The Book of Cthulhu

Surprised myself by diving head first into this anthology, since I don;t read as many short stories as I think I should. Lots of great, even classic takes on Lovecraft, whose own works I can take or leave, to be honest. Here we get gothic, noir, dark comedy, lyrical excess, violence, creepiness, creepy violence and oodles of nastiness. Not all the stories quite work out - The Doom That Came To Innsmouth goes south near the end after a promising start and I'm not a fan of John Langan's stuff, but a lot of the rest is spectacularly good, giving me new and old writers to check out. Happy New Year! Cthulu f'thagn!

One of best lovecraft inspired reprint anthology on the market. Ross Lockhart is fantastic and longtime caretaker and cheerleader for the Lovecraftian genre, and I believe this is the first anthology of the kind he edited. There are a few stories which drag a little, or aren't among my favorites, but there are stellar entries by Caitlyn Kiernan, Charles Stross, Michael Shea (a frequently anthologized Fat Face), Elizabeth Bear, Kage Baker, Edward Morris, Cherie Priest, and Brian McNaughton. Definitely worth the read if you haven't seen these stories elsewhere.

This is a nice collection of Lovecraft-inspired stories - some are very close uses of the Cthulhu "Mythos", others are more fanciful or take elements of Lovecraft's style or attitude with less clear use of Cthulhu himself - which makes it a nice, varied collection. I think the editor also did a nice job with the arrangement, so that the stories flow well.

I will say that I was quite disappointed in the copyediting on this book, which was so bad that it interfered with my ability to enjoy the stories, because I kept having to stop and read around the copy errors to figure out what was going on. Fully 40% of the quotations are without start quotes or without end quotes, which can lead to confusion about when a quote exists and when it's show more narrative statement. Words are clearly missing from sentences, and there are misspellings - probably the worst offender of this was the use of "accept" for "except". Errors like these make a book rough going, and I don't know that many readers would keep slogging it out just to enjoy the stories. And that's a real shame, because the stories are compelling, and I found most of them enjoyable and clever! So, A+ for content, but D- for format. I think this may be a new or possibly independent publisher - if so, I hope that they can obtain some better help on proofreading, because it's a good product and a shame to have made it so unnecessarily difficult. show less

Fun collection of short stories. The stories, like most horror collections, are uneven in tone and impact.

It's still a great book for October spookiness and the cosmic horrors of Lovecraft's world. It's enjoyable!

A good collection. Some I’d seen before, but some newer ones. I’m always surprised how different writers interpret Cthulhuness. Some are pure WTF, others are really interesting.

A hit-or-miss collection. Some fairly lame stories as well as quite good ones. Standouts include Andromeda Among the Stars (Caitlin R Kiernan), The Infernal History of the Ivybridge Twins (Molly Tanzer), and The Oram County Whoosit (Steve Duffy).

Mostly good and disturbing horror stories. I could only read a few at a time. It took several years to work through the collection.