Overall Rating - 5.5/10

Plot - 6/10

Above average. Plot was medium-paced with some interesting twists and went in some fun, unexpected directions.

World/Concepts - 7/10

Good. Digging through the Lovecraft canon for spooky stuff to put into the world was lots of fun. I love math so it was an easy win for this book when mathematics was integrated with the Lovecraftian lore.

Characters - 6/10

Above average. Nothing to write home about in my opinion. The main cast was characterized well, but development there wasn’t much exploration or development.

Prose - 4/10

Below average. Mostly average writing, but there was a lot of telling not showing and towards the end there were some odd tense changes that really took me out of it.

Themes - 3/10

Poor. Lovecraftian fiction is fighting an uphill battle in my opinion. So few authors are able to truly drive home the themes around cosmic horror and get readers to feel small, insignificant, and frightened by their unimportance. Unfortunately, Howard doesn’t stick the landing here. His tendency to tell instead of show made it difficult to immerse in the moments that made the characters feel those sweet sweet cosmically horrific feelings.

Enjoyment - 7/10

Good. Overall I had fun reading Carter & Lovecraft. Noir + Lovecraft is such a fun pairing, regardless of how well or not it was executed. There were elements I didn’t enjoy, and the writing wasn’t for me, but nothing could get in the way of how enjoyable it was to read the main character encounter a bunch of eldritch BS integrated into a modern setting.

Content Warnings

A review by ilovewednesdays Carter & Lovecraft by Jonathan L. Howard