A fun (and rather disturbing) take on the advice column genre. Dear Cthulhu leads you into the dark corners of the human and elder god mind, dispensing advice that is much more likely to get you jailed or damned than to actually help you solve your problems. Cthulhu's snarky, humorous and dismissing take on human problems is sure to make you laugh so if you like twisted humor and really bad advice, this is definitely the book for you! ( )

Dear Cthulhu: Have a Dark Day is 2009 paperback from Dark Quest Books. It has 94 pages of text but note the dimensions of 9x6.1"; it takes about a half hour to read. The cover art is by the author, Patrick Thomas, and is probably the best thing about the book. The only thing I know about Mr. Thomas is his somewhat overwrought story "Surely You Joust" in Cthulhu Unbound #2, although his web site shows him to have published quite a few short stories. He just hasn't crossed over into Cthulhu mythos country very much until now. I gather for a few years he has been writing a satirical advice column, Dear Cthulhu, where everyone's favorite elder god answers questions in the manner of Ann Landers. This book is the first in a series of compilations of these columns.

It's not a bad idea but the execution isn't all that hot. I was more bored than amused. Maybe it works better in small doses between stories in an anthology or magazine. Try reading only one or two `letters' at a time. If you want to see something similar done better, check out Calls for Cthulhu on YouTube, particularly episode 6 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njcB7xN0Pec). Maybe I'll pick up the next volume because I'm a ridiculous completist, but I definitely recommend checking it out before you shell out the somewhat exorbitant $9.95 list price. ( )