matt4hire's review against another edition
5.0
So, yeah, this is pretty much everything. It's worth noting that the man's writing was almost uniformly amazing. There are dips in quality, occasionally..."Through the Gate of the Silver Key", and "The Dream Cycle of Unknown Kadath" is a little unnecessarily long...but, overall, it's really great stuff. If you're interested in horror, and especially modern horror and its roots, the bulk of Lovecraft's are a necessity. Even if you're not, they're largely fun and actually scary, still.
lalolanda85's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
Loved the atmosphere and constant dread on most of his stories, though several ones were mostly filler or not as impactful, but I loved the vocabulary
rula_2005'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? It's complicated
4.25
barry_x's review against another edition
challenging
dark
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Wow, after a period of about eight years I have finally finished this book! The book is a collection of all H.P. Lovecraft's short stories, novellas and novels, excepting collaborative works. It's an absolute monster of a book compiled by the Arkham Archivist available for free here https://arkhamarchivist.com/free-comp....
I distinctly remember from my teens hearing the words 'Lovecraftian' ascribed to creepy, cosmic fiction and I knew a little of the Cthulhu Mythos through playing 'Call of Cthulhu' RPG games, and of course references were dropped into heavy metal records all the time and all the movies that I didn't know where about Lovecraft but where, so I always kind of knew it existed and had an idea about it without ever reading anything by Lovecraft.
So, I picked up this collection, and basically read a short story every now and then when I was between books but after a wave of enthusiasm I probably put it back down for about four of five years, but for some perverse reason I didn't ever classify it as 'did-not-finish' thinking one day I would go back to it. In 2022 I made a bit of a commitment to pick it up again and this morning I finally finished it (so can I have a badge please!).
So what to make of it? It seems rather criminal and yet fitting that Lovecraft was underappreciated during his lifetime. It's hard to imagine that these stories which were barely published and read in the 1920's and 30's have spawned a Mythos that other writers have run with and that has spawned multimedia. Of course, the role playing game probably has a lot to do with this from the 1980's onwards, but there was a wealth of fiction reimagining and working with the Mythos in the decades before then. In some ways Lovecraft could have easily been forgotten.
I still remember my first exposure to his early stories in 2015, and how I loved his use of language, his turn of phrase, how nothing quite read like it. One always feels you are descending into a particular universe, a particular mind. I felt it was so rich, so evocative, often overwrought but better for it. At first I felt, 'how have I missed this', I was so enamoured with it.
And yet, after a period of time, I quickly found the stories too similar, and always demanding significant attention without the pay-off. I liked needing to pay close attention for a while, but all to often I find the stories hard to read and engage with.
Most of his stories include young bookish gentlemen discovering old books via academia and antiquarianism and learning more than they should. Cosmic beings from space or cults or ancient civilisations hint at what we know of as reality is miniscule compared to the cosmos. It can get quite 'samey' but later in the collection once you see the same names, same books, or mad prophets or creatures from space and time mentioned you can quickly build up the universe. I quite liked this later on in the book, thinking back to where I had read something before and thinking about how it all came together. The richness has been used by many for decades...
Many of the stories describe cosmic, dreamlike travel, often to places on Earth (or in our dreams), almost like another dimension. Considering the period he was writing in, his vividness and and visual descriptions of things that perhaps could only be captured by art is astonishing. And yet, sometimes these descriptions are the downfall because they are so overwrought and complex that it is an effort to try and understand them and stay with it.
Indeed, 'The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath' is a huge sprawling braindump of an exploration into dreamworld and quite frankly is one of the worst things I have ever read (to be fair it was unpublished in Lovecraft's lifetime).
However, his later works really show a writer getting into his stride, and it is hear that a lot of his Mythos starts to come together. Some of his more well known stories are also his best ones. I loved 'At the Mountains of Madness' which is a brilliant pulpy adventure to Antarctica with aeroplanes and everything (which would have been very novel then). I had a real blast with 'Shadows Over Innsmouth' which is genuinely really very creepy but had me smiling too, remembering a fun game with Deep Ones once (even though it is a barely veiled story about the 'horror' of race mixing). 'The Color From Outer Space' manages to be really tense and scary too, and seems to be a blueprint for the 1950's sci-fi trope of something 'atomic' from space landing in a field. 'The Case of Charles Dexter Ward' is rather brilliant story about possession. 'The Whisperer in Darkness' feels way ahead of it's time too and is utterly cosmic whilst tapping into the horror of being stalked by unknown forces. 'The Dreams in the Witch House' freaked me out with the 'cosmic haunted house' and how sinister the witches were. So when he's good, he's very good indeed...
