A review by davidabrams
The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe by Edgar Allan Poe

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

I started reading this volume on Halloween night 2023; I finished it seven months later. This was my first time through the COMPLETE Poe and, frankly, the journey was occasionally dull. Sure, the highlights of The Black Cat, The Tell-Tale Heart, The Raven and others are rightfully well-known and quite good, particularly for their time--but who else has suffered through "Eureka: a Prose Poem" or "The Domain of Arnheim" or a dozen other dull-blade fictions gathered here? Poe occasionally requires fortitude and endurance. But there are plenty of rewards to be found here, too--a surprising faux Rocky Mountain explorer's journal ("Julius Rodman") and of course Poe's greatest work (you'll have to pry me with a crowbar from that opinion): "Arthur Gordon Pym." This latter has been one of my favorite 19th-century novels ever since I first read it in graduate school 30-ish years ago. It's thrilling, scary, and still makes my brain exploded on the final weird page of that short novel. "Pym" makes these 1,300 pages worth it.