The Hastur Cycle

Hastur is by far the most intriguing being in the broad universe of the Cthulhu Mythos. This is a fantastic collection of very good stories, with a wide range of styles. Included are some very early "pre-Mythos" stories such as Ambrose Bierce's story that introduced the name "Hastur" as that of a pastoral deity and the hauntingly atmospheric "An Inhabitant of Carcosa"; as well as selections from Chambers' 1890s anthology The King in Yellow. Also notable is James Blish's interactive interpretation of the Blasphemous Play within the story "More Light". The only issue I had with the book is that a few of the selections bear only tentative relevance to the Unnameable One, but this is a very entertaining and creepy collection.

I've been reading this for years now and finally decided to finish it since I only had 3 or 4 stories left. As with most anthologies there's a couple good stories, a couple of passable stories and some crap. None of these stories really blew me away (the Machen story was my favorite and probably the only 4 star story). Also since these stories are all about Hastur in some way, they get kind of repetitive (especially to someone who's read just about everything Lovecraft ever wrote).