Reviews with content warning for Racism - The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories

I was so excited to read this book, knowing nothing of lovecraft except the concept of his books. Unfortunately, his tales are plagued. The longer stories tended to be easier to read because they had less oppressive language.
Overall, one star for whoever put these stories together, the last couple seemed to tie it all up to feel like it was all part of the same flawed world. And one other because I did actually quite enjoy "at the mountains of madness", which was also a considerable portion of the book.
However, if you're looking for cosmic horror, I'd say to look for some more recent work from other authors who aren't going to start aggressively discriminating.

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macliffe's review

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Didn’t love the writing style and too much zombie / cultish stuff.

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readerforever's review

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adventurous dark tense fast-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? No

3.5

Lovecraft is racist and it shows in his work. He’s imaginative and can write ornately which makes his racism especially dangerous. While I can appreciate cosmic horror, the fact that his is inspired by fear of his fellow human beings doesn’t sit well with me. I however love the work recently that takes Lovecraft and turns his work on its head like NK Jemisin’s great city duology and Lovecraft country.

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ed_moore's review against another edition

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dark slow-paced

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

1.5

The Call of Cthulhu: 1.75 Stars

For an iconic horror story that has inspired so much, and the most famous work of the man who coined the term ‘Lovecraftian’, ‘The Call of Cthulhu’ was extremely lacking. The narrative perspective was perhaps the greatest flaw, this being in the first person view of Thurston, however all the “action” happens only through him reading his great uncle Angell’s manuscripts and hearing recounts, in some cases recounts of recounts and then main terrifying plot element occurred within a dream of a character who is interviewed within the manuscript, placing the reader about 3 people away from any engaging events and hence nullifying any response or connection to the story. It all reads like a bland recount, and opens with an overly dramatic, almost non-fiction in tone analysis of the idea of occult which also removed any believability from the story. There is so much without explanation, the figure of ‘Cthulhu’ is very limited in appearance and not a major threat (though the cult of Cthulhu seem to be framed as the main antagonists, even still they have little fear factor and are easily subdued), and the present plot line was extremely mundane. The writing was entirely uninspiring and not to mention Lovecraft makes many racist remarks and insinuations which do absolutely nothing to help his case, just making an already weak story extremely problematic. The most unsettled I was reading this was when random classical music blurted out between chapters in my audiobook which caught me completely off guard, which is zero credit to Lovecraft’s writing.

The Dulwich Horror: 1.25 Stars

The Dulwich Horror tells of Wilbur Whateley, a boy who ages at an abnormal rate who is harbouring and summoning an entity to terrorise the town of Dulwich. This was written so poorly, it was difficult to follow, unbelievably mundane, the horror wasn’t at all threatening and the characters depicted as ‘outsiders’ and hence played the roles of the worshippers of the satanic were so heavily racialised and written in such an offensive manner. The story was so mundane and the ending came to such a swift conclusion with far too much ease in comparison to the threat that Lovecraft created.

Dagon: 2.75 Stars

This was the shortest of the three stories in the collection by a significant margin and largely benefitted from such, there was no room for Lovecraft to make a threatening entity seem extremely mundane, allowed for more individual imagination by the reader, and had little space to weave in any racist remarks. Dagon is the encounter of the speaker with a huge fish entity, that encapsulates the idea of the Lovercraftain megalophobia far better than ‘Call of Cthulhu’, ultimately Dagon is a suicide note, this encounter driving the speaker into madness, and therefore the story has enough mystery but unlike the other two resolves in at least some manner. That being said, it was still noting remarkable.

My total rating of Lovecraft’s stories is an average of each individual review.

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