Customer Reviews

Return to Lovecraft Country fiction anthology (Triad Publication, 6)

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

 

 

I bought this book despite having never previously heard of Triad and all the negative reviews here at Amazon, and I am not disappointed. This is a small collection of short-stories all in the Lovecraftian vein, a couple that are slavishly Mythos-oriented (which will appeal to pastiche fans), and several which are quite fresh and unavailable in any other format. As to typos, none are so glaring as detract from reading, and only the most retentive and picky readers are likely to notice them at all. Do keep in mind, Triad is not a big publishing house with hundreds of staffers and copy readers, multiple department editors for each book, so on and so on. To this end, collectors will know that second runs of these small press books are unlikely, thus firmly establishing them as future, pricey collectibles you will be hard-pressed to find if you don't grab a copy now...

As a newcomer to Lovecraft style gothic horror fiction, I was looking for something with a variety of stories that was easy to get into. I was recommended this book by a friend and after finishing it I have decided it was a worthy purchase. Admittedly it is not perfect, but I've seen a few errors in some of Stephen King's novels, so it did not detract from my enjoyment all that much. My main purpose for getting an anthology book was to get an idea of the variety of writing styles and pick the authors that seemed to resonate with me the most, in order to explore more of their dark and horrific tales; in that I feel this book has succeeded. I am looking forward to reading more from CJ Henderson, Robert Price, and Donald Burleson, and I hope to find more books from Triad Entertainments.

Every single book produced by Triad Publications that I have purchased has had glaring typographical errors throughout, and this book is no exception. In fact the amount of errors is so massive in each of their books I actually vowed to never buy a Triad Publication book again, but the inclusion of a CJ Henderson story in Return To Lovecraft Country made me pick the book up. Mr. Henderson's work is excellent as always, but the rest of the stories in this anthology are poorly written and make the book unworthy of its cover price.

After searching for works updating the Lovecraft mythos I thought that I'd be in for a treat when I happened upon this book. I was, in a word, disppointed. The book is poorly edited with numerous spelling and grammatical typos (probably in a rush to publish), its works are horribly derivative and sophmoric at best. I would go so far as to say that it cheapens Lovecraft's works and any true fan would be well advised to avoid this book. One exception I found was 'The Last Feat of the Harlequin' by Ligotti (unfortunatetly not even that salvages this book given the fact that I read it already in one of his anthologies).

Of note only for the TED Klein tale, and "Last Feast of Harlequin" but these two tales have improved in far superior short story collections than this one.