9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Lovecraft's themes, not his prose style, February 17, 2002
The authors of this collection do an excellent job of using Lovecraft's themes (alienation, atavism, family secrets, the true horrific nature of the cosmos) and his influences (Dunsany, Machen, Poe) while for the most part avoiding cliched devices and plots.
While there are stories set in Arkham or involving Shub-Niggurath (to cite two examples), the stories are interesting in their own right, rather than being excuses to add new lore. Horror is a constant element, with some stories sliding over into science-fiction or fantasy, and there's variation in how the narrative is structured, in the voice of the narrator and the prose styling.
This is going to be the anthology to beat in the field of Mythos fiction.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Mixed Bag- Some Gems, some still Rough, January 7, 2006
This review is from: The Children of Cthulhu (Paperback)
It's nice to pay homage to Lovecraft. Given his contribution to the horror genre, such consideration is well deserved. Lovecraft's approach to the supernatural, his contribution to what has become called the Cthulhu Mythos and his embrace of the weird has enhanced our collection of horror. So it's nice that people pay him the honor he merits as what many consider second only to Poe in macabre fiction.
There's a lot that can be done with Lovecraft offers. People turning into hybrid amphibian creatures, the opening of dimensional doors to strange vistas, self-destructive ennui, the nature of dreams and lost civilizations, one's own sense of alientation and dread, and perhaps most of all the existential idea that our religions are false and that the real Gods either don't like us, or don't care and our fate is to be little more than food. That's a lot to work with. The Children of Cthulhu tries to work with all of it. Sometimes it works, sometimes not.
Too much homage is not a good thing. As a collection of work dedicated or based on Lovecraft's Mythos this has some real fine stories. But it also suffers some fairly weak ones which is unfortunate. This could have been a finer volume of fiction than was finally published. It suffers for falling short of it's possibilities.
The first three stories are quite good. Details, by Mieville gets the collection off to a good start. I believe this is also available in his collection 'Looking for Jake'. Visitation, is also a fine story and I liked the historical fiction in The Invisible Empire.
Other enjoyable stories?
Foster's A Fatal Exception has Occurred, Dorr's Dark Side of the Moon. Patterson's Principles and Parameters suggest some modern horrors on the edge of science and academic exploration. Hodge's The Firebrand Symphony returns us to the idea that the arts can touch the horror within us in ways that philosophy and science cannot, and is perhaps the best story of the collection. Cardin's teeth reminds of the dangers of too much philosophy, that the monsters we seek may turn against us.
I found Kiernan's Nor the Demons Down Under the Sea to be spooky and enjoyable, invoking for me the dread of a haunted house. Ochse's Spectacle of a Man brought back good old urban dread. Chadbourn's Sour Places reminds us that there are places in decay that might be subject to more primal forces.
But many of the other stories just don't work as well as they could. Many stories are either weak in chills, low on atmosphere or seem to be trying to hard to be modern Lovecraft. This suggests that a bit more edit, better selection and polishing might have made this a better collection. Laymon's and Brite's contributions are just not that remarkable, which is true of others. It's hard to identify where the problem is. Pelan and Adams write a nice introductory essay to the volume and perhaps it's just difficult to appeal to every taste in a collected volume.
So expect a few gems along with a few rocks.
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14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Mostly not really Lovecraftian, but decent enough., March 18, 2004
This review is from: The Children of Cthulhu (Paperback)
Most of the stories in this anthology adopt the trappings of Lovecraft's tales, but none of the style. The most loyal of the bunch is China Mieville's entry. The remainder of the tales drop names or refer to classic tales to remind the reader of the nature of the anthology. A few of the tales, such as "A Victorian Pot Dresser," begin well, but soon decend into stadard horror cliches, with tight little endings that follow standard movie logic. What's missing, what's forgotten, is that most of the dread that Lovecraft evoked in his stories came not from the events in themselves, but from the greater implications of those events -- the knowledge that humanity is supremely insignificant is the wider world and, despite the realization of this horror, we can never understand why, the very nature of reality being invisible to our inferior biology and intellect. Most of these stories skip such implications and head straight for the gruesome monsters and the spattering blood with a near-complete lack of subtlety.
Best to skip this one and stick with older material, if not Lovecraft himself. Most of the anthologies published by Chaosium are far superior.
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