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A review by jimbowen0306
The Haunter of the Dark: The H.P. Lovecraft Omnibus, #3 by August Derleth, H.P. Lovecraft
2.0
I turned to Lovecraft because I read some where that Stephen King (an author I enjoy) liked them/used them as inspiration. I can certainly see why King was drawn to them (or more accurately, elements here had echoes/ripples in King's work), it's just they sometimes felt... underdeveloped. I'd have liked to see these short stories turned into longer works that had a more developed stories (and characters), and were fully developed novels in their own right.
The stories reminded me of the warning English teachers gave my class in school. They would tell us to plan, because if you sometimes run out of time, and end up saying the main character woke up and found it had all been a dream, he'd give us detentions for a week (or something). Well in some of these stories, it felt like Lovecraft ran out of steam, and ended up writing "Well we bricked up the holes, and went on with our lives, but some of us had nightmares.", and you have no idea how much that profoundly irritated me after a while.
The stories reminded me of the warning English teachers gave my class in school. They would tell us to plan, because if you sometimes run out of time, and end up saying the main character woke up and found it had all been a dream, he'd give us detentions for a week (or something). Well in some of these stories, it felt like Lovecraft ran out of steam, and ended up writing "Well we bricked up the holes, and went on with our lives, but some of us had nightmares.", and you have no idea how much that profoundly irritated me after a while.