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Nov 24, 2009

Werner rated it:

Doyle's Sherlock Holmes canon and Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos have both long been favorite subjects for pastiches; and given the number of contemporary writers who are fans of both, it's not surprising to find an anthology bringing them together. (The antithetical character of the juxtaposition is more apparent than real: Doyle eschewed the supernatural in his Holmes stories; but as Holmes observes in one of the stories here, we're dealing here with science, not magic --and Doyle's own Holmes st More...

5 comments like (7 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Nathanielk rated it:

The ultimate pastiche: Sherlock Holmes meets the denizens of H.P. Lovecraft's sinister universes. Two writers who have not only been imitated, but whose characters/settings have been used by countless others. The combo is even better. A Study in Emerald is just one of the many little gems in this book. Probably best that you have read at least one Cthulu mythos tale first though: just to know what is being lampooned or venerated.

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Feb 28, 2008

Mike rated it:

Oh man.
I love "A Study In Emerald". Love it. I've read some of the other stories in the book and have liked them pretty well, but I love "A Study In Emerald".
In case you don't know this is basically a collection of stories that break down to being Sherlock Holmes vs. Cthulu. And the first story is "A Study In Emerald" by [author:Neil Gaiman}. It's brilliant. It shows why Neil Gaiman is a master of his craft. It's chilling and thought provoking and just g More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Oct 30, 2007

Mary rated it:

How could this book possibly go wrong? Cthulhu is awesome! Sherlock Holmes is awesome! Put them together, and you ought to get double the awesome. And yet, only a few of the stories managed to strike a balance between the two worlds that actually works. A Study In Emerald, by Neil Gaiman, is by far the best story in the collection and reason enough to buy the book all on its own.

Though the other stories tend to pale in comparison, there are a handful more that are worth reading, a More...

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Oct 13, 2011

Riju rated it:

"Shadows over Baker Street" is an ingenious (if not singular) attempt by Ballantine Books to superimpose the gigantic persona of Sherlock Holmes upon the weirdly menacing landscape of Cthulhu, under the editorship of Michael Reaves and John Pelan. The authority of these two as well as the host of authors invited by them to undertake this `mission' is irreproachable. But to an aficionado of either genre, the crux of the matter is to find out who has been disparaged by whom (although the More...

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Jun 06, 2011

Kathy rated it:

This anthology of short stories revolve around a central theme of Sherlock Holmes…with a twist, an H.P. Lovecraft twist. Every tale involves the supernatural and it's an intriguing mix of the feel of Holmes' England and Watson's companionship. The disconcerting aspect is not the supernatural as much as it’s the individual authors creating future histories for each man and none of those histories connect. As I read, I couldn't understand what happened to that second marriage or how the various au More...

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Jan 25, 2010

Nathan rated it:

I'd love to give it 5 stars, but I feel there's only so much pastiche can achieve, even if it is as inspired as the short stories in this collection. Now, that said, if they were all on par with Neil Gaiman's "A Study in Emerald", I'd be whining that I couldn't go up to 6 stars & begging for another installment.

When I first read this collection about a year ago I liked it well enough, being much more well-versed on the Lovecraft side of the equation than the Holmes. But credi More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Apr 29, 2011

Brenna rated it:

Mixing Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and H.P. Lovecraft is just a fascinating premise. While a few of the stories fall short, this collection is entertaining and well worth the read. My favorite stories in the collection are as follows:

"A Study in Emerald," Neil Gaiman - This is the story that made me buy the collection. I read it in Gaiman's book Fragile Things, and thoroughly enjoyed it. The ending is excellent and while the story is pure Gaiman, it is also an excellent homage More...

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May 25, 2011

Cris rated it:

In my experience, most anthologies contain stories that vary in quality. Not here. I found the Shadows over Baker Street to be of a uniformly high quality. Which is not to say that I enjoyed all the stories equally, or at all. "A Study in Emerald" by Neil Gaiman wowed me the most. <spoiler>The sense of things just slightly off led to a deliciously spooky ending.</spoiler> I also found "The Adventure of the Antiquarian's Niece" appropriately spooky.

Ove More...

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Aug 27, 2010

Snail in Danger (Sid) rated it:

This is so very fanfic-ish, in concept at least. (And sometimes in execution. Please note that that's not meant as an insult. While some fanfic is bad enough to make run screaming into the streets, some of it is of pro or near-pro quality.) It's a pretty cool idea, but I started losing interest after a few stories.

The Neil Gaiman piece at the beginning was excellent. I know that's a "really going out on a limb there" thing, but ... Neil Gaiman doesn't push my readerl More...

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Mar 09, 2010

John added it

I picked this book up because I am a huge Sherlock Holmes fan. I don't usually like stories written by other than ACD but I thought the premise of combining ACD with Lovecraft was very interesting. The stories were somewhat entertaining and the first was the best. The other stories lacked the Holmes cunning and most of the stories seemed to labor hard to use overly long Victorian diction. One of the stories I thought did a good job in that regard but most of them it was easy to tell that the More...

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Dec 16, 2009

Alex rated it:

An anthology of modern writers inventing new tales that set Sherlock Holmes as a consulting detective in the world of H.P. Lovecraft. If you enjoy X-files, Lost or any other blend of mystery and the supernatural this should strike a cord.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 29, 2009

Michael rated it:

Fun mix of the Sherlock Holmes universe and the Cthulhu mythos. As with any anthology the quality of the stories vary, but the stories are all well written, and even the worst of them are entertaining. The only downside with the organization is that the editor placed the best story, "A Study in Emerald" (written by Neil Gaiman), as the first story in the book, and the other stories just don't measure up to that one. A Study in Emerald is a great story, with a really good twist. Avo More...

1 comment like

Nov 05, 2009

King Dinösaur rated it:

What a cool idea! Sherlock Holmes meets Cthulhu! The lead-off story is by Mr. Neil Gaiman, so that gives you an idea of the quality of this endeavor. I'm already hooked...

3 comments like

Jul 27, 2011

Tarl rated it:

You know, I wasn't sure what to expect when I got this book, and I have to say, I enjoyed every part of it. The stories are well crafted, the writing is true to form (for Sherlock), and not once was I left puzzling over how something was working story-wise. That said, sure, there were points where the Mythos didn't mesh as well as it possibly could have with the Holmes world, but even those stories were really well done and often you could get past the minor hiccups with no effort at all. Overal More...

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Mar 14, 2011

robyn rated it:

Most of these aren't very enjoyable. The two best are Neil Gaiman's "Study in Emerald," which is a wonderful homage to Holmes and Lovecraft both, and which is also a genuinely original and well-conceived tale, and the slower but well-constructed "The Antiquarian's Niece," by Barbara Hambly.

It's harder to write a Holmes pastiche than people seem to think, and judging by this collection, even harder to write Lovecraft; and most of these stories weren't even that goo More...

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Feb 11, 2010

Jeannie rated it:

I liked this book but it's a little bit like too much of a good thing.I think I made the mistake of trying to read this book through when I would have been better set to read a story or two a day.I got kind of sick of Sherlock and Watson.
That said this is a fun book with a good premise.I am always looking for some good Mythos stories and this book has quite a few of them.
I think if you want to fully appreciate this book you will read it along with another book so that you look forwar More...

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Feb 14, 2010

Peter rated it:

Pretty disappointing, honestly. Some of the stories Gaiman's "A Study in Emerald" and Stableford's "Art in the Blood" were fun to read, but few of the stories captured the tone of Doyle and even fewer touched on what makes Lovecraft fun to read (Stableford makes a decent effort). James Lowder's "The Weeping Masks" might be the prize of the collection with a bleak ending uniting Lovecraftian hopelessness with Watson's sense of loss over Holmes' canonical disappearanc More...

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Aug 23, 2011

Jesse rated it:

Well I can tell you that this book contains one REALLY good story, and a lot of "meh" quality average stories. I'm not saying its a bad collection, but it is the work of a bunch of VERY different authors, and its pastiche work at that. Now that isn't to say that pastiche can't be good, but sometimes the aim of writing the best story possible can be lost when focusing on hitting certain other stylistic marks. I'm looking back on the titles of the stories in this book to refresh my me More...

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Jul 03, 2011

Kristopher rated it:

There's lots of good stories here, but none of them are really great.

Both Arthur Conan Doyle and H.P. Lovecraft had sui generis literary voices. Doyle (or at least Sherlock Holmes) believed in an logical world where a smart, observant man could unlock any mystery. Lovecraft, of course, was interested in the vast darkness beyond human understanding. Unfortunately, none of the stories in this Also, only one story, Steve Perry's "The Case of the Wavy Black Dagger," is structur More...

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Aug 11, 2008

Belarius rated it:

Shadows Over Baker Street presented me with a real dilemma, because I felt as though such a scattershot mix of stories couldn't really be boiled down to one rating. In the end, however, the sheer number of bad stories simply tipped things in favor of a two-star rating.

For the uninitiated, the book is a collection of short stories in which the formulaic "mythos fiction" of H.P. Lovecraft and others collides with the world of Sherlock Holmes. We are, in principle, to expect More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Aug 02, 2008

Erik rated it:

I loved Shadows Over Baker Street. Though some of the stories weren't as great as others I think they all conveyed a real feeling that Lovecraft's world was in always lurking in the shadows of Doyle's world. Despite knowing there would be a supernatural element to each story I found myself suspending disbelief, thinking that it would be a normal Holmes story. Now that I finished this book I don't think I'll be able to read a Doyle penned Holmes story now without considering there will be somethi More...

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Jan 19, 2009

Nancy rated it:

Sherlock Holmes meets Cthulhu! Not really, but that might be a subtitle to grab the attention of readers who enjoy both Sherlock Holmes pastiches and those stories that follow the tradition of HP Lovecraft in the mythos. A very fun book, but as always, when you have an anthology of stories to read, there are some that will be really good, some that will be okay, and some that you read just because they're in the collection. Funny thing, though, everyone who reads this book is going to like somet More...

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Oct 21, 2007

Nicholas added it

http://nhw.livejournal.com/104196.html[return][return]I've always had a liking for Holmes pastiches, and vividly remember as a teenager devouring John Dickson Carr's The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes, based around adventures mentioned but not fully recounted in the canonical stories, and Robert Lee Hall's Exit Sherlock Holmes in which both Holmes and Moriarty turn out to be time-travelling clones from the 24th century, but it's very well done as far as I remember. Also of course there's the early More...

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Nov 20, 2011

Lara rated it:

They made a mistake putting Neil Gaiman's story first in this anthology. He's a tough act to follow.

The premise of the book is pretty great: incorporate Lovecraftian horror themes into the Sherlock Holmes universe. Unfortunately the quality of the stories is kind of hit and miss, and some of the authors are kinda phoning in the Lovecraft elements. After a while it feels like you're reading different takes on the same story over and over. There's only so much you can do with this them More...

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Feb 02, 2011

Bre rated it:

Annnnd...the Cthculu awards go to...
Study in Emerald...the best story in this volume. If you only read one, chew on this.
Most disturbing/creepy...Violet Smith. (Taking a moment to shudder) The girl is wasting away and hasn't eaten in three years, what else can I say? Gave me the goosebumps, guv.
Most Thought Provoking...The Horror of Many Faces. Oh Ctchlu, a murderous Holmes? It gets my seal of approval and the bees were appropriately creepy. Tied for best story.
In the More...

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Apr 11, 2011

Kristy rated it:

I was pretty darn excited to pick up a collection of stories combining the creations of two favorite authors: Doyle and Lovecraft. However, after the first few stories, the novelty got old really fast, and the stories rather stale. I think you have to commit to the whole thing, but I didn't really feel like it. Hit the first four (especially Neil Gaiman!), and maybe just flip through the rest.

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Nov 16, 2008

F.R. rated it:

In the introduction to one of his 'Best New Horror' guides, Stephen Jones writes that the premise of this book - Sherlock Holmes meets H.P.Lovecraft - is one of the silliest in recent times. I disagree. I think the idea of taking the character who believes "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, nust be the truth" to the world of Cthulhu is one filled with possibilities.

The style of the stories owes more to Conan-Doyle than to Lovecra More...

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Jun 16, 2009

Camdon rated it:

This was an amazing idea but the stories were a mixed bag. I enjoyed 50% of the book and was bored by the rest. They should have put the story by Neil Gaimin towards the back of the book. It was, for me, easily the best short story and I might not have been so disappointed in the authors that followed if the book had built up to it.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Apr 07, 2009

Deb rated it:

Conan Doyle meets H.P. Lovecraft, two of my favorites! It's interesting how well the two mesh, but then they are not that far from being contemporaries, especially since H.P. preferred a rather vintage style. Barbara Hamby, Neil Gaiman, Poppy Brite, Richard Lupoff and Elizabeth Bear are just a few of the many contibutors.

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