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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Fifteen of August Derleth's less inspired Mythos tales, 7 Jun 2003
It is most unfortunate and wrong in more ways than one that this collection of stories is passed off as the work of H.P. Lovecraft. All of these stories were written by August Derleth, who was inspired by various little notes Lovecraft left behind, but the only indication of the true ownership of the tales comes in the list of sources from which these stories were assembled, a section quite easy to overlook by the general reader. Any Lovecraft disciple must have mixed feelings about August Derleth. His contribution to the Lovecraft legacy is undeniably significant; in the years after Lovecraft’s death, Derleth almost single-handedly kept his memory alive, forming the historic Arkham Press to publish the master’s stories himself. Derleth’s contribution is much more controversial when it comes to extending the Cthulhu legacy, however, for his conception of the Mythos is significantly different from that of Lovecraft; Derleth tended to see things in black and white, good vs. evil. This bifurcation of the Mythos legacy is in sharp contrast to Lovecraft’s original vision of a world where good and evil do not exist per se. Reading Derleth’s Mythos stories poses a danger of the reader conflating Derleth’s ideas and conceptions with those of Lovecraft, and I for one strive to keep the original legacy intact in my mind. This danger is exacerbated by Derleth’s frequent citation of events and characters from Lovecraft’s original writings. Dunwich and Innsmouth serve as frequent settings for these stories; familiar names such as Wilbur Whateley and the Whateley clan, Obed Marsh and his batrachian (which seems to be Derleth’s favorite word) descendants are encountered at every turn; and all manner of dark tomes are referred to, those introduced by members of the Lovecraft Circle as well as others Derleth invents himself. August Derleth was a perfectly competent writer capable of producing an impressive story every now and then. For the most part, however, his work is overly formulaic and repetitive, and, while he tries very hard to write the kind of stories Lovecraft wrote, his stories just don’t captivate the reader or come alive with the type of overwhelming, cosmic menace that seemed to live in the very words Lovecraft put to paper. The fifteen stories collected here are remarkably similar in plot and presentation, and that helps make this a somewhat tedious read at times; sometimes the only real spark of interest generated in my mind was a curiosity to see just how commonplace a spin a given story would place on Lovecraft’s otherworldly cosmology. When Derleth did dare to color outside the lines, his attempts come off rather strangely and almost comically. A case in point is The Dark Brotherhood, a tale in which a band of strange men bearing an incredibly strong resemblance to Edgