Customer Reviews

The Early Fears

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Ths magnificent volume is a book I return to time and time again. It reprints, in one handsome sturdy volume, the complete contents of Robert Bloch's first two Arkham House collections, and also includes three tale previously uncollected -- 39 tales in all!! It stands as the finest collection of Robert Bloch's weird fiction, and shews how his style matured from the very early years (when he began to write under the influence of his mentor, H. P. Lovecraft, who suggested to Bloch that he try his hand at writing fiction) to his sly and cynical mature style. Here we have the very early Cthulhu Mythos stories such as "The Mannikin," "The Faceless God" and "The Shambler from the Stars" to those very cool and unique mature tales that only Bloch could have written: "The Hungry House," "Enoch," "The Light-House" (a completion of an Edgar A. Poe story!), "Return to the Sabbath," and so many others. I wish some wise publisher would reprint this book and add to it "The Skull of the Marques de Sade," which would then make it the one indispensable Robert Bloch edition of his short fiction. This volume also includes a new introduction by the author, "The View from 1993." Fedogan & Bremer books are always beautiful and well-made, and thus this volume is a fine bargain at even outlandish prices -- it will last your lifetime. Wonderful!

very few times i am actually...charmed by horror. but this is charming. you get taken away by bloch's style. naive, simple, but it does not matter. because that is what enthralls you. good stories, a great many of them. some are not so naive. some even contain pretty good description. bloch has a sort of "fresh" style, which makes the story pretty good even if they don't seem original. this collection also contains a real masterpiece, psychologically one of the best written horror stories of all times: the sorceror's apprentice. somehow i always end up thinking about tales from the crypt when reading this collection.