And yet, one can't read Lovecraft without addressing the bigotry in his work. His works are filled with racism, anyone not white (or even from how he viewed 'lesser' European people, like Italians) are treated as people to fear and to be shunned or loathed. If a white man is prodding cosmic creatures he's doing it in a library through academia, if anyone else does it they do so in base rituals as if they are little more than subhuman. He's absolutely terrified of miscegenation and it is baked in to many of his stories. Anti-semitism is rife in his early work also. Similarly, he seems to be terrified of women too, considering them of inferior intellect. Indeed, you will be hard pushed to find a female character of note in the collection, with perhaps the exception of 'The Thing on the Doorstep' (a story I enjoyed and actually cheered on the female character, even if I did roll my eyes often at the horror of a woman being educated and taking over a man's brain).
I don't think we can use the 'standards of the time' angle here also, because although attitudes to race and gender have changed, not all writers were so virulently racist. And even so, in 2023 we can only view art in the context we experience it in - so if something transgresses our moral compass today we can't say it's okay, because our emotional response is from now. It doesn't necessarily change the context the stories were written in, but it is valid to judge any art by our standards now. Indeed Lovecraft has been given relative literary immortality retrospectively, and yet also has a laser focus on his bigotry as a consequence.
As a white man, I have a certain degree of privilege and dare I say it, some racist attitudes do not harm me in ways they harm others. That said, some of these stories are exceptionally offensive, not just 'a bit racist' or with the odd casual racist sentence. The whole purpose of the story is one of fear of anyone not white. 'The Horror at Red Hook' is perhaps the most infamous example of 'swarthy' immigrants who can't be trusted, but by far the worst for me was 'Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family' which is basically about people going to Africa and fucking apes. It's absolutely disgusting, and some of these stories basically made me put the book down for a long time of a few years.
Is Lovecraft redeemable? Many authors have explored this (N.K. Jemisin has had a thoughtful go at this in 'The City We Became'). I think we can critically analyse him and take what we like and ditch what we don't.
Three stars feels like a cop-out. There are some brilliant stories in here and some unreadable ones. I could easily give this one star for the horrible bigotry that is unpleasant to read and yet I did stay with it. I could equally give it five stars for it's immeasurable influence over fiction, cinema, video games, rpg games and much, much more.
I'm sticking with 3 and I am glad I read this.
I distinctly remember from my teens hearing the words 'Lovecraftian' ascribed to creepy, cosmic fiction and I knew a little of the Cthulhu Mythos through playing 'Call of Cthulhu' RPG games, and of course references were dropped into heavy metal records all the time and all the movies that I didn't know where about Lovecraft but where, so I always kind of knew it existed and had an idea about it without ever reading anything by Lovecraft.
So, I picked up this collection, and basically read a short story every now and then when I was between books but after a wave of enthusiasm I probably put it back down for about four of five years, but for some perverse reason I didn't ever classify it as 'did-not-finish' thinking one day I would go back to it. In 2022 I made a bit of a commitment to pick it up again and this morning I finally finished it (so can I have a badge please!).
So what to make of it? It seems rather criminal and yet fitting that Lovecraft was underappreciated during his lifetime. It's hard to imagine that these stories which were barely published and read in the 1920's and 30's have spawned a Mythos that other writers have run with and that has spawned multimedia. Of course, the role playing game probably has a lot to do with this from the 1980's onwards, but there was a wealth of fiction reimagining and working with the Mythos in the decades before then. In some ways Lovecraft could have easily been forgotten.
I still remember my first exposure to his early stories in 2015, and how I loved his use of language, his turn of phrase, how nothing quite read like it. One always feels you are descending into a particular universe, a particular mind. I felt it was so rich, so evocative, often overwrought but better for it. At first I felt, 'how have I missed this', I was so enamoured with it.
And yet, after a period of time, I quickly found the stories too similar, and always demanding significant attention without the pay-off. I liked needing to pay close attention for a while, but all to often I find the stories hard to read and engage with.
