The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories

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This could mean that for a novice, the collection may get alienating here and there. If this is the very first Lovecraft material you will ever read, then I think this particular anthology might baffle you at times because the degree of difficulty to his prose that might not be accessible to a reader more used to a contemporary and more straightforward style of storytelling, particularly when it comes to horror.

Not only did Lovecraft reinvent the horror genre, he did it in a way that was utterly unheard of before.

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Although not my favorite of the Cthulhu Mythos tales, it certainly does the best job of encompassing all of the primary and lovable elements of weird tales and cosmic horror. Nothing like a good old jolly Christmas festival, eh? Wrong! This is Lovecraft we're talking about, so of course strange alien monsters and dark forbidden lore is gonna show up to crash the party. This story makes the horrors of the Necronomicon feel more real as it actually provides a quote from the fictional text of terror. The ending is similar to that of Dagon, which is one of my favorites. Despite being one of Lovecraft's early stories, it's on par with his later masterpieces such as The Shadow Over Innsmouth and Call of Cthulhu. A very short yet classic tale that touches on one of my greatest fears; the unknown horrors of the sea and the infinite secrets that it holds within itself. Discovering dark secrets and higher beings never meant to be witnessed by human eyes, being driven to madness and suicidal tendencies, hallucinatory encounters with unfathomable horrors, all of the Lovecraftian staples are present here. The writing is phenomenal, rivaling the effectiveness of his greatest works that he would go on to write at the end of his career. This anthology “The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories” of course contains most of his best stories. I will just run through them briefly, some of them I already reviewed in my The Best of H.P. Lovecraft review. Hillier’s six mesmerising, portal-like illustrations embrace the alien realities that lurk among the gambrel roofs of Lovecraft’s landscapes. By splicing Victorian portraits and lithographs with cosmic and Lovecraftian symbolism, each piece – like the stories themselves – pulls apart the familiar to reveal what lies beneath.

I wish I could rate this book purely on the merits of literary talent, but to do so would be irresponsible to those who might be swayed by my recommendation. I don't see many references to Lovecraft's personal flaws in this review section, so I feel obligated to at least mention some. H. P. Lovecraft was born in 1890 in Providence, Rhode Island, where he lived most of his life. Frequent illnesses in his youth disrupted his schooling, but Lovecraft gained a wide knowledge of many subjects through independent reading and study. He wrote many essays and poems early in his career, but gradually focused on the writing of horror stories, after the advent in 1923 of the pulp magazine Weird Tales, to which he contributed most of his fiction. His relatively small corpus of fiction—three short novels and about sixty short stories—has nevertheless exercised a wide influence on subsequent work in the field, and he is regarded as the leading twentieth-century American author of supernatural fiction. H. P. Lovecraft died in Providence in 1937. Howard Phillips Lovecraft, of Providence, Rhode Island, was an American author of horror, fantasy and science fiction. stāstu krājumā ir apkopoti daži un, iespējams, labākie no Lavkrafta stāstiem – Dagons, Ktulu aicinājums, Krāsa no kosmosa, Danvičas šausmas, Čukstētājs tumsā, Ārprāta kalnos un Ēna pār Insmūtu. Lvakrafta daiļrades pazinējs pamanīs, ka te nav neviena Sapņu cikla stāsta, bet, būsim godīgi, ar tiem var piepildīt atsevišķu stāstu krājumu.

Ancient texts, insane cults, forbidden knowledge, social recluses going mad and blasphemous abominations galore. I would lie if I pretended this book was easy to review, or to recommend. People usually either love or hate Lovecraft – I can see why, and his work is definitely not for everyone. If you can’t laugh at affected, excessively florid prose, don’t even bother. If you like the idea of sentient oozing green goo, step right up! But seriously: his thing was the ineffable, so you need to use your own imagination to make his stories creepy. All he will do is hint at what could possibly be lurking in shadows, or what those cultists might be summoning, and the rest is up to you. Most of his mysterious stories remain unsolved, and that can both frustrating and very creepy, but people who need their horror spelled out for them will not get into it. This is for those of us who love ideas like books with a mind of their own, geographies that will dive a man mad, strange not-quite-humanoid creatures, secret forgotten cults worshiping strange and ancient gods. Its companion volumes from Penguin Classics are The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories (2001), and The Dreams in the Witch House and Other Weird Stories (2004). A land of quaint gardens and cherry trees, and when the sun rose he beheld such beauty of red and white flowers, green foliage and lawns, white paths, diamond brooks, blue lakelets, carven bridges, and red-roofed pagodas.”