The Gods of HP Lovecraft

Currently on offer via LT Early Reviewers, for those participating:

The Gods of HP Lovecraft by Martha Wells (JournalStone)

Description: The Gods of H.P. Lovecraft: a brand new anthology that collects the twelve principal deities of the Lovecraftian Mythos and sets them loose within its pages. Featuring the biggest names in horror and dark fantasy, including many NY Times bestsellers, full of original fiction and artwork, and individual commentary on each of the deities by Donald Tyson.

About the book: Lovecraft’s bestiary of gods has had a major influence on the horror scene from the time these sacred names were first evoked. Cthulhu, Azathoth, Nyarlathotep, Yog-Sothoth—this pantheon of the horrific calls to mind the very worst of cosmic nightmares and the very darkest signs of human nature. The Gods of H.P. Lovecraft brings together twelve all-new Mythos tales from:

Cthulhu (Adam Nevill) – Yog-Sothoth (Martha Wells) – Azathoth (Laird Barron) – Nyarlathotep (Bentley Little) – Shub-Niggurath (David Liss) – Tsathoggua (Brett Talley) – The Mi-Go (Christopher Golden & James A. Moore) – Night-gaunts (Jonathan Maberry) – Elder Things (Joe Lansdale) – Great Race (Rachel Caine) – Yig (Douglas Wynne) – The Deep Ones (Seanan McGuire)

With commentary on each deity by Donald Tyson

See the September 2015 giveaway list if you're interested.

>1 elenchus:

Nice! Put in a request for the eBook version (there doesn't seem to be as much demand for that). Thanks for the heads-up. :)

Thanks for the tip! I would have been sad to have failed even to request it, like I missed out on that Foucault volume not so long ago.

I was tempted but in the end opted not to request it. I have unread titles I want to read more, but I'll be curious to hear what you think. There's something seriously questionable about the algorithm if neither of you win it!

>4 elenchus: There's something seriously questionable about the algorithm if neither of you win it!

Heh. I've got a pretty good track record of receiving LTER requests. But at this point, that's resulted in a fair handful of unreviewed books-in-hand that might count against me.

Fairly expansive definition of "Gods" methinks.

I'd request one, except I can't in good conscience promise to review anything in the near future.

Snagged one and very much looking forward to reading it quickly. Have some travel coming up...!

What about @AndreasJ, @paradoxosalpha, @artturnerjr ... did you request a copy? Were you awarded one?

>8 elenchus:

Yup, requested and won one. Beginner's luck, I suppose. :)

Didn't request one. September's been a horribly busy month for me.

Yes, I was awarded one. I'm looking forward to its arrival.

Here's another winner.

Promises to have a good set of reviews and maybe a discussion here, it's my vicarious participation in the book.

I got a review copy. Given that it's Lovecraft related, I'll probably do a review for Innsmouth Free Press.

In anticipation of this one, I just read Tyson's Necronomicon and posted my review.

Seems like it is a good appetiser!

My copy arrived today. I'll tackle it after I've finished reading Peter Straub's Hellfire Club. That should be soon, because the Straub is reading super-fast.

Got my eBook copy last month. I'm on the third story. Frankly wasn't all that impressed by the first two tales, but the one I'm on now (Laird Barron's "We Smoke the Northern Lights") is thus far a savory Barronial blend of noir and cosmic horror, so things are looking up (Donald Tyson's descriptions of the various Lovecraftian deities involved which follow each story are pretty cool, too).

I'm reading the penultimate story, and I've started drafting my review. It should be up this week.

>18 artturnerjr: Got a review copy myself, and I'm also on Barron's story -- which is the first half of a novella coming out in a couple of days X's for Eyes. I've heard Barron state the two halves can be read separately.

I liked the first story. The second story didn't do much for me.

That Martha Wells story is pretty terrible, I think. The characters and setting were obviously developed for a novel series having little to do with Yog-Sothothery, and she didn't put anything in the story that could make me care about them one bit. Steampunk lady P.I. with half-elf and young gay wizard henchmen? Not what I signed on for.

>21 paradoxosalpha:

Yeah, my sentiments exactly. If you're already a fan of her work, it's probably perfectly entertaining, but I'd never even heard of her before, so I was mostly just left scratching my head and feeling annoyed.

My review is up.

>23 paradoxosalpha:

Thanks! I'll refrain from reading it until I've written my own review, though - don't want it to influence my thoughts on the book.

>20 RandyStafford:, >22 artturnerjr:

Reading the earlier LT reviews, I'm surprised to find fairly uniform liking for the Wells story, with several singling it out for special praise.

>23 paradoxosalpha:

Loved the reference to Deities and Demigods, which I may have shelved in the basement somewhere. I've been musing lately, sporadically, on how influential Gygax and his co-conspirators were on my understanding of myth and legend. Your reference reminded me that, no doubt, I was introduced to Yog-Sothothery via AD&D, well before reading any particular tale. Could be fun to pull out a few of the manuals and flip through them again.

Of related interest, RandyStafford has his blog review of Cthulhu Lives! linked under the book's home page here on LT. Another Early Reviewer title.

>23 paradoxosalpha:

Excellent review. I too appreciated your noting the Deities and Demigods influence.

>27 elenchus:

Damn, how'd I miss requesting that one?

>26 elenchus:, >28 gwendetenebre:

Though I neglected to mention it in my review, I'm pretty sure Deities and Demigods was in fact where I first encountered Yog-Sothothery, although I quickly followed it up with a trip to the public library and a read of The Outsider and Others.

I wasn't sure I remembered that title as an ER option, either!

I've gotten a lot from this thread and the reviews from the group's members, so maybe we post a notice here whenever we see something on offer. I don't recall seeing anything in the December batch, which just went live and still accepts requests.