Most of his stories include young bookish gentlemen discovering old books via academia and antiquarianism and learning more than they should. Cosmic beings from space or cults or ancient civilisations hint at what we know of as reality is miniscule compared to the cosmos. It can get quite 'samey' but later in the collection once you see the same names, same books, or mad prophets or creatures from space and time mentioned you can quickly build up the universe. I quite liked this later on in the book, thinking back to where I had read something before and thinking about how it all came together. The richness has been used by many for decades...
Many of the stories describe cosmic, dreamlike travel, often to places on Earth (or in our dreams), almost like another dimension. Considering the period he was writing in, his vividness and and visual descriptions of things that perhaps could only be captured by art is astonishing. And yet, sometimes these descriptions are the downfall because they are so overwrought and complex that it is an effort to try and understand them and stay with it.
Indeed, 'The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath' is a huge sprawling braindump of an exploration into dreamworld and quite frankly is one of the worst things I have ever read (to be fair it was unpublished in Lovecraft's lifetime).
However, his later works really show a writer getting into his stride, and it is hear that a lot of his Mythos starts to come together. Some of his more well known stories are also his best ones. I loved 'At the Mountains of Madness' which is a brilliant pulpy adventure to Antarctica with aeroplanes and everything (which would have been very novel then). I had a real blast with 'Shadows Over Innsmouth' which is genuinely really very creepy but had me smiling too, remembering a fun game with Deep Ones once (even though it is a barely veiled story about the 'horror' of race mixing). 'The Color From Outer Space' manages to be really tense and scary too, and seems to be a blueprint for the 1950's sci-fi trope of something 'atomic' from space landing in a field. 'The Case of Charles Dexter Ward' is rather brilliant story about possession. 'The Whisperer in Darkness' feels way ahead of it's time too and is utterly cosmic whilst tapping into the horror of being stalked by unknown forces. 'The Dreams in the Witch House' freaked me out with the 'cosmic haunted house' and how sinister the witches were. So when he's good, he's very good indeed...
And yet, one can't read Lovecraft without addressing the bigotry in his work. His works are filled with racism, anyone not white (or even from how he viewed 'lesser' European people, like Italians) are treated as people to fear and to be shunned or loathed. If a white man is prodding cosmic creatures he's doing it in a library through academia, if anyone else does it they do so in base rituals as if they are little more than subhuman. He's absolutely terrified of miscegenation and it is baked in to many of his stories. Anti-semitism is rife in his early work also. Similarly, he seems to be terrified of women too, considering them of inferior intellect. Indeed, you will be hard pushed to find a female character of note in the collection, with perhaps the exception of 'The Thing on the Doorstep' (a story I enjoyed and actually cheered on the female character, even if I did roll my eyes often at the horror of a woman being educated and taking over a man's brain).
I don't think we can use the 'standards of the time' angle here also, because although attitudes to race and gender have changed, not all writers were so virulently racist. And even so, in 2023 we can only view art in the context we experience it in - so if something transgresses our moral compass today we can't say it's okay, because our emotional response is from now. It doesn't necessarily change the context the stories were written in, but it is valid to judge any art by our standards now. Indeed Lovecraft has been given relative literary immortality retrospectively, and yet also has a laser focus on his bigotry as a consequence.
As a white man, I have a certain degree of privilege and dare I say it, some racist attitudes do not harm me in ways they harm others. That said, some of these stories are exceptionally offensive, not just 'a bit racist' or with the odd casual racist sentence. The whole purpose of the story is one of fear of anyone not white. 'The Horror at Red Hook' is perhaps the most infamous example of 'swarthy' immigrants who can't be trusted, but by far the worst for me was 'Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family' which is basically about people going to Africa and fucking apes. It's absolutely disgusting, and some of these stories basically made me put the book down for a long time of a few years.
Is Lovecraft redeemable? Many authors have explored this (N.K. Jemisin has had a thoughtful go at this in 'The City We Became'). I think we can critically analyse him and take what we like and ditch what we don't.
Three stars feels like a cop-out. There are some brilliant stories in here and some unreadable ones. I could easily give this one star for the horrible bigotry that is unpleasant to read and yet I did stay with it. I could equally give it five stars for it's immeasurable influence over fiction, cinema, video games, rpg games and much, much more.
