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19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Three stars does not mean unreadable. That's what 1 is for., December 29, 2003
I can half heartedly reccomend this with serious caveats. Problem one. It is really a one-trick pony. OK. You get it. Holmes vs. various mythos creatures. This looks great on paper but does not sustain a book. If you are really interested, however, and since many of the stories are entertaining and a couple actually thought provoking, then buy it and read no more than one story a month, maybe every 6 weeks. This isn't only because of the limitations of the idea, but also because all but two authors chose (generally successfully) to mimic Doyle's/"Watson's" writing style. Problem two. A disproportionate number of stories are based on The Shadow over Innsmouth. One that isn't, "The Curious Case of Miss Violet Stone," is, as has been pointed out by a previous review, based on The Shadow out of Time. This is one of the two best stories in the book. A few stories seem headed off down that sidetrack created by August Derleth where there was a chance in fighting back and winning with Help from Outside. In HPL doom was eventually inevitable and there was no Help available. "Death Did Not Become Him" is very tenuously mythos being more related to the story of the Golem and Cabbalistic mysticism with a pretty lane excuse given for the connection. Most of The Uspeakable Old Ones are named in various chants and so forth, but few put in an appearance. In the original HPL the power of suggestion hightened the suspense. Here it is merely disappointing. Shub-Niggurath has a cameo and I think (based on precious little evidence) that Nyarlathotep has some off-stage schtick. Most disappointing, Chthlhu Himself is totally AWOL, replaced by innumerable aquatic hybrids. "The Case of the Antiquaritan's Niece," is vaguely related to "The Dunwich Horror." The best story is by Neil Gaiman. More or less connected to At the Mountains of Madness, it also reminded me of the wonderful Kim Newman's Anno Dracula books.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Hypergeometry? Why, it's elementary!, November 12, 2005
Many fans of the literature of H.P. Lovecraft wonder what his fiction would have been like if set in another era. Ramsey Campbell is perhaps the best representative of the '60s and '70s while John Tynes and his crew admirably adapt the core of Cthulhu to the 1990's. But what about the 1890's? Well, there is already a game afoot in that period and it is the inestimable Sherlock Holmes and his faithful companion and recorder Dr. John Watson. The 1890's of Sherlock Holmes brings to the table of the Lovecraftian corpus the very summit of the Enlightenment and Rationality to be broken on the jagged rocks of Madness and Otherworldliness. Before the humbling of the Great War, all the power and prestige of the West was to be found in London, as well as the darkness of poverty, suffering, and a bubbling social revolution, ripe to be exploited for the Mythos.
Some of the stories herein are mere supernatural detective tales. The Sherlock Holmes we know and love has never been beaten and can conquer even the eldritch and the horrific when armed with the Necronomicon. Here, the gnosticism of Abdul Al-Hazred is simply one more tool in the box of Holmes for fighting the forces of darkness. Rarer is the story where he must come to grips with something he can't explain, when his much vaunted intellect is vanquished by something too alien to be dealt with by mere humans. In a world of only rational numbers, the value of "pi" is insanity. I think only "The Horror of the many Faces" successfully pulls this off.
Not every one of these tales is about Sherlock Holmes. A few deal more or less exclusively with Dr. Watson, and one is even about Irene Adler. H.G. Wells makes a guest appearance, and "A Study in Emerald" has . . . well, the ending is too good to give any hints.
For anyone who enjoys both Lovecraft and Doyle, this is a great anthology. I think that the tone leans more towards the latter than the former, but it is better than much of the fiction published recently, and is perhaps as good as the anthology SHADOWS OVER INNSMOUTH edited by Stephen Jones.
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9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A Mixed Bag, July 14, 2004
I have to agree with other reviews printed here. The book is something of a mixed bag. Few of the stories are well balanced quality pieces of professional writing. Their strengths and limitations differ. Some of the stories show a paucity of knowledge about Lovecraft's work. In such stories, only a few of the most general references are made to the Lovecraftean canon. Otherwise the stories just suggest the pursuit of a "nightstalker" figure similar to a sort of Jack the Ripper. To justify the story's inclusion in this collection, the author tosses in a couple of Lovecraft's character names or place names such as "Cthulhu" or "Innsmouth" into the story. Nothing is ever done with these references, mind. That would require too much effort. Some stories work pretty well because the writer has worked with the material before and knows it well. I think that Richard Lupoff's story "The Voorish Sign" is one of the book's best. But Lupoff has written and published other Sherlock Holmes pastiches over the years. He has a track record, so to speak. Some of the most intriguing and most enjoyable stories set a Lovecraftian stage beautifully, drawing us in, getting us really eager to move on to the denouement. Unfortunately, it is as though the writer at this point does not know what to do with the situation he/she has established, and just . . . stops. Such is "The Mystery of the Worm" by John Pelan. A series of biographic sketches appear at the end of the book, profiling the authors of the various stories. Here one sees quite a range of experience. Some of the writers have published a number of books and stories, and seem to have done their share of "weird tales." Others have published very little professionally, and seem to be either beginner professionals or serious amateurs. This may partly explain the sense of unevenness one gets from the book. If I could ask for one thing, it would be a more genuine knowledge of H.P. Lovecraft's writings by some of the authors. Most of the writers, not surprisingly, have a good sense for Holmes and Watson, since Arthur Conan Doyle's characters are well known through a myriad of books and movies, although even here there are disappointments. One of the weakest stories in the book, "The Drowned Geologist" by Caitlin Kiernan, is just a long letter supposedly written to Dr. Watson -- but we learn at the end of the story, it was never mailed. This story reveals virtually no serious detailed knowledge of either Doyle's OR Lovecraft's writing. In fact, the only evidence that Holmes and Watson are even involved in the story at all comes in the letter's salutation, "My dear Dr. Watson." One suspects the author congratulated herself that she could make a token gesture toward the editors' requirements while writing something else entirely. I enjoyed the book despite its uneven quality. It is the kind of book that is very good to take on an airplane trip. Three or four of the stories are very good.
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