Customer Reviews

The Definitive H.P. Lovecraft: 67 Tales of Horror in One Volume (Halcyon Classics)

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

When I was very young, my oldest sister would read to me constantly - usually books of which my mom disapproved. H.P. Lovecraft was one of these books that mom said was too scary for kids. She was probably right; Lovecraft scared the living hell out of me as a kid. You know what? He still does. His famous "Cthulhu Mythos" is truly a masterful creation of "Elder Gods" who existed before mankind and want, again, to break through their dimensional barrier and extinguish mankind. "The Dunwich Horror,"" and "Shadow Over Innsmouth" represent a splendid (and horribly scary)sample of the terrifying stores around which he threatened the Earth with the Elder Gods.

This book has it all - Lovecraft's best works that are guaranteed to give you a weird, eerie feeling, making you especially careful where you travel in the New England deep woods. "Like a man who walks a lonely road doth walk in fear and dread, because he knows that close behind, a fearsome fiend doth tread."

Best,
Vienna

This is precisely what you are looking for. All of Lovecraft's stories consolidated into a single book for an excellent price. This IS the Mythos. There are no stories by those following HPL. There are no critiques, no rebuttals, and no dilutions.

This is the Mythos. Pure.

Talk about a collection - when i saw the size of this beast i wondered if I had seen a glitch, if my eyes were giving out after all the horror I had read, or if Kindle was giving me yet another taste of the good life. I had already collected Dracula and a few others for next to nothing, and this seemed like I was doing the same. So i clicked, checked, and was a happy camper.

While you have a lot of small things here, the 67 alone is enough to send a reader into some mind-altered vortex that says, "Danger, Will Robinson." That danger was not danger at all, however, but was something that was good to the last drippy drop. you really can't beat the size of the beast you get here and, honestly, you can't keep from admiring just how lovely this thing is. It is horror at its finest and it is beautiful in the way you find it coming up and devouring your Kindle.

Maybe that's what was meant by waking the sleeping Cthulhu. He's a Kindle man and he's been waiting for someone to download this sea of sexy stories and find him there, waiting.

All joking aside, though, get this!

Before the horror and fantasy niche genres were invented, there was weird fiction. H.P. Lovecraft coined the term as a blending of elements of science, fantasy, and horror with a focus on dread-inspiring unknown forces and the defeat of any forces of nature which give us solace. Some authors preceded him, such as Lord Dunsany, and others published alongside him, such as Robert E Howard and Clark Ashton Smith. These authors found a forum to publish in the pulp rag Weird Tales, of which Lovecraft was a key contributor. While the group of weird fictionalists had varied focii, Lovecraft focused on horror, and perfecting that was his craft. Anyone who has read Lovecraft could apply the term "weird fiction" equally to the style and content of his writing, as his work includes as another reviewer put it, "almost crunchy" prose. In spite of that, he somehow manages to consistently provide very engrossing literature that will surely entertain in a chilling way...

The Definitive H.P. Lovecraft provides a keen insight into his works, and provides material from all three major categories of his works. The first half of the book is devoted to the 'Cthulu Mythos' of which is Lovecraft's claim to fame. These works, while not related directly story-wise, all are devoted to an alternate history for the earth's development with horrific ramifications for the present. These stories are generally longer tales which are thoughtfully divided into chapters for easier consumption. You can tell that a lot of these chapters were offered up seperately in Weird Tales since they sometimes provide overlapping details.

As an aside, if you are like me and like to read a whole book before beginning another one, even if it is a collection, would highly recommend reading the first half of this book as a seperate work of literature. The Cthulu Mythos stands on its own as a frighteningly intriguing collection, and it varies greatly from the second half of the book. So, my advice is to read the first half, go on to something else, and read the last half when you want to read a long collection of quite short stories.

This first section also contains "The Colour Out of Space" which doesn't really fit EXACTLY into the Cthulu Mythos per se, no direct references, but it is similar enough to not feel out of place. It also happens to be a favorite of mine: a quintessential dumb farmer finds a meteor story, but it is still awesome.

The second section of the book begins with the Dream Cycle, which is a much more metaphorical ride through time and space. This is very cool, much more interesting than it might sound, and it includes what are surely very personal thoughts and fears. The most notable thing about this change other than the style is the abrupt beginning and ending of the much shorter stories. These stories are geared to fit their length, which is a vivid contrast to the Cthulu Mythos which read like short novels with a slower pace of development, and different style "hooks" used in their development. Not all of the Dream Cycle are short stories, but you don't find longer stories until about 75% through the book.

The third major style of Lovecraft is the Macabre stories, and these are interspersed (note the second half is alphabetical) in the second section as well. These stories are primarily good old fashioned horror stories, but you wont find any spirits in white sheets and clanking chains here. Lovecraft might like multidimensional beings, but he really doesn't care for ghosts and his threats are always physical, not just scary looking. Some of these stories are of intermediate length as well, but primarily are short.

Standout stories include the entire Cthulu Mythos: The Nameless City, The Festival, The Colour out of Space, The Call of Cthulhu, The Dunwich Horror, The Whisperer in Darkness, Dreams in the Witch-house, The Haunter of the Dark, The Shadow over Innsmouth, The Shadow out of Time, At the Mountain of Madness, and The Case of Charles Dexter Ward which are quite frankly all excellent. A few others that I liked included: Celephais, Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family, Herbert West: Reanimator, Imprisoned with the Pharaohs, In the Vault, Medusa's Coil, and Through The Gates of the Silver Key.

I would note that the Kindle page says it includes the story "Darkness" but IT DOES NOT! GASP! You still get 67 tales as advertised, not 68 as listed.

Overall, this is a great collection that will chill you, thrill you, and take you back in time a century or so ago and further than that if you will let it. Lovecraft almost singlehandedly inspired what we call horror today, and it is good to go back and look at the roots of a very enjoyable genre to read.

I'll just add a third voice saying that this is a fantastic collection of one of the best gothic horror authors, well presented by the publisher.

Seems that people like to put words like "Complete" or "Definitive" on their books to get you to buy it. If you look at the contents for this book (67 stories) and another one on Amazon with the word Complete in the title (63 stories), you might think you want this one (since it has 4 more stories and is $1 less at 1.99), but you would be wrong. Between the two of them, there are 73 stories. Complete is missing 10 that are in Definitive [Darkness, Dream House, Imprisoned with the Pharaohs, Medusa's Coil, Poetry of the Gods, The Alchemist, The Beast in the Cave, The Crawling Chaos, The Horror at Martin's Beach, Through the Gates of the Silver Key] -- and Definitive is missing 4 (actually has 69, not 67) that are in Complete [Ibid, Old Bugs, The History of the Necronomicon, The Thing in the Moonlight]. Maybe there's another title that has even more stories ...

Ever wondered who coined the words 'Necronomicon', 'Arkham', 'Space time continuum'? None other than one of the masters if not THE MASTER of the horror and macabre genre H.P Lovecraft. Included in this collection is the best Sci-Fi Horror "The Color out of Space", and other great works of the weird and the macabre, like "The Dunwich Horror", "The Call of Cuthulhu" and the darkly humorous "Herbert West: Reanimator". Guaranteed to satisfy any Lovecraft junkie, and those who want to be introduced to the work of this great but underrated writer...

I was familiar with the Lovecraft from the Call of Cthulhu RPG, but had never actually read any of the stories.

Purchase of my Kindle led me to pick this up. What a great deal for $2!

The writing is amazing. The ideas that Lovecraft either came up with or built upon are wonderful. His Mythos is complicated and engaging.

Lovecraft does a good job of referencing some earlier stories. It's nice to hear about the Innsmouth Curse, for example, in multiple stories. Though, you might get sick of hearing of the Mad Arab who wrote the Necronomican. Seriously, was Mad part of his name?

This collection, in my opinion, is front-loaded with the best stuff. My favorites being The Call of Cthulhu, The Dunwich Horror and The Shadow over Innsmouth. Though, the Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath is really good also.

Now, be warned, this was written in a time when different language was acceptable. Some of what he says is quite offensive, but, I hope readers can get past that to the true quality that is there.

Easy 5 stars.

Edit - I see that a rival publisher doesn't like this review, as all of the reviews here were down-voted after I pointed out this was the better version. Tough. This is the Lovecraft version to get.

Howard Phillips Lovecraft is the epitome of an "acquired taste." His prose is dense to point of being crunchy, his pacing is all over the place, his characterizations pedantic (there are few women, and most of the protagonists are quite similar to the author), and some actions and plot points fail the "dumb test." In other words, if people in a horror movie did the things they do here, you'd be yelling at the screen. And yet, once you forgive the author these flaws, you'll find yourself in the grip of some of the best cosmic horror and dark fantasy stories ever told. Lovecraft introduces concepts that are baffling in their intellectual magnitude, from the ideas of extra-terrestrials as eternal primeval forces, humanity as an error caused by failed experiments in the creation of higher lifeforms, a sympathetic vegetable race capable of supreme art and sentience, and much more. The horror here is not of the "boo" variety, it is existential. Stories range from the gothic parable (The Outsider), to science fiction (The Colour Out of Space), to rural dystopia (The Dunwich Horror), to the simply non-classifiable (The Shadow Out of Time). Some of the stories here, while fantastic, are so "out there" for the first-time reader that I fear the compounded effect of all of them would be hard to process without some serious effort. But still, these stories are unforgettable, disturbing, provokingly intelligent and even beautiful. There's a lot to enjoy here, and the only thing I can add to the new fans of Lovecraft is this: I envy you.

Lovecraft is great. This edition, is not. The first paragraph of The Picture in the House, is missing. It makes me wonder what else is screwed up. Are there no more proofreaders?