contains "The Rats in the Walls", "The Colour Out of Space", "The Dunwich Horror", and the short novel "At the Mountains of Madness". That last one was my favorite, because I love the thrill of discovering some place new. I spent the whole time I was reading it wishing I could be part of the expedition that went into the ancient city, even knowing what horrors lurked in the darkness below. Good stuff. It was particularly fun to read these stories and see all the references and connections to Lovecraft's work in modern fiction, the ones that I'd missed before. What an eye-opener.

sireno8's review

4.0

I had never read any Lovecraft but I have a good friend who is a big fan. Since I read scary books in October I asked him for recommendations and H.P. topped the list of course. I now see why. Lovecraft truly is a master. The stories are effecting on both a conscious and subconscious level. The scope of his imagination is tremendous. He's a master of set up so by the time you get to the meat of the story you will believe anything and crave bigger and bigger shocks. He is also amazingly deft at point of view--what you see, how you see it and what you don't see. This and his impressive arcanery add to his subject's authenticity and it all adds up to a totally thrilling creep show. Loved these stories and look forward to reading more.

octavia_cade's review

2.0

This is a mixed bag for me. There's a handful of stories by Lovecraft in here, and most of them weren't that good. The Rats in the Walls, The Dunwich Horror, and At the Mountains of Madness have interesting elements but don't rise to likeable. The high point here was The Colour Out of Space, which I thought was excellent. It tried its damnedest to drag the rest of the anthology up to three stars by main strength, but one good story compared to three indifferent (and one of those indifferent being a short novel) just isn't enough to compensate for the rest, or the letter fragments in which Lovecraft expounded on weird fiction in a way that made me think he must have been a terrible bore at parties. I think the best word I can use to describe the collection as a whole, bar that one excellent story, is "overwrought." Still, I read it and I gave it a good shot.

The whole volume is introduced and annotated by S.T. Joshi, and I don't know why he didn't bother with a table of contents or captions for the various illustrations, but I wish he had. His short introductory essay was clear and interesting, however, as were some of the notes, but others seemed a bit like filler. A number of them were just definitions for not-very-unusual words. Is it really necessary to have footnotes explaining words like "pustules," "puerile," and "plethora"? If so, that might just be more terrifying than anything else in here...

nikkigee81's review

3.0

The annotations were a little insulting, to be frank. I don't think most of them added to the book, rather, detracted from it.

carlosernesto's review against another edition

5.0

Though I wouldn't recommend it as an intro to HPL (due to the inclusion of lesser stories, such as "The Shunned House" and "The Horror at Red Hook"), as a longtime Lovecraft fan I found it to be a real treat. Joshua and Cannon's notes help bring out the use of historical and literary allusions as well as the intertextuality of Lovecraft's tales. Includes such gems as "The Picture in the House," "Pickman's Model," and "The Call of Cthulhu."

piratequeen's review against another edition

4.0

This volume was my introduction to Lovecraft. It contains "The Rats in the Walls", "The Colour Out of Space", "The Dunwich Horror", and the short novel "At the Mountains of Madness". That last one was my favorite, because I love the thrill of discovering some place new. I spent the whole time I was reading it wishing I could be part of the expedition that went into the ancient city, even knowing what horrors lurked in the darkness below. Good stuff. It was particularly fun to read these stories and see all the references and connections to Lovecraft's work in modern fiction, the ones that I'd missed before. What an eye-opener.