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H.P. Lovecraft, The Complete Omnibus Collection, Volume I: 1917-1926
This is Volume One of a two-volume omnibus set comprising the complete fictional works of Howard Phillips Lovcecraft. Every story written for publication under his own name is included in this set, from 1917 through 1935. (Poems, ghost-written material and stories written in collaboration with other writers are not included.)Highlights of this volume • Dagon• The Doom that Came to Sarnath• The Music of Erich Zann• Herbert West, Reanimator• The Hound• The Lurking Fear• The Rats in the Walls• The Shunned House• The Horror at Red Hook• In the Vault• The Call of Cthulhu• The Strange High House in the Mist• The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath
560 pages, Paperback
Published January 15, 2016
68 people are currently reading
119 people want to read
About the author
H.P. Lovecraft
6,108 books19.2k followersHoward Phillips Lovecraft, of Providence, Rhode Island, was an American author of horror, fantasy and science fiction.
Lovecraft's major inspiration and invention was cosmic horror: life is incomprehensible to human minds and the universe is fundamentally alien. Those who genuinely reason, like his protagonists, gamble with sanity. Lovecraft has developed a cult following for his Cthulhu Mythos, a series of loosely interconnected fictions featuring a pantheon of human-nullifying entities, as well as the Necronomicon, a fictional grimoire of magical rites and forbidden lore. His works were deeply pessimistic and cynical, challenging the values of the Enlightenment, Romanticism and Christianity. Lovecraft's protagonists usually achieve the mirror-opposite of traditional gnosis and mysticism by momentarily glimpsing the horror of ultimate reality.
Although Lovecraft's readership was limited during his life, his reputation has grown over the decades. He is now commonly regarded as one of the most influential horror writers of the 20th Century, exerting widespread and indirect influence, and frequently compared to Edgar Allan Poe.
See also Howard Phillips Lovecraft.
— Wikipedia
Lovecraft's major inspiration and invention was cosmic horror: life is incomprehensible to human minds and the universe is fundamentally alien. Those who genuinely reason, like his protagonists, gamble with sanity. Lovecraft has developed a cult following for his Cthulhu Mythos, a series of loosely interconnected fictions featuring a pantheon of human-nullifying entities, as well as the Necronomicon, a fictional grimoire of magical rites and forbidden lore. His works were deeply pessimistic and cynical, challenging the values of the Enlightenment, Romanticism and Christianity. Lovecraft's protagonists usually achieve the mirror-opposite of traditional gnosis and mysticism by momentarily glimpsing the horror of ultimate reality.
Although Lovecraft's readership was limited during his life, his reputation has grown over the decades. He is now commonly regarded as one of the most influential horror writers of the 20th Century, exerting widespread and indirect influence, and frequently compared to Edgar Allan Poe.
See also Howard Phillips Lovecraft.
— Wikipedia
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 30 reviews
August 21, 2019
Review Part One
The Tomb (1917) ★★★★☆
“...here I would lie outstretched on the mossy ground, thinking strange thoughts and dreaming of strange dreams.”
I enjoy this poetic spooky style of writing far more when it’s read to me.
A young man spends substantial time outside (inside?) a sepulcher of an intriguing (infamous?) family long extinct.
Dagon (1917) ★★★★★
“...the strange object was a well-shaped monolith whose massive bulk had know the workmanship and perhaps the worship of living and thinking creatures.”
A soldier escaped from a German ship runs aground on a piece of the ocean floor never meant to be seen by surface eyes.
The giant bas-reliefs of unknowable worshipping creatures was related to Gustsve Doré. The Vision of the Valley of Dry Bones seemed apropos.
“The end is near. I hear a noise the door, as some immense slippery body lumbering against it. It shall not find me. God, that hand! The window! The window!”
A Reminiscence of Dr. Samuel Johnson (1917) ★★☆☆☆
Just a boring anecdote of a possibly immortal man. Nothing spooky.
Polaris (1918) ★★★☆☆
“The Pole Star, even and monstrous, leers down from the black vault, winking hideously like an insane watching eye which strives to convey some strange message...”
This read like a Dungeons & Dragons fantasy. Before it’s time, but not that interesting.
Beyond the Wall of Sleep (1919) ★★★★☆
“I am an entity like that which you become in the freedom of dreamless sleep. I am your brother of light...”
You can feel the astronomy nerd’s passion writing of madmen possessed by otherworldly heroes, radio telepathy, lucid dreaming, and the limitless potential of humanity.
Lovecraft will have you looking up at the sky on Halloween night to Algol, the Demon-Star, and wondering about it’s malicious intentions.
Old Bugs (1919) ★★★☆☆
“Numbers of men, or things which had been men, dropped to the floor and began lapping at the puddles of spilled liquor...”
Lovecraft’s version of a cautionary tale, a warning as to the life changing effects of drugs and alcohol.
The Transition of Juan Romero (1919) ★★☆☆☆
“Deep, Deep, below me was a sound - a rhythm...”
Mines are frightful places even without supernatural elements. Now add in a seemingly endless void, a tempest, Aztec Gods, Hindu magic(?), and you have... a story with great ingredients that didn’t come together.
The White Ship (1919) ★★★☆☆
“Sometimes at twilight the gray vapors of the horizon have parted to grant me glimpses of the ways beyond...”
Another fever dream of a story. An isolated lighthouse keeper listens to the tales the ocean has to tell then boards a mysterious white ship bound for strange lands.
The Street (1919) ★★☆☆☆
Snap shot of generations on the same plot of land. Mostly a story about the fear of change. Just not that interesting.
The Doom that Came to Sarnath (1919) ★★★★★
“As the men of Sarnath beheld more of the beings of Ib their hate grew...”
Old religion, sea beings, colonialism, madness, and a thousand years worth of bloody vengeance - oh yes. Oh hell yes!
The Statement of Randolph Carter (1919) ★★★☆☆
“Again I say, I do not know what has become of Harley Warren...”
An unknowable horrors story. Two enter, one disappears, the other is left with nothing but nightmares.
The Terrible Old Man (1920) ★★★★☆
“Mr. Czanek has never before noticed the color of the man’s eyes; now he saw that they were yellow.”
The thieves that planned to rob a rich eccentric old sea captain received a ghastly surprise. The town chatted about the screams for days.
The Tree (1920) ★★★☆☆
A tree by the tomb of a murdered artist grows to freakish proportions to take revenge.
Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and his Family (1920) ★★★★☆
“Arthur Jermyn went out on the moor and burned himself after seeing the boxed object which had come from Africa.”
Inspired by wild tales of Africa as the “Dark Continent,” Lovecraft has written a tale of generations of familial madness! Not even a little PC, and yes I cringed when the Belgian Congo was mentioned, but I enjoyed it all the same.
The Cats of Ulthar (1920) ★★★★★
“It is said that in Ulthar, which lies beyond the river Skai, no man may kill a cat.”
Vengeance against animal abusers! I hope they were awake the whole night.
From Beyond (1920) ★★★☆☆
“His eyes were pits of flame, and they glared at me with what I now saw was overwhelming hatred.”
A mad scientist taps into another dimension and looses his mind.
Celephaïs (1920) ★★★☆☆
“He reigns there still, and will reign happily forever, though below the cliffs at Innsmouth the channel tides played mockingly with the body of a tramp...”
A man seeks out his dreamland at the cost of his life.
Nyarlarthotep (1920) ★★★½☆
“...through this revolting graveyard of the universe the muffled, maddening beating of drums, and thin, monotonous whine of blasphemous flutes from inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond Time...”
Cool snapshot of a soul sucking Old One come up from Egypt. It has some memorable imagery but it’s too short.
The Temple (1920) ★★★☆☆
“I have no fear, not even from the prophecies of the madman...”
The last survivor of madness from a German U-Boat is drawn inexorably towards a lost undersea city.
I wasn’t feeling it.
The Picture in the House (1920) ★★★★☆
“[To] the true epicure in the terrible, to whom a new thrill of unutterable ghastliness is the chief end... [there is the] lonely farmhouse of backwoods New England; for there the dark elements of strength, solitude, grotesqueness and ignorance combine to form the perfection of the hideous.”
The horror of backwoods New England! I can picture Stephen King reading this as a child and nodding his head at the subtle, ignoble, cruelty.
The Nameless City (1921) ★★★½☆
“That is not dead which can eternal
lie,
And with strange aeons even death
may die.”
- Abdul Alhazred (first appearance)
That’s my favorite Lovecraft poem so far. This is the first story I’ve read with reference to a previous work: The Doom at Sarnath.
An archeologist travels to an ancient city in the desert, shunned by its neighbors.
The Quest of Iranon (1921) ★★★☆☆
Another Dreamlands story where Sarnath and her sister cities are mentioned.
Iranon is a traveling bard forever searching for a way back to Aira where his father was king.
Ex Oblivione (1921) ★★★☆☆
“...no new horror can be more terrible than the daily torture of the commonplace.”
A man wants to badly to deep dive into his dreams of knowledge and beauty that he takes an overdose and probably dies.
The Moon Bog (1921) ★★★★☆
“Soon those shrieks had attained a magnitude and quality which can not be written of, and which makes me faint as I think of them.”
In Ireland, a rich America ignores the local tales of a curse to anyone who drains the bog.
Big mistake.
The Outsider (1921) ★★☆☆☆
This was way too vague. If you are going to be dreaming and strange you at least need to start on bedrock.
The Other Gods (1921) ★★☆☆☆
Barzai the Wise climbs the highest mountain where the gods hang out and things do not go well for him.
Ulthar is mentioned.
The Tomb (1917) ★★★★☆
“...here I would lie outstretched on the mossy ground, thinking strange thoughts and dreaming of strange dreams.”
I enjoy this poetic spooky style of writing far more when it’s read to me.
A young man spends substantial time outside (inside?) a sepulcher of an intriguing (infamous?) family long extinct.
Dagon (1917) ★★★★★
“...the strange object was a well-shaped monolith whose massive bulk had know the workmanship and perhaps the worship of living and thinking creatures.”
A soldier escaped from a German ship runs aground on a piece of the ocean floor never meant to be seen by surface eyes.
The giant bas-reliefs of unknowable worshipping creatures was related to Gustsve Doré. The Vision of the Valley of Dry Bones seemed apropos.
“The end is near. I hear a noise the door, as some immense slippery body lumbering against it. It shall not find me. God, that hand! The window! The window!”
A Reminiscence of Dr. Samuel Johnson (1917) ★★☆☆☆
Just a boring anecdote of a possibly immortal man. Nothing spooky.
Polaris (1918) ★★★☆☆
“The Pole Star, even and monstrous, leers down from the black vault, winking hideously like an insane watching eye which strives to convey some strange message...”
This read like a Dungeons & Dragons fantasy. Before it’s time, but not that interesting.
Beyond the Wall of Sleep (1919) ★★★★☆
“I am an entity like that which you become in the freedom of dreamless sleep. I am your brother of light...”
You can feel the astronomy nerd’s passion writing of madmen possessed by otherworldly heroes, radio telepathy, lucid dreaming, and the limitless potential of humanity.
Lovecraft will have you looking up at the sky on Halloween night to Algol, the Demon-Star, and wondering about it’s malicious intentions.
Old Bugs (1919) ★★★☆☆
“Numbers of men, or things which had been men, dropped to the floor and began lapping at the puddles of spilled liquor...”
Lovecraft’s version of a cautionary tale, a warning as to the life changing effects of drugs and alcohol.
The Transition of Juan Romero (1919) ★★☆☆☆
“Deep, Deep, below me was a sound - a rhythm...”
Mines are frightful places even without supernatural elements. Now add in a seemingly endless void, a tempest, Aztec Gods, Hindu magic(?), and you have... a story with great ingredients that didn’t come together.
The White Ship (1919) ★★★☆☆
“Sometimes at twilight the gray vapors of the horizon have parted to grant me glimpses of the ways beyond...”
Another fever dream of a story. An isolated lighthouse keeper listens to the tales the ocean has to tell then boards a mysterious white ship bound for strange lands.
The Street (1919) ★★☆☆☆
Snap shot of generations on the same plot of land. Mostly a story about the fear of change. Just not that interesting.
The Doom that Came to Sarnath (1919) ★★★★★
“As the men of Sarnath beheld more of the beings of Ib their hate grew...”
Old religion, sea beings, colonialism, madness, and a thousand years worth of bloody vengeance - oh yes. Oh hell yes!
The Statement of Randolph Carter (1919) ★★★☆☆
“Again I say, I do not know what has become of Harley Warren...”
An unknowable horrors story. Two enter, one disappears, the other is left with nothing but nightmares.
The Terrible Old Man (1920) ★★★★☆
“Mr. Czanek has never before noticed the color of the man’s eyes; now he saw that they were yellow.”
The thieves that planned to rob a rich eccentric old sea captain received a ghastly surprise. The town chatted about the screams for days.
The Tree (1920) ★★★☆☆
A tree by the tomb of a murdered artist grows to freakish proportions to take revenge.
Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and his Family (1920) ★★★★☆
“Arthur Jermyn went out on the moor and burned himself after seeing the boxed object which had come from Africa.”
