Scan barcode
grapeoldone's review
1.0
Pretty disappointed in this book. I bought it based on the story "Her Acres of Pastoral Playground" by Mike Allen, which is included in the book. This was an awesome, creepy story, but the rest of the book was a let down. I'd recommend checking out Mike Allen's story in audio form at Drabblecast and give the rest of this book a pass.
theartolater's review
4.0
If you've ever thought of what the world might be like after R'lyeh rises out of the Pacific and Cthulhu begins his reign on Earth, have I got the book for you!
This is a collection of short stories. That it's a collection of short stories is really the only significant downfall to this book, given the different visions of many of the authors, but the end result is a great mix of pulpy Lovecraftian fun and good old fashioned creepy horror. This probably holds zero value to anyone not into the Cthulhu mythos in general, but in terms of what I was hoping for? This more than delivered.
This is a collection of short stories. That it's a collection of short stories is really the only significant downfall to this book, given the different visions of many of the authors, but the end result is a great mix of pulpy Lovecraftian fun and good old fashioned creepy horror. This probably holds zero value to anyone not into the Cthulhu mythos in general, but in terms of what I was hoping for? This more than delivered.
house_of_hannah's review
In the first paragraph flowers are compared to a penis, and the very first story ends in tentacle rape. Hard pass.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Rape and Murder
brucemri's review
4.0
The quality here is fairly lumpy, with several stories that I'd be inclined to give 3 stars or fewer to. But the good pieces are excellent, and bring up the overall quality substantially.
adubrow's review
Pretty much just gross and unpleasant. I would have continued if there had been less dysfunctional human interest angles and more monsters.
otterno11's review
1.0
Wow, this anthology may have been among the least successful collections of Cthulhu Mythos stories I have ever subjected myself to. Nearly every story was awful, cliched, and unpleasant, in a surprisingly repetitive way. The exceedingly middle aged, male, and white authors (with only the Japanese writer Ken Asamatsu to break up the whitebread monotony) each endeavored to detail all of the ways in which “mankind” are sheep, along with some seriously gross, awkward sex scenes (that’s not even including the obligatory tentacle rape, of course). It is pretty obvious the authors felt they were being “edgy” but in a way that made them seem more like obnoxious 12 year olds than mature writers of cosmic horror.
Perhaps the theme of the collection had promise, with plenty of room for thought provoking, if not scary, takes on Lovecraft’s creations and the eschatology of his fictional world and all of it’s dark hints of deep geologic time and the very ephemeral place of human experience in an infinite universe. One or two of the stories brush the surface of this, particularly “The New Pauline Corpus” by Matt Cardin, which deals with some interesting theological implications of cosmic horror but is itself a bit dull, but these glimmers are overwhelmed by florid crap. Unfortunately, there is very little else that delves any deeper than tentacles, and like much of contemporary “Cthulhu Mythos” writing, seems never to have heard of the idea of subtlety. At best, stories like John Langan’s “The Shallows” and Richard A. Lupoff’s “Nothing Personal,” are just uninspiring breaks from tedious schlock.
For the most part, Cthulhu and various other Great Old Ones lumber about like Godzilla stomping on cities and making the populace go insane (that sure sounds original, doesn’t it?). The stories even make the Cthulhu-kaiju connection explicit, though putting a lampshade on it doesn’t excuse cliched writing. Generally, for the most part the stories themselves lumber along until their own dumb, unsatisfying conclusions. As we’ve been seeing lately, there have been a new crop of authors coming at Lovecraftian pastiches and tropes in some surprising and refreshing ways, but here we see the sexist, racist, boringly ossified state of things with the old guard of Lovecraftian fiction, where nothing is fresh; weird fiction bereft of anything weird.
Perhaps the theme of the collection had promise, with plenty of room for thought provoking, if not scary, takes on Lovecraft’s creations and the eschatology of his fictional world and all of it’s dark hints of deep geologic time and the very ephemeral place of human experience in an infinite universe. One or two of the stories brush the surface of this, particularly “The New Pauline Corpus” by Matt Cardin, which deals with some interesting theological implications of cosmic horror but is itself a bit dull, but these glimmers are overwhelmed by florid crap. Unfortunately, there is very little else that delves any deeper than tentacles, and like much of contemporary “Cthulhu Mythos” writing, seems never to have heard of the idea of subtlety. At best, stories like John Langan’s “The Shallows” and Richard A. Lupoff’s “Nothing Personal,” are just uninspiring breaks from tedious schlock.
For the most part, Cthulhu and various other Great Old Ones lumber about like Godzilla stomping on cities and making the populace go insane (that sure sounds original, doesn’t it?). The stories even make the Cthulhu-kaiju connection explicit, though putting a lampshade on it doesn’t excuse cliched writing. Generally, for the most part the stories themselves lumber along until their own dumb, unsatisfying conclusions. As we’ve been seeing lately, there have been a new crop of authors coming at Lovecraftian pastiches and tropes in some surprising and refreshing ways, but here we see the sexist, racist, boringly ossified state of things with the old guard of Lovecraftian fiction, where nothing is fresh; weird fiction bereft of anything weird.
More...