ETA: Actually, one current title might be of interest (I didn't request it):

Death Rays and the Popular Media, 1876–1939 by William Fanning, a McFarland title.

Noting here that LT is routing links above to the later edition of Legends & Lore or to another 3rd edition, which doesn't include the Yog-Sothothery entries. The original edition apparently didn't clear copyright and had to be redone. Plus the cover art is so superior!

>31 elenchus:

The Deities & Demigods edition history is interesting; I researched it when writing my review.

The original TSR edition (which I owned shortly after it came out) had chapters on historical pantheons, Arthurian legends, Cthulhu Mythos, Melinbonean Mythos, Nehwon Mythos, and "Non-human Deities." (The last was all original to the D&D "world.") Chaosium Games had obtained licenses for role-playing game implementations from the Lovecraft estate (Call of Cthulhu) and Michael Moorcock (Stormbringer), and they threatened legal action against TSR. TSR agreed to include a permission statement crediting Chaosium in the second edition. In the third and subsequent editions (retitled Legends and Lore, largely due to the ongoing bad press about D&D as insanity-making occult awfulness), the "offending" chapters were removed, but they forgot to take out the permission statement!

I believe there have been other, more recent books called Deities & Demigods for "Dungeons & Dragons nth edition," but they are of no interest in terms of their influence on a broader culture.

Thanks for that, paradoxosalpha: I got a superficial overview from reviews but none mentioned that the copyright pressures came from another gaming company, rather than author estates.

I think AD&D generally, and perhaps Deities and Demigods specifically, motivated me to read both Elric and Fafhrd & the Gray Mouser. I didn't read Cthulhu until much later, once I'd forgotten the original reference and had since read plenty of other mentions of Lovecraft. I agree that later D&D editions don't have the same cultural cache, which isn't a bad thing in itself, just recognition of how seminal it was for so many of us.

There's a new book out on the cultural influence of Gygax, I forget the name. Anyone familiar with it?

>33 elenchus:

The Gygax book is Empire of Imagination, and has just been the subject of a pretty thorough review by LTer Stormraven.

>30 elenchus: I asked for a review copy of Death Rays and the Popular Media. I came across some excerpts from it when I was researching some historical details in Frois Froisland's The Man with the X-Ray Eyes & Other Stories from the Front. It looked intriguing. (And verified an historical reference in Froisland.)

Agreed. Thought it was pretty dreadful. There was an ostensibly similar story with a Werewolf private detective that initially had me rolling my eyes but I was partially won over by its hard boiled style and being firmly placed in the modern world. Less convinced by the actual plot. Something do with Nightgaunts and the Dreamlands but not really sure it made any sense.

>36 Linden_Dunham:

Yes, I thought the Jonathan Maberry Nightgaunt story was a little better than the Martha Wells piece. As "hardboiled" goes, though, it fell far short of the Raymond Chandler homage the Deep Ones read this week in "The Big Fish."

John Coulthart's illustrations for The Gods of H.P. Lovecraft:

http://www.johncoulthart.com/feuilleton/2015/12/11/the-gods-of-hp-lovecraft/

Finally finished this one yesterday and have posted my review. Here's the LT version:

https://www.librarything.com/work/16420958/reviews/123384750

...and here's the slightly fancier version (with hyperlinks and so forth) on my blog:

http://desirousofeverythingatthesametime.blogspot.com/2016/01/the-gods-of-hp-lov...

Latest relevant offering from LT's Early Reviewers program:

Cthulhu Lies Dreaming:Twenty-Three Tales of the Weird and Cosmic by Salome Jones (Ghostwoods Books)

Description: “The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.”

The classic American horror author H. P. Lovecraft coined the term ‘weird fiction’ in the 1920s. Even today, in our rational world of wonder, his legacy of cosmic horror slumbers on. Deep in the recesses of our unconscious minds, we suspect it to be the truth – that we begin to glance the shape of true reality, and it is not to our liking. Not at all.

Modern science, with its experts and specialities, is a fragmentary thing. In this, it reflects the human mind. We keep our thoughts in boxes, broken into digestible shards. It is safer. Cosmic horror warns us that what we fondly imagine to be reality is just a thin skin of light and substance over endless gulfs of insanity. Gather too much knowledge, make the wrong connections, and the truth can no longer be denied.

The amazing tales lovingly collected in Cthulhu Lies Dreaming are fragments of that truth. Treat them with the caution that they deserve. Each will offer you glimpses behind the skin of the world, leading you closer and closer to the edge of the abyss. Knowledge may bring wisdom, but it also offers far darker gifts to the curious.

The truth is indeed out there – and it hungers.

Available in .pdf, .mobi, .epub

Clicking on above link takes you to the February 2016 Early Reviewers batch, for anyone wanting to request a copy.

Bumping to ensure no-one interested in making a request for the above book misses the opportunity. Usually open through the end of the month.

>40 elenchus:

I saw that but don't think I'm gonna request it; I'm already up to my ears in unread weird fiction. :/

I'm also not requesting, I get pretty much what I need from this group!

Not available to me unfortunately.

Finished this one awhile ago but finally posted my review today.

>45 RandyStafford:

Good stuff! Is there a story you could name as a favorite?

Intellectual pleasure: "Call the Name". (The second story I've read from Nevill. I may have to look up one of his novels.)

Most Memorable: "In the Mad Mountains".

Most affecting: "Deep, Deep Down, Below the Waters".

>47 RandyStafford:

"Deep, Deep Down, Below the Waters"

I liked that one a lot, too. Definitely need to look into more of Ms. McGuire's fiction in the near future.