Inspired by wild tales of Africa as the “Dark Continent,” Lovecraft has written a tale of generations of familial madness! Not even a little PC, and yes I cringed when the Belgian Congo was mentioned, but I enjoyed it all the same.
The Cats of Ulthar (1920) ★★★★★
“It is said that in Ulthar, which lies beyond the river Skai, no man may kill a cat.”
Vengeance against animal abusers! I hope they were awake the whole night.
From Beyond (1920) ★★★☆☆
“His eyes were pits of flame, and they glared at me with what I now saw was overwhelming hatred.”
A mad scientist taps into another dimension and looses his mind.
Celephaïs (1920) ★★★☆☆
“He reigns there still, and will reign happily forever, though below the cliffs at Innsmouth the channel tides played mockingly with the body of a tramp...”
A man seeks out his dreamland at the cost of his life.
Nyarlarthotep (1920) ★★★½☆
“...through this revolting graveyard of the universe the muffled, maddening beating of drums, and thin, monotonous whine of blasphemous flutes from inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond Time...”
Cool snapshot of a soul sucking Old One come up from Egypt. It has some memorable imagery but it’s too short.
The Temple (1920) ★★★☆☆
“I have no fear, not even from the prophecies of the madman...”
The last survivor of madness from a German U-Boat is drawn inexorably towards a lost undersea city.
I wasn’t feeling it.
The Picture in the House (1920) ★★★★☆
“[To] the true epicure in the terrible, to whom a new thrill of unutterable ghastliness is the chief end... [there is the] lonely farmhouse of backwoods New England; for there the dark elements of strength, solitude, grotesqueness and ignorance combine to form the perfection of the hideous.”
The horror of backwoods New England! I can picture Stephen King reading this as a child and nodding his head at the subtle, ignoble, cruelty.
The Nameless City (1921) ★★★½☆
“That is not dead which can eternal
lie,
And with strange aeons even death
may die.”
- Abdul Alhazred (first appearance)
That’s my favorite Lovecraft poem so far. This is the first story I’ve read with reference to a previous work: The Doom at Sarnath.
An archeologist travels to an ancient city in the desert, shunned by its neighbors.
The Quest of Iranon (1921) ★★★☆☆
Another Dreamlands story where Sarnath and her sister cities are mentioned.
Iranon is a traveling bard forever searching for a way back to Aira where his father was king.
Ex Oblivione (1921) ★★★☆☆
“...no new horror can be more terrible than the daily torture of the commonplace.”
A man wants to badly to deep dive into his dreams of knowledge and beauty that he takes an overdose and probably dies.
The Moon Bog (1921) ★★★★☆
“Soon those shrieks had attained a magnitude and quality which can not be written of, and which makes me faint as I think of them.”
In Ireland, a rich America ignores the local tales of a curse to anyone who drains the bog.
Big mistake.
The Outsider (1921) ★★☆☆☆
This was way too vague. If you are going to be dreaming and strange you at least need to start on bedrock.
The Other Gods (1921) ★★☆☆☆
Barzai the Wise climbs the highest mountain where the gods hang out and things do not go well for him.
Ulthar is mentioned.
January 17, 2023
Review Part Two
The Music of Erich Zann (1921) ★★★★☆
“He neither answered me nor abated the frenzy of his unutterable music, while all throughout the garret strange currents of wind seemed to dance in the darkness...”
A mysterious, entertaining story about a man who might have been the pied piper of unmentionable monstrosities. Or was he the gatekeeper?
Or a survivor?
Herbert West, Reanimator (1921) ★★★★☆
“...there is madness in a room full of classified charnel things, with blood and lesser human debris almost ankle-deep on the slimy floor...”
I love it when a story comes together; when all the threads merge for an impactful, vengeful, ending.
Here is the first mention of Miskatonic University in Arkham, Herbert West’s alma mater. Is this the first zombie story? Earliest one I’ve read!
Hypnos (1922) ★★★☆☆
“Wise men have interpreted dreams, and the gods have laughed.”
Two friends lead each other to dark, drug fueled, hallucinations. One does not return.
What the Moon Brings (1922) ★★★☆☆
“Over these horrors the evil moon now hung very low...”
On the full moon the low tide reveals a decayed city.
The Hound (1922) ★★★★☆
“...leering sentiently at me with phosphorescent sockets and sharp ensanguined fangs yawing twistedly in mockery of my inevitable doom.”
First mention of the Necronomicon written by the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred, who appeared in The Nameless City.
Here two bored guys looking for excitement try grave robbing, the collection of eldritch objects, and reading the Necronomicon.
I can still hear the screaming...
The Lurking Fear (1922) ★★★★☆
“...the unwholesome Martense mansion had thrown visible tentacles of terror. The idea of such tentacles gave me an unexplained thrill...”
First reference to tentacles! Lovecraft is in rare form here with his odious malevolent monstrosities.
As with Reanimator, we have several very short stories that build to a horrific conclusion.
This is the first time you see Lovecraft getting a little meta, sharing with his readers the fun it is to be scared of the strange, of the weird.
“I experienced virtual convulsions of fright. But that fright was so mixed with wonder and alluring grotesqueness, that it was almost a pleasant sensation.”
The Rats in the Walls (1923) ★★★★☆
“Ultimate horror often paralyses memory in a merciful way.”
Delapore goes with his son and cats to claim their ancestral home. On ancient land filled with dark hungers he will make an astonishing discovery deep underground.
It is a shame this story is better known for the unfortunate name of the beloved brave black cat.
The Unnamable (1923) ★★★☆☆
Carter and Joel sitting on a tomb... and getting completely freaked out by Carter’s scary ancestral bogeyman story.
This is the third time Lovecraft has made a point of finding trees in cemeteries freaky as hell. His mind just can’t get over what’s feeding them.
The Tree (1920)
The Lurking Fear (1922)
The Unnamable (1923)
The Festival (1923) ★★★★☆
“...things have learnt to walk that ought to crawl.”
A Yuletide festival in the underground vault of an eldritch church with the Necronomicon. Lovecraft brings you a Christmas you’ll never forget.
The Shunned House (1924) ★★★☆☆
“There are horrors beyond horrors, and this was one of those...”
Before building or moving into a house always check that:
1. The graves have been relocated, bodies and all
2. It’s not a vampiric resting place
3. The trees and mushrooms are not feeding on unknowable malevolent putrid vapors
This is the first time vampires have come up but even that couldn’t raise this long story up from just ok.
The Horror at Red Hook (1925) ★★★★☆
By the end this was a genuinely scary story about the worst parts of illegal immigration.
