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sergeus's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
- Loveable characters? No
2.75
I had expected a larger collection of shorter stories to mean that I would blaze through this book more quickly - that with more mile markers I'd build up more of a pace. What actually happened was that because I was "starting afresh" so many times, I was monstrously slow in reading this book.
In the end, the final two stories (which occupy about half of the book) only took me a week or so to read, and I got a lot more out of them than all of the previous ones. The continuity of characters makes a big difference.
There's a lot more of what I expected of Lovecraft in this book than there was in the previous two. You can see that he's leaning into the otherworldly and unnameable horrors that he's so well known for.
It's again interesting to read a book that is close to modernity but more removed from the present day. The characters regularly talk about recognizing handwriting as though it were some incontrovertible proof of identity like a fingerprint match, and that anyone could make such a comparison with some amount of familiarity.
It's also clear (as his reputation indicates) that Lovecraft thought some kinds of people were incontrovertibly of a "higher quality" than others. There's racism in that and it's remarkably casual - not essential to the plot, just thrown in as if it's an obvious truth. He draws a bunch of lines between folks, about noble lineages and the like as well, as if that immediately set those people apart.
The out-of-time nature also shows up (or shews up) in the actual prose itself. Some of it is Lovecraft being from 100 years ago, but he clearly does it intentionally as well. Parts of the writing jump back farther into the past and then the language variation gets really thick. It was remarkably helpful to actually try to speak some of the olden-times quoted letter to understand them as they were written vaguely phonetically. (It's my understanding that that was common before widespread standardization of literacy, so I suspect Lovecraft was aiming to imitate that.)
Overall, I'm glad to be getting more into the meat of the cosmic horror that I started reading Lovecraft for. But this book struggled more than the previous ones with feeling directionless for the first half, until it focused in on the bigger stories in the latter half.
The latter half set up some groundwork that I hope will pay off later, not in specific events, but in the foundations of how the mythos works. There's just the one nod to our old friend Randolph Carter, who I believe we'll see again.
In the end, the final two stories (which occupy about half of the book) only took me a week or so to read, and I got a lot more out of them than all of the previous ones. The continuity of characters makes a big difference.
There's a lot more of what I expected of Lovecraft in this book than there was in the previous two. You can see that he's leaning into the otherworldly and unnameable horrors that he's so well known for.
It's again interesting to read a book that is close to modernity but more removed from the present day. The characters regularly talk about recognizing handwriting as though it were some incontrovertible proof of identity like a fingerprint match, and that anyone could make such a comparison with some amount of familiarity.
It's also clear (as his reputation indicates) that Lovecraft thought some kinds of people were incontrovertibly of a "higher quality" than others. There's racism in that and it's remarkably casual - not essential to the plot, just thrown in as if it's an obvious truth. He draws a bunch of lines between folks, about noble lineages and the like as well, as if that immediately set those people apart.
The out-of-time nature also shows up (or shews up) in the actual prose itself. Some of it is Lovecraft being from 100 years ago, but he clearly does it intentionally as well. Parts of the writing jump back farther into the past and then the language variation gets really thick. It was remarkably helpful to actually try to speak some of the olden-times quoted letter to understand them as they were written vaguely phonetically. (It's my understanding that that was common before widespread standardization of literacy, so I suspect Lovecraft was aiming to imitate that.)
Overall, I'm glad to be getting more into the meat of the cosmic horror that I started reading Lovecraft for. But this book struggled more than the previous ones with feeling directionless for the first half, until it focused in on the bigger stories in the latter half.
The latter half set up some groundwork that I hope will pay off later, not in specific events, but in the foundations of how the mythos works. There's just the one nod to our old friend Randolph Carter, who I believe we'll see again.
cayleighgb's review against another edition
The case of Charles Dexter ward is relatively long and wasn’t exactly what I was expecting in a collection of short stories. I’ll come back to it later and read it as a stand-alone.
italian_herbs's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
mysterious
reflective
tense
slow-paced
3.5
“The Case of Charles Dexter Ward” is definitely the best short story added in this collection.
booknooknoggin's review
3.0
Some stories I hated as they were weird and about dreams. A few were exceptionally good, such as The Hound, and The Charles Dexter Ward story that was his last work. I would still recommend that those who love gothic literature still read this.
eviee's review
5.0
"The other dropped on all fours to run toward the car."
That's the sentence that made me want to nope out of the story, particularly because it's about a person. I really love this one, it's so creepy and atmospheric.
That's the sentence that made me want to nope out of the story, particularly because it's about a person. I really love this one, it's so creepy and atmospheric.
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