I'm sticking with 3 and I am glad I read this.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Antisemitism, Racism, and Xenophobia
Moderate: Misogyny
nyxnovels's review against another edition
Rereading this I’m struck by an unfamiliar sense of dread and discomfort. However, this time it is not the lurking of monsters in the shadows but the festering racism darkening every chapter. I low key miss when the ominous atmosphere of lore and myth was spookier than the cruel undertones of reality.
rosekk's review against another edition
3.0
I don't think I've ever been so determined to finish a book - nor has finishing a book required so much determination. I appreciate what Lovecraft brought to literature - and the horror/fantasy genres in particular. I know I've read a lot which was clearly inspired by Lovecraft's work (and plenty that is just wholesale ripped of from it), so I know I owe plenty of my favourite books (and games... and music...) to him and his work. I also understand why people have been so taken with his work; he offers some unique takes on terror and what inspires it.
I just didn't love any of the stories that much. Part of the problem might be that I'm coming to the party too late - I've read (and watched, and played) some really great things that draw on Lovecraft, but that means I've met a lot of his ideas before, with all of the benefits that come from decades of intervening work. As such I can appreciate Lovecraft's stories for what they are, but they don't hold the same allure for me.
I couldn't get on with his writing style. It didn't help that this collection is arranged chronologically, so my first experiences were with his most amateur work, but even his most famous takes have a wordy way with them that just doesn't hold my attention well.
Reading so much of his work in one go probably also didn't help - a lot of motifs get repeated, and it gets boring when it starts to feel like you're reading the same story in different guises. It was recommended to me to dip in and out of the book and not read it all at once, but I was worried that if I didn't stick with it I'd end up leaving it and not finishing it for ages.
Perhaps the most obvious problems with the stories are the extreme racism. I know you can't expect authors living in different eras and places to adhere to the same worldview as myself, but his xenophobia is so gratuitous in invades many of his stories. It's not just a matter of a few off-hand questionable phrases that indicate some unpleasant prejudices, whole stories are brought down by what amounts to propaganda against certain races. The story that struck me the worst for this was The Street - I loved the idea of a whole area like a street that had a degree of sentience and judged its inhabitants, and the changes occurring on it; but the bulk of the story is about complaining about how Armenians and Syrians have destroyed the feel of the otherwise happy all-American road... And of course there are plenty of other races that are clearly judged wanting by Lovecraft.
Over all, I'm glad I read the collection because there are some interesting things in the stories, and they've been so influential. I'm also really relieved to have finished them.
I just didn't love any of the stories that much. Part of the problem might be that I'm coming to the party too late - I've read (and watched, and played) some really great things that draw on Lovecraft, but that means I've met a lot of his ideas before, with all of the benefits that come from decades of intervening work. As such I can appreciate Lovecraft's stories for what they are, but they don't hold the same allure for me.
I couldn't get on with his writing style. It didn't help that this collection is arranged chronologically, so my first experiences were with his most amateur work, but even his most famous takes have a wordy way with them that just doesn't hold my attention well.
Reading so much of his work in one go probably also didn't help - a lot of motifs get repeated, and it gets boring when it starts to feel like you're reading the same story in different guises. It was recommended to me to dip in and out of the book and not read it all at once, but I was worried that if I didn't stick with it I'd end up leaving it and not finishing it for ages.
Perhaps the most obvious problems with the stories are the extreme racism. I know you can't expect authors living in different eras and places to adhere to the same worldview as myself, but his xenophobia is so gratuitous in invades many of his stories. It's not just a matter of a few off-hand questionable phrases that indicate some unpleasant prejudices, whole stories are brought down by what amounts to propaganda against certain races. The story that struck me the worst for this was The Street - I loved the idea of a whole area like a street that had a degree of sentience and judged its inhabitants, and the changes occurring on it; but the bulk of the story is about complaining about how Armenians and Syrians have destroyed the feel of the otherwise happy all-American road... And of course there are plenty of other races that are clearly judged wanting by Lovecraft.
Over all, I'm glad I read the collection because there are some interesting things in the stories, and they've been so influential. I'm also really relieved to have finished them.
king4's review against another edition
challenging
dark
inspiring
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.5
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
5.0
aaairm's review against another edition
2.0
I’d strongly recommend “The Best of Lovecraft” over this. Many of the stories haven’t aged well and many are recycled. It’s obvious that the author was paid by the word back in the day: most stories could be edited to half their length.
The best of Lovecraft stands the test of time, but the complete Lovecraft does not.
The best of Lovecraft stands the test of time, but the complete Lovecraft does not.
thefriendlyabyss's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
For anyone remotely interested in Lovecraft, this is a great book that captures the breadth of his writing. Some stories are better than others.