Most of the story is of Detective Malone who notices strange things going on in the Red Hook underworld. But he’s frustrated/resigned to the fact that the police will not pursue anything unless someone rich makes it a ‘case’ or if white kids go missing.
When he does find the traffickers it’s Sicario meets Rosemary’s Baby. If that doesn’t give you nightmares nothing will.
In the Vault (1925) ★★★☆☆
“Great heavens, Birch, but you got what you deserved.”
Some things should not be done.
Some lines should not be crossed.
And if you cross them on someone know for revenge you had better expect it... even from the grave.
He. (1925) ★★★½☆
“...a hellish black city of giant stone terraces with impious pyramids flung savagely to the moon...”
A man frustrated with modern New York walks the night on uncrowned streets to appreciate what is left of the past.
One night he meets a man who has preserved the past and can show him that and so much more...
Cool Air (1926) ★★★★★
“It is a mistake to fancy that horror is associated inextricably with darkness, silence, and solitude.”
Oh yes, this was a proper short story! Less than ten pages, clear and impactful. And the best hat tip I’ve read to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
The Call of Cthulhu (1926) ★★★★☆
My enjoyment and appreciation of this story increased dramatically upon reread. Having built up to this with Dagon, The Doom that Came to Sarnath, and The Nameless City, I hit the mythos running.
The introduction set my mind to the dizzying fear of movies like Event Horizon:
“...someday the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open such terrifying reality...”
Between the old papers, mysterious nightmares, suspicious deaths, global cults, and that statue it all began to seem frightfully real...
“[The cult] had always existed and would always exist, hidden in distant wastes and dark places all over the world...”
Shudder. All that aside, it was a cluttered story that would have been more effective if trimmed.
Pickman’s Model (1926) ★★★★★
As Fuseli and Goya before him, Richard Upton Pickman is a master at bringing fear to life on canvas. The story centers on the one dreadful monster portrait but the ones I’m desperate to see are his Fae inspired works.
“Pickman was showing what happens to those stolen babes - how they grow up.”
But even more frightening are the images of those monsters left in the soft cradles to grow up, wolves among sheep.
“Every face but one showed nobility and reverence, but that one reflected the mockery of the pit.”
Even Pickman’s discourse on tame ghosts verses old human ghosts freaked me out.
“I want... ghosts of beings [who] have looked on hell and known the meaning of what they saw.”
This one is a favorite now, a highly visual and scary experience.
The Strange High House in the Mist (1926) ★★★½☆
This is a surprisingly light fantasy story, probably because it’s an encounter with the Mighty Ones as opposed to the Elder Gods.
And the prose were so lovely...
great eager mists flock to heaven
laden with lore,
and oceanward eyes on the rocks
see only a mystic whiteness,
as if the cliff’s rim
were the rim of all the earth...
The Silver Key (1926) ★★★★☆
This was a sweet story about reconnecting with your imagination. Whatever your age, you can always go back home to your dreams.
The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath (1926) ★★★½☆
Holy Shit that was long.
This is Randolph Carter’s tour through the Dreamlands to meet the gods atop the mountains of unknown Kadath. Along the way he had various adventures.
The best parts of this story are where it is a sequel to The Cats of Ulthar and Pickman’s Model. The appearance of Nyarlathotep in his pharaoh form was also memorable. And the story ended well.
But it was way too long.
History of the Necronomicon (1926) ★★★☆☆
The short fictional history of Abdul Alhazred and the Necronomicon. It’s amusingly convincing and tied into Robert Chambers The King in Yellow.
Average 3.7 Stars
*audible note: you can find free individual story audios that may be better, you can pay for individual audios that may be better but I have enjoyed the campfire consistency of the reader.
The Music of Erich Zann (1921) ★★★★☆
“He neither answered me nor abated the frenzy of his unutterable music, while all throughout the garret strange currents of wind seemed to dance in the darkness...”
A mysterious, entertaining story about a man who might have been the pied piper of unmentionable monstrosities. Or was he the gatekeeper?
Or a survivor?
Herbert West, Reanimator (1921) ★★★★☆
“...there is madness in a room full of classified charnel things, with blood and lesser human debris almost ankle-deep on the slimy floor...”
I love it when a story comes together; when all the threads merge for an impactful, vengeful, ending.
Here is the first mention of Miskatonic University in Arkham, Herbert West’s alma mater. Is this the first zombie story? Earliest one I’ve read!
Hypnos (1922) ★★★☆☆
“Wise men have interpreted dreams, and the gods have laughed.”
Two friends lead each other to dark, drug fueled, hallucinations. One does not return.
What the Moon Brings (1922) ★★★☆☆
“Over these horrors the evil moon now hung very low...”
On the full moon the low tide reveals a decayed city.
The Hound (1922) ★★★★☆
“...leering sentiently at me with phosphorescent sockets and sharp ensanguined fangs yawing twistedly in mockery of my inevitable doom.”
First mention of the Necronomicon written by the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred, who appeared in The Nameless City.
Here two bored guys looking for excitement try grave robbing, the collection of eldritch objects, and reading the Necronomicon.
I can still hear the screaming...
The Lurking Fear (1922) ★★★★☆
“...the unwholesome Martense mansion had thrown visible tentacles of terror. The idea of such tentacles gave me an unexplained thrill...”
First reference to tentacles! Lovecraft is in rare form here with his odious malevolent monstrosities.
As with Reanimator, we have several very short stories that build to a horrific conclusion.
This is the first time you see Lovecraft getting a little meta, sharing with his readers the fun it is to be scared of the strange, of the weird.
“I experienced virtual convulsions of fright. But that fright was so mixed with wonder and alluring grotesqueness, that it was almost a pleasant sensation.”
The Rats in the Walls (1923) ★★★★☆
“Ultimate horror often paralyses memory in a merciful way.”
Delapore goes with his son and cats to claim their ancestral home. On ancient land filled with dark hungers he will make an astonishing discovery deep underground.
It is a shame this story is better known for the unfortunate name of the beloved brave black cat.
The Unnamable (1923) ★★★☆☆
Carter and Joel sitting on a tomb... and getting completely freaked out by Carter’s scary ancestral bogeyman story.
This is the third time Lovecraft has made a point of finding trees in cemeteries freaky as hell. His mind just can’t get over what’s feeding them.
The Tree (1920)
The Lurking Fear (1922)
The Unnamable (1923)
The Festival (1923) ★★★★☆
“...things have learnt to walk that ought to crawl.”
A Yuletide festival in the underground vault of an eldritch church with the Necronomicon. Lovecraft brings you a Christmas you’ll never forget.
The Shunned House (1924) ★★★☆☆
“There are horrors beyond horrors, and this was one of those...”
Before building or moving into a house always check that:
1. The graves have been relocated, bodies and all
2. It’s not a vampiric resting place
3. The trees and mushrooms are not feeding on unknowable malevolent putrid vapors
This is the first time vampires have come up but even that couldn’t raise this long story up from just ok.
The Horror at Red Hook (1925) ★★★★☆
By the end this was a genuinely scary story about the worst parts of illegal immigration.
Most of the story is of Detective Malone who notices strange things going on in the Red Hook underworld. But he’s frustrated/resigned to the fact that the police will not pursue anything unless someone rich makes it a ‘case’ or if white kids go missing.
When he does find the traffickers it’s Sicario meets Rosemary’s Baby. If that doesn’t give you nightmares nothing will.
In the Vault (1925) ★★★☆☆
“Great heavens, Birch, but you got what you deserved.”
Some things should not be done.
Some lines should not be crossed.
And if you cross them on someone know for revenge you had better expect it... even from the grave.
He. (1925) ★★★½☆
“...a hellish black city of giant stone terraces with impious pyramids flung savagely to the moon...”
A man frustrated with modern New York walks the night on uncrowned streets to appreciate what is left of the past.
One night he meets a man who has preserved the past and can show him that and so much more...
Cool Air (1926) ★★★★★
“It is a mistake to fancy that horror is associated inextricably with darkness, silence, and solitude.”
Oh yes, this was a proper short story! Less than ten pages, clear and impactful. And the best hat tip I’ve read to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
The Call of Cthulhu (1926) ★★★★☆
My enjoyment and appreciation of this story increased dramatically upon reread. Having built up to this with Dagon, The Doom that Came to Sarnath, and The Nameless City, I hit the mythos running.
The introduction set my mind to the dizzying fear of movies like Event Horizon:
“...someday the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open such terrifying reality...”
Between the old papers, mysterious nightmares, suspicious deaths, global cults, and that statue it all began to seem frightfully real...
“[The cult] had always existed and would always exist, hidden in distant wastes and dark places all over the world...”
Shudder. All that aside, it was a cluttered story that would have been more effective if trimmed.
Pickman’s Model (1926) ★★★★★
As Fuseli and Goya before him, Richard Upton Pickman is a master at bringing fear to life on canvas. The story centers on the one dreadful monster portrait but the ones I’m desperate to see are his Fae inspired works.
“Pickman was showing what happens to those stolen babes - how they grow up.”
But even more frightening are the images of those monsters left in the soft cradles to grow up, wolves among sheep.
“Every face but one showed nobility and reverence, but that one reflected the mockery of the pit.”
Even Pickman’s discourse on tame ghosts verses old human ghosts freaked me out.
“I want... ghosts of beings [who] have looked on hell and known the meaning of what they saw.”
This one is a favorite now, a highly visual and scary experience.
The Strange High House in the Mist (1926) ★★★½☆
This is a surprisingly light fantasy story, probably because it’s an encounter with the Mighty Ones as opposed to the Elder Gods.
And the prose were so lovely...
great eager mists flock to heaven
laden with lore,
and oceanward eyes on the rocks
see only a mystic whiteness,
as if the cliff’s rim
were the rim of all the earth...
The Silver Key (1926) ★★★★☆
This was a sweet story about reconnecting with your imagination. Whatever your age, you can always go back home to your dreams.
The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath (1926) ★★★½☆
Holy Shit that was long.
This is Randolph Carter’s tour through the Dreamlands to meet the gods atop the mountains of unknown Kadath. Along the way he had various adventures.
The best parts of this story are where it is a sequel to The Cats of Ulthar and Pickman’s Model. The appearance of Nyarlathotep in his pharaoh form was also memorable. And the story ended well.
But it was way too long.
History of the Necronomicon (1926) ★★★☆☆
The short fictional history of Abdul Alhazred and the Necronomicon. It’s amusingly convincing and tied into Robert Chambers The King in Yellow.
Average 3.7 Stars
*audible note: you can find free individual story audios that may be better, you can pay for individual audios that may be better but I have enjoyed the campfire consistency of the reader.
February 28, 2018
** Review of Audio Format **
Narration Matters
This is my first foray into Lovecraft after hearing for years all of the other people inspired by him. I'm not gonna lie, the narration detracted from my enjoyment. It wasn't that Finn's voice is irritating or that he doesn't read well. For me, it was that he was constantly trying to sound like he was telling a scary story in front of a campfire. He whispered a lot and it became hard not to just tune him out. And I'm a hardcore, prolific reader. If this couldn't hold my attention, you're in trouble. I listened on 1.5 speed and it didn't help the delivery. For me, this is one book that I think I would have enjoyed more if I had read it.
I do think many of the stories were excellent and were finely developed if a little less varied in content than I would expect. I have to give credit to Finn for adding in the forwards and the life history of Lovecraft before each new section and letting the listener know what was going on in Lovecraft's personal life to set the stage. It was the most interesting part of the listen and really helps the listener know where Lovecraft was in his mind at the time he wrote many of his stories.
Narration Matters
This is my first foray into Lovecraft after hearing for years all of the other people inspired by him. I'm not gonna lie, the narration detracted from my enjoyment. It wasn't that Finn's voice is irritating or that he doesn't read well. For me, it was that he was constantly trying to sound like he was telling a scary story in front of a campfire. He whispered a lot and it became hard not to just tune him out. And I'm a hardcore, prolific reader. If this couldn't hold my attention, you're in trouble. I listened on 1.5 speed and it didn't help the delivery. For me, this is one book that I think I would have enjoyed more if I had read it.
I do think many of the stories were excellent and were finely developed if a little less varied in content than I would expect. I have to give credit to Finn for adding in the forwards and the life history of Lovecraft before each new section and letting the listener know what was going on in Lovecraft's personal life to set the stage. It was the most interesting part of the listen and really helps the listener know where Lovecraft was in his mind at the time he wrote many of his stories.
August 8, 2018
A lot of indescribable terror to be sure. I don't love collections like this, but it's a great way to have everything. These stories aren't all great, but the great ones are worth the price of admission, and reading them in publication order is great to follow the author's growth and growing mythos.
Read
January 2, 2018I didn't actually read this all the way through, and as such am not offering a rating.
I couldn't do it. This is NOT my thing. I might come back to this, but man these works are definitely of a time. What I did read helped me better understand Lovecraft's early style. It was good.
Let me put it this way, I would not suggest listening to the audiobook version of this while doing chores and such. It gets you into a weird (heh) headspace.
I couldn't do it. This is NOT my thing. I might come back to this, but man these works are definitely of a time. What I did read helped me better understand Lovecraft's early style. It was good.
