The Mammoth Book of Cthulhu (Mammoth Books)

No one here tries to write like Lovecraft, and the introduction indicts Lovecraft (correctly) for his racism, etc. etc. etc. Nevertheless, this is a very good collection of stories that shows a good deal of imagination. I enjoyed it from beginning to end. True to its inspiration, these stories are no place to look for a happy ending--unless your sympathies lie on the dark side!

Enjoyable, with a bit of a dead zone of duds in the middle. There are various approaches to writing Lovecraft-influenced fiction, and while at the end of the day a good story is a good story, in a Lovecraft-themeed anthology, you want the text to interact with the ideas (or the person directly, as the last story does) in some way. Most of these do. One doesn't, or not in any way that made an otherwise solid story feel Lovecraftian (that's the Yoon Ha Lee). Two stories were by authors, Langan and Stranza, who portray eruptions of the supernatural into the ordinary, except that they make the ordinary banal, and the supernatural can't rescue it from banality. The rest are great, to one degree or another, especially, but not only, the show more Malik, the Wise and the Bulkin stories, and of course, the reliably fun nasty pulp of Barron. The last, more of a meditation than a story (I bleieve the correct arcane technical term is 'essay'), confronts, like the final squamous revelation at the end of a Lovecraft story, the real horror of Lovecraft's racism and virulent anti-semitism that is genuinely more disturbing than some of the proceeding horrors show less

A very good collection, in the main, of a variety of stories with Lovecraftian themes. There's humour here, which I don't like mixed with my horror and in particular, Lovecraftian horror. There's a lot of exploration of some of the darker sides of Lovecrafts prose, and some of the themes looked at, aren't typical. This does have some more mainstream looks at his mythos and ideas but also has some more left field looks as well. This is an interesting collection which has something for all the spectrum of Lovecraft fans, so of a casual reader or full on obsessive, like, me, then you'll get something out of this.

Collection of recent Lovecraft inspired works. It's interesting to see the directions modern Lovecraftian horror has taken, moving away from the trappings of old books and haunted New England settings and exploring the themes: fear of the outsider and fear of your self. Good collection.

Not the strongest Lovecraftian anthology I've read (especially wrapping it up after Lovecraft Country), but there were some gems in here.