Michael's review
The Call of Cthulhu (Penguin Modern Classics) by Howard Phillips Lovecraft
A selection of Lovecraft's entertaining short stories. Each lavished with detailed description and each packs the sort of twist ending present in all classic horror stories; the kind that makes you simultaneously shudder and review everything you just read in an entirely different light.
A few notes on the edition: the preface and the explanatory notes are really good and reveal a great deal about Lovecraft's life and the inspiration for his stories, but there are a few embarrassing typos. The stories are arranged in chronological order which isn't ideal and I would guess these stories were chosen to show recurring themes in Lovecraft's work. Unfortunately, this means a lot of the stories are quite similar and nearly all of them follow the same formula. What you get with this book is 3 or 4 great stories each rehashed 3 or 4 times.
My favourite story of the collection, entitled The Whisperer in Darkness, differs from the rest of the stories in the respect that the narrato...more
A few notes on the edition: the preface and the explanatory notes are really good and reveal a great deal about Lovecraft's life and the inspiration for his stories, but there are a few embarrassing typos. The stories are arranged in chronological order which isn't ideal and I would guess these stories were chosen to show recurring themes in Lovecraft's work. Unfortunately, this means a lot of the stories are quite similar and nearly all of them follow the same formula. What you get with this book is 3 or 4 great stories each rehashed 3 or 4 times.
My favourite story of the collection, entitled The Whisperer in Darkness, differs from the rest of the stories in the respect that the narrato...more