Let me put it this way, I would not suggest listening to the audiobook version of this while doing chores and such. It gets you into a weird (heh) headspace.
June 7, 2018
I just finished “H.P. Lovecraft, The Complete Omnibus Collection, Volume I: 1917-1926”, a collection of 45 short stories by H.P. Lovecraft. I loved the different tales with their creepy overtones and weird monsters, but I found his narrative a bit dry and hard to get through. Lovecraft was probably a genius, but more of an idea-man or researcher than a storyteller. He is most well known for his Cthulhu story, but I most enjoyed “The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath”, and the way it tied several other stories together. Here’s a quote, “The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of the infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.”
May 1, 2020
Having never read any of Lovecraft's work before, it was intimidating to dive into it. This collection made Lovecraft's early work accessible. Presented in chronological order, groups of Lovecraft's stories are interspersed with short overviews from John to explain Lovecraft's writing career during reach period.
John also briefly discusses the prejudiced attitudes that become abundantly clear in Lovecraft's writing in a way that both acknowleges and leaves those attitudes aside. Thus the reader is allowed to appreciate Lovecraft's writing regardless of any personal feelings about the man.
I will definitely read volume 2 of this collection.
John also briefly discusses the prejudiced attitudes that become abundantly clear in Lovecraft's writing in a way that both acknowleges and leaves those attitudes aside. Thus the reader is allowed to appreciate Lovecraft's writing regardless of any personal feelings about the man.
I will definitely read volume 2 of this collection.
May 4, 2020
I very much enjoyed listening to this collection! Did so for many weeks almost every night, re-listening to some when I had doubts because I might have fallen asleep or simply out of curiosity. Overall a very enjoyable experience. Some quick thoughts:
+, +, + Lovecraft has this great grasp of our very human fear of the unknown
+, +, + I very much enjoyed the perspective from another time, and words which are not filtered through modern values, revealing perspectives that would be hard to find expressed today even in the realm of fiction. Even in the stories that were more boring the trivia of 1920s life/conceptions or even centuries before brought a breath of fresh air.
+, +, - each story is quite different from the others, in themes, perspectives and even styles. This is
mostly good, but there's also a few which are duds IMO, or too wishy-washy
- particularly from the dream travel narratives which at times felt disjointed to me because they lacked the anchoring.
+,+,+ in the best ones i thought the mixture of strong historical anchoring, either in early 20th century or more likely on 19th or even earlier centuries, the mixture of historical or pseudo-historical grounding makes then the supernatural elements particularly interesting. I think Lovecraft is at his best when you can really feel the historical research
Memories from some of my favorite stories/ideas slightly sorted by how much I enjoyed them:
<-----------------------
The Rats in the Walls: possibly my favorite story in the whole book, mixing historical elements, anchoring, American and European history... and a generally interesting narrative flow. For some reason I always imagined the described architecture like that in the game A Plague Tale, which I never finished so I can't confirm my suspicion of weather there's any relationship.
Herbert West, Reanimator: found this to be quite an interesting story, with good historical anchoring and creepy twists.
Facts Concerning the late Arthur German and his family: made a reinforced impression on me through the visuals and story in the game "The Sinking City"
Cool Air: great little fiction story with a sciency/thriller twist
The Horror at Red Hook: feels like a great film noir historic movie, unfortunately one of the type unlikely to be made today as it could risk too much criticism, but exactly in that it's nice to read historical or even old books for views from other I won't say less but differently filtered times.
In the Vault: great little small town/thriller/draculla's village feeling story with an interesting relatable morality undertone
Pickman's Model: great story with good grounding and one that has been resonated in many games, I can't help but remember the references in the Fallout universe games, but the story here is so much deeper on the cultural elements and nature of humans, their interests and their censorships
The Statement of Randolph Carter: for some reason this one stuck with me. With it's interesting realistic grounding I somehow associate it with a mixture of visual memories from the great games "The Sinking City" and "Bloodborne"
The Temple: very impressive perspective narrative with a memorable narrator (again one which might be a bit taboo in our times despite it making for an interesting story)
The outsider: interesting twist. I had hoped it relates somehow to the brilliant games in the Dishonored series... in the end I don't think so but it was a quite interesting surreal dark story.
The Shunned House: great historical "modern" anchoring and down to earth feeling story
The Lurking Fear: interesting one with a good historical construction
Old Bugs: nice little tale and an unexpected morality element of the kind you wouldn't here nowadays. Impressed a memory into me.
The Terrible Old Man: nice twist!
From Beyond: a bit too dreamlike for my taste but still also nice anchoring at times
The Picture in the House: interesting twist. Made me think of the game Resident Evil 5 for some reason
The Music of Erich Zann: liked the presentation more than the story, but memorable in the details
What the Moon Brings: didn't remember anything, but made me think of the secret ending in the game Bloodborne...
The Cats of Ulthar: didn't love it but memorable nonetheless
The tomb: interesting
Dagon: nice in it's anchoring
The Street: what an interesting idea to think of the life of a place through time!
The Doom that came to Sarnath: a bit too fictional but still an interesting story mixing collapse of civilizations with supernatural in ways that reminded me of the Connan universe
The Other Gods: so so I found it. For a few moments it reminded me of some stories within the game Skyrim.
The Nameless City: boring at times but i imagine it as a movie with interesting Indiana Jones types elements.
----------->
Overall it was a wonderful universe of many stories, a few too loose and disjointed but a few truly brilliant and many simply interesting twists with an interesting perspective from another time! I enjoyed it quite a lot. 23h audiobook that i might have listened to at least parts multiple times, always enjoying it. One of the best buys I got for an audible point :))
+, +, + Lovecraft has this great grasp of our very human fear of the unknown
+, +, + I very much enjoyed the perspective from another time, and words which are not filtered through modern values, revealing perspectives that would be hard to find expressed today even in the realm of fiction. Even in the stories that were more boring the trivia of 1920s life/conceptions or even centuries before brought a breath of fresh air.
+, +, - each story is quite different from the others, in themes, perspectives and even styles. This is
mostly good, but there's also a few which are duds IMO, or too wishy-washy
- particularly from the dream travel narratives which at times felt disjointed to me because they lacked the anchoring.
+,+,+ in the best ones i thought the mixture of strong historical anchoring, either in early 20th century or more likely on 19th or even earlier centuries, the mixture of historical or pseudo-historical grounding makes then the supernatural elements particularly interesting. I think Lovecraft is at his best when you can really feel the historical research
Memories from some of my favorite stories/ideas slightly sorted by how much I enjoyed them:
<-----------------------
The Rats in the Walls: possibly my favorite story in the whole book, mixing historical elements, anchoring, American and European history... and a generally interesting narrative flow. For some reason I always imagined the described architecture like that in the game A Plague Tale, which I never finished so I can't confirm my suspicion of weather there's any relationship.
