This collection of Holmes or Holmesian characters meeting the Lovecraftian-themed horror was interesting. The stories were uneven though, with some lacking the feel of Lovecraftian horror and others barely linked to Sherlock Holmes or Watson. Still, I enjoyed the book overall.

Try this book if you enjoy both Sherlock Holmes and H. P. Lovecraft. ( )

Pretty average, except for A Study in Emerald, which works as an affectionate tribute to Sherlock Holmes with a decent twist. It plays a bit loose with Lovecraft but in a good way - some of the stories don't seem to get Lovecraftian horror at all.

The big problem is that the Holmes format and Lovecraft format are totally at odds with each other. Lovecraft stories end with a horror ending where people lose their sanity, nothing is understandable and there's no hope for the future. In a Holmes story the ending is (usually) happy, everything is resolved and everything is explained as being entirely logical, while clues throughout the story make the ending satisfying. These stories typically follow a pretty unhappy medium. Even attempts to portray some permanent effect on Holmes' or Watson's mind falls flat when the next story has them yet again baffled and confused about the idea of Lovecraftian cults existing, despite them having just confronted them. Obviously that's somewhat unavoidable in a short story collection like this but it is a little silly. Most of the stories have unpleasant things happen to the characters yet Holmes and Watson escape mostly unscathed. Multiple stories seem to have a very loose handle on Holmes' character and speaking style, which is pretty jarring. One story dedicates pages to a lovingly described firefight in the London sewers, which is neither very Lovecraftian or Sherlockian. One story is based on Moriarty recording his plans to control the world on a wax cylinder, live, while he's doing them. There's a story that featured something from Jewish folklore that almost felt anti-semitic because of the weird way it was handled.

I feel like more stories could have done with trying to break away from some of the Lovecraft mythology while still keeping some of the spirit. Some of them quote Lovecraft stuff but make it incredibly mundane.

I guess I feel most of the stories failed to work as either a Lovecraft story or a Holmes story and ended up not making much of an impact. It was alright enough but just not exciting and too much repetition of basic story premises. ( )

This large collection of stories that try to combine Sherlock Holmes and H.P. Lovecraft is consistently entertaining, but other than Neil Gaiman's opening tale, which manages to surprise, nothing else rises above the ordinary. Even the few stories narrated by Dr. Watson lack the feel of Doyle's original tales, and in these and the other stories I can't help but feel that these are not the Dr. Watson and Sherlock Holmes I have come to know. As for the Lovecraftian elements in these stories, there are some grim things to be sure, but none of the writers writes like Lovecraft, so the effect of the horrors is less immediate. Even the appearance of H.G. Wells and (the fictional) Dr. Nikola don't liven things up that much. This one is more of a miss than a hit, for sure. ( )

This is an excellent collection with a very good set of stories. If you like either Sherlock Holmes, or the works of H.P. Lovecraft, then you will like this anthology. The writers capture both the traits of the great detective with the ambiance and feel of Lovecraft's mythology. This is a good book to just immerse yourself and escape reality for a while, even if it can be scary at times. The stories range from Holmes early career all the way to the time after his retirement. This is definitely one to recommend and share. ( )

Originally I was going to pass on this collection since the concept sounded too gimmicky. But then I read and was impressed by the odd mood of Neil Gaiman's award-winning "A Study in Emerald", so I decided to give it a try. Besides no less reverential a Lovecraft scholar than Peter Cannon combined the two mythos in his The Lovecraft Papers. It's not at all certain Lovecraft would have minded either since he was taken with Sherlock Holmes at an early age and allowed his friends to play in the horrible funhouse - especially the library annex - he created in his Yog-Sothory.

While I've read and enjoyed Arthur Conan Doyle's Holmes stories, I'm not very familiar with the many additions to that literary universe by other authors. (This one is authorized by his estate.) So, I approached this as a Lovecraft fan and not a Holmes fan.

The stories are arranged in chronological order of setting, and the most striking thing about them is how many don't feature the standard pairing of Holmes and Watson.

The London of Gaiman's story is a strange, uneasy place where the monstrosities of famous Victorian fantastic literature often are referenced in handbills, and we don't follow Holmes or Watson but another doctor and detective. All is explained in a disturbing ending. Holmes and Watson don't even get a mention in Elizabeth Bear's "Tiger! Tiger!". Instead, in India, we follow Irene Adler and Colonel Moran, two of the more famous minor characters in the Holmes series, on a tiger hunt with a strange, unseen menace, Great Game machinations, and Afghan magic all playing a part. I liked it better than Bear's more famous Cthulhu stories, "Shoggoths in Bloom" and "Mongoose". Like the Gaiman, it works in plot and as a mood piece.

The same is not true of Steve Perry's "The Case of the Wavy Dagger" which strikes me as more a martial arts warrior babe story and Cthulhuish only via the context of being included here. No Watson again in Steven-Eliot Altman's "A Case of Royal Blood". Instead, H. G. Wells plays Holmes' assistant as the two investigate a poltergeist haunting the royal family of the Netherlands. A fruitful conflation of Wells and Lovecraft though not as stunning as what Brian Aldiss did with "The Saliva Tree". Watson doesn't have to share the stage at all with Holmes in James Lowder's "The Weeping Mask". More Conan Doyleish adventure than Lovecraftian horror, it's an effective account of Watson's encounter with a strange Afghan cult.

And no Watson again in Brian Stableford's "Art in the Blood". As usual, when he puts his had to working in a classic fictional setting, Stableford delivers in a superb effort which has the Diogenes Club investigating the death of one of its agents and trying to help a seaman suffering a crippling disease.

Finally, Holmes and Watson show up together in a Poppy Z. Brite's and David Ferguson's rather perfunctory "The Curious Case of Miss Violet Stone" which features Lovecraft's the Great Race.

Barbara Hambly throws William Hope Hodgson's Carnacki into the blender with a little referenced Lovecraft story, "The Rats in the Wall", and pours out the effective "The Adventure of the Antiquarian's Niece". I think John Pelan's "The Mystery of the Worm" is doing something similar with a Fu Manchuish villain and another, less famous Lovecraft story, "The Nameless City". It's another involving story though more on the scientific detective side of things than horror.

Paul Finch's "The Mystery of the Hanged Man's Puzzle" is just good pulpy fun with Holmes delivered a taunting challenge by an executed criminal on his last morning, a challenge to avoid worldwide destruction. The action in London's sewers reminded me a bit of that classic Dr. Who episode "The Talons of Weng-Chiang". However, a bit of high implausibility involving a Gatling gun took me right out of the story towards the end.

Nothing explicitly Lovecraftian shows up in Tim Lebbon's mood piece "The Horror of Many Faces" which involves a rash of vicious murders in London - all committed by formerly upstanding citizens.

We always suspected Watson was a bit modest in the matter of the ladies, so it was nice to see an old lover, an Afghan princess, show up in "The Adventure of the Arab's Manuscript" by Michael Reaves.

Former paleontologist Caitlin Kiernan puts her training to good use in one of the very best stories in the book, "The Drowned Geologist". A story told via letter and hints of a horror from deep time - to say nothing of the lurking, nagging unease generated from a nearby shipwreck, this is another Kiernan story which uses the vitality of Lovecraft's themes without slavishly copying the plots and style.

John P. Vourlis' "A Case of Insomnia" is merely ok, a story of mysterious plague of insomnia. Better is Richard A. Lupoff's "The Adventure of the Voorish Sign". Lupoff has done some stunning takeoffs on Lovecraft in all kinds of veins from silly to experimental science fiction. This story is Lupoff mostly in his mystery writer mode and told in a straight detective style as Holmes searches for a missing husband.

I did not like F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre would be humor tale "The Adventure of the Exham Priory". It was yet another example of that author's nostalgic Victorianism.

While I did like David Niall Wilson and Patricia Lee Macomber's "Death Did Not Become Him", it seemed Lovecraftian only by virtue of a couple of paragraphs wedged in at the last moment.

Simon Clark's "Nightmare in Wax" borrows a stylistic trick from Lovecraft's "A Whisperer in the Darkness" - partially telling the tale through the wax cylinder recordings of one Professor Moriarty and his work at draining a flooded village to uncover ...

Three weak stories and excellent work in the Gaiman, Stableford, and Kiernan pieces. Not a perfect collection judged by any measure but good enough for a Lovecraftian to pick up. ( )