Herbert West, Reanimator: found this to be quite an interesting story, with good historical anchoring and creepy twists.
Facts Concerning the late Arthur German and his family: made a reinforced impression on me through the visuals and story in the game "The Sinking City"
Cool Air: great little fiction story with a sciency/thriller twist
The Horror at Red Hook: feels like a great film noir historic movie, unfortunately one of the type unlikely to be made today as it could risk too much criticism, but exactly in that it's nice to read historical or even old books for views from other I won't say less but differently filtered times.
In the Vault: great little small town/thriller/draculla's village feeling story with an interesting relatable morality undertone
Pickman's Model: great story with good grounding and one that has been resonated in many games, I can't help but remember the references in the Fallout universe games, but the story here is so much deeper on the cultural elements and nature of humans, their interests and their censorships
The Statement of Randolph Carter: for some reason this one stuck with me. With it's interesting realistic grounding I somehow associate it with a mixture of visual memories from the great games "The Sinking City" and "Bloodborne"
The Temple: very impressive perspective narrative with a memorable narrator (again one which might be a bit taboo in our times despite it making for an interesting story)
The outsider: interesting twist. I had hoped it relates somehow to the brilliant games in the Dishonored series... in the end I don't think so but it was a quite interesting surreal dark story.
The Shunned House: great historical "modern" anchoring and down to earth feeling story
The Lurking Fear: interesting one with a good historical construction
Old Bugs: nice little tale and an unexpected morality element of the kind you wouldn't here nowadays. Impressed a memory into me.
The Terrible Old Man: nice twist!
From Beyond: a bit too dreamlike for my taste but still also nice anchoring at times
The Picture in the House: interesting twist. Made me think of the game Resident Evil 5 for some reason
The Music of Erich Zann: liked the presentation more than the story, but memorable in the details
What the Moon Brings: didn't remember anything, but made me think of the secret ending in the game Bloodborne...
The Cats of Ulthar: didn't love it but memorable nonetheless
The tomb: interesting
Dagon: nice in it's anchoring
The Street: what an interesting idea to think of the life of a place through time!
The Doom that came to Sarnath: a bit too fictional but still an interesting story mixing collapse of civilizations with supernatural in ways that reminded me of the Connan universe
The Other Gods: so so I found it. For a few moments it reminded me of some stories within the game Skyrim.
The Nameless City: boring at times but i imagine it as a movie with interesting Indiana Jones types elements.
----------->
Overall it was a wonderful universe of many stories, a few too loose and disjointed but a few truly brilliant and many simply interesting twists with an interesting perspective from another time! I enjoyed it quite a lot. 23h audiobook that i might have listened to at least parts multiple times, always enjoying it. One of the best buys I got for an audible point :))
September 15, 2022
An excellent way to read Lovecraft's work, with seemingly unbiased discussion and explanation of the various stories. Those who complied the work did a great job of presenting the reader with a varied mix of stories, poems, and other writings. Would highly recommend to any horror or Lovecraft fan.
September 27, 2024
This is, at the very least from a historical perspective, an outstanding collection. It is well organized and well annotated, the chronological presentation of all of Lovecraft's stories that precede his Cthulhu series along with some of his poems. Each year is given a brief introduction in regards to his life and there is some critical appraisal of each story before it's given. As an audiobook production, it's pretty good as well. As the compiler says in the intro, these are not the Lovecraft tales for newbies, with very few among his masterworks, but it's a great resource for completists who want to read all of his stuff.
November 14, 2021
There are some less than fantastic stories in Lovecraft's early work but there are several real gems in here.
The annotations and information by Mr John are a great introduction to this weird and wonderful author.
The annotations and information by Mr John are a great introduction to this weird and wonderful author.
July 27, 2018
Regarding the writing, I found it impossible for me to get past the blatant racism of stories like "The Rats In the Walls." What a horrible human being Lovecraft must have been.
Like some others on this page, I listened to the audiobook version. To anyone contemplating this purchase, I advise you not to waste your money. The narrator is an amateur, not an actual voice actor, and his performance is pathetic. In my Audible review I call him a "toned-down Edgar Oliver," but that's not fair, since I actually like Edgar Oliver. The ridiculous performance turned in by this Mr. John is pretentious and inept even by the most generous standards.
Read Lovecraft if you can stand him. Do not buy the audiobook.
Like some others on this page, I listened to the audiobook version. To anyone contemplating this purchase, I advise you not to waste your money. The narrator is an amateur, not an actual voice actor, and his performance is pathetic. In my Audible review I call him a "toned-down Edgar Oliver," but that's not fair, since I actually like Edgar Oliver. The ridiculous performance turned in by this Mr. John is pretentious and inept even by the most generous standards.
Read Lovecraft if you can stand him. Do not buy the audiobook.
October 28, 2024
About halfway through book I realized my fatal error of reading a large collection of short stories, especially since this is the early days of H.P. Lovecraft’s works. Some are very, very good, and others are just… fine.
Really, I would’ve given it 5 stars still if the last like 10 “chapters” are sort of influences, I guess, for H.P. Lovecraft…? It was like a bunch of synopses of other people’s short stories for a good tenth of the book… which… was really rather boring.
Another thing to note, H.P. Lovecraft was a VERY racist man. And while I do think it was a lot of his place of birth, and being a product of the time, in the early 1900s, it doesn’t excuse for the fact that he was very overtly racist. It’s noted, in this collection, that his racism stems from not really ever knowing any people of color, and that he was a very kind man to just about everyone. Still, I wanted to bring that up here because it’s impossible to ignore, unfortunately.
I liked that most of Lovecraft’s works were prefaced with a little bit of his life at the time. I think it’s extremely interesting reading this book of his writings over a century later. It’s almost a little surreal.
The Rats in the Walls was my favorite short story. There were a lot of pretty good ones, but for some reason, that one really stuck out to me. Just the atmosphere of the characters and location and situation. It just all worked really well for me.
Really, I would’ve given it 5 stars still if the last like 10 “chapters” are sort of influences, I guess, for H.P. Lovecraft…? It was like a bunch of synopses of other people’s short stories for a good tenth of the book… which… was really rather boring.
Another thing to note, H.P. Lovecraft was a VERY racist man. And while I do think it was a lot of his place of birth, and being a product of the time, in the early 1900s, it doesn’t excuse for the fact that he was very overtly racist. It’s noted, in this collection, that his racism stems from not really ever knowing any people of color, and that he was a very kind man to just about everyone. Still, I wanted to bring that up here because it’s impossible to ignore, unfortunately.
I liked that most of Lovecraft’s works were prefaced with a little bit of his life at the time. I think it’s extremely interesting reading this book of his writings over a century later. It’s almost a little surreal.
The Rats in the Walls was my favorite short story. There were a lot of pretty good ones, but for some reason, that one really stuck out to me. Just the atmosphere of the characters and location and situation. It just all worked really well for me.
July 9, 2021
I have to admit that I fell for a kind of trap in Lovecraft’s Cthulhu stories. He always makes references in passing to numerous places, characters and artifacts that a reader may assume to have been described in another of his many stories. This belief led me to want to track down all his stories and try to nail down the scope of the Cthulhu mythos. While some references were indeed from earlier stories, the vast majority were simple, yet effective, plot devices to enhance the reality of his tales. While this discovery did increase my appreciation of his craft, I did have to wade through quite a number of less gripping stories in this collection to come to that conclusion. While I appreciate the small biographical and literary context provided by the editors of this collection, my interest would have probably been more served by a collection that only focused on the Cthulhu mythos rather than in Lovecraft’s entire works.
January 28, 2024
I definitely see why the author recommends reading the second book first! Although the stories in this book were obviously less polished and much more racist than volume II of this series, I still enjoyed them. Highlights for me included The Statement of Randalph Carter, the Cats of Ulthar, Nyarlathotep, The Other Gods, The Music of Erich Zann, and Herbert West Reanimator. I also enjoyed some of the biographical information Finn includes, which helped contextualize the stories within Lovecraft's life. Unfortuantely the narrator (the author himself) had a narrative style that made it easy to zone out while listening, so I'm having to re-read a few stories that I'm blanking on. But on the whole, I think this is a solid collection of decent classic sci-fi/horror stories with good additional info supplemented throughout.
February 6, 2018
Great Introduction To Lovecraft
The structure of this collection, by introducing and explaining its selection of content (noting specifically the exclusion of ephemera, etc...,) chronologically and with biographical information, appeals instantly for new readers and may also for familiar readers. The compilation from someone who clearly appreciates both Lovecraft and his cultural influence on the genre, presents the work with a subtle cleverness. The enthusiasm is further augmented by the accompanying Audiobook , and I strongly recommend getting both. Really enjoyable and definitely an #EpicWin ! ~*gw
The structure of this collection, by introducing and explaining its selection of content (noting specifically the exclusion of ephemera, etc...,) chronologically and with biographical information, appeals instantly for new readers and may also for familiar readers. The compilation from someone who clearly appreciates both Lovecraft and his cultural influence on the genre, presents the work with a subtle cleverness. The enthusiasm is further augmented by the accompanying Audiobook , and I strongly recommend getting both. Really enjoyable and definitely an #EpicWin ! ~*gw
April 26, 2023
It's widely known at this point that H.P. Lovecraft was deeply troubled and much of his writing is steeped in his own problematic fears of people from other races. Nonetheless, the reach of influence from his creative work is stunning and powerful. This complete omnibus is truly impressive, and does not skirt around Lovecraft's flaws. I love many of the stories (though a couple of them are just too prejudiced to be enjoyable), and the asides about what was going on in the author's life at the time of writing them are fascinating.
January 14, 2020
This is a great way to listen to Lovecraft's early work. It has mini biography at the start of each time frame, so you get to know more about his state of mind when he was writing each story. Looking forward to the second Omnibus.
July 18, 2020
Amazing and beautiful stories from the father of American literary horror and the creator of the eldrich horror genre and Lovecraftian pantheon of deities and entities, a master traveler or alternate realities, a scholar and a poet. (Also problematically openly racist)
December 20, 2018
The best collection I've ever found for Lovecraft.
October 7, 2019
Man, Lovecraft is pretty hit or miss. Some of his work is brilliant, some I can't finish fast enough.
April 23, 2023
The prose was poetic. The narrator put me to sleep at times.
March 4, 2017
This omnibus is a great read because it gives a lot of background on Lovecraft's life as well as containing most of his stories. I really loved the dreamworld story saga the most in this book. Where else are you going to get horrible eldritch monsters and talking cats in the same story?
February 18, 2021
As a big fan of Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos, I wanted to experience his stories in an audible version which I debated for some time in which version to choose. I’m glad I went with this omnibus edition, as it’s broken down year-by-year his stories released, and a short interlude of said years detailing his life and work. Though this is just the first half, it left me eager to move onto the second half right away. Awesome choice for any Lovecraft/Cthulhu fan.
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November 29, 2023
The Lovecraft stories are a bit of a mixed bag, it's his early work. There's the obvious issues that come with Lovecraft and his general issues.
The narration on the audio version is lacklustre, the delivery doesn't change with the tone of the tale which can leave the whole thing flat and there were some pronunciations that I've never heard before including the names of gods and goddesses that the editor/narrator somehow managed to find a way to say that I've never heard in spite of doing academic research on them.
I also found the biographical sections treatment of Lovecraft's beliefs to be inconsistent and lacking the ability to consider the possibility of metaphor.
The narration on the audio version is lacklustre, the delivery doesn't change with the tone of the tale which can leave the whole thing flat and there were some pronunciations that I've never heard before including the names of gods and goddesses that the editor/narrator somehow managed to find a way to say that I've never heard in spite of doing academic research on them.
I also found the biographical sections treatment of Lovecraft's beliefs to be inconsistent and lacking the ability to consider the possibility of metaphor.
August 16, 2020
A great way to experience Lovecraft's work. Having everything annotated and organised chronologically provides insights beyond what are, for the most part, excellent weird tales. The free ebook that comes with this audiobook edition is a great inclusion, too.
October 22, 2020
Some of his earlier stuff can be hit and miss, although there are many gems to be found in this body of his earlier work.
Would still highly recommend this if only to help contextualize his transformation from Edgar Allan Poe-esque fiction to his own unique brand of cosmic horror.
Would still highly recommend this if only to help contextualize his transformation from Edgar Allan Poe-esque fiction to his own unique brand of cosmic horror.
December 30, 2020
I read this anthology and went mad. Truly, my arms are tentacles and to describe my face is impossible in any language from this reality.
November 19, 2022
great annotations
2022: doing another lovecraft read for the spookyween season the audio context for each story and collaborators are still great
2022: doing another lovecraft read for the spookyween season the audio context for each story and collaborators are still great
Read
April 18, 2017It's frightening how many of the thoughts Lovecraft had on people and conditions in the first decades of the last century are becoming applicable to the first decades of this situation. And, as always, Lovecraft is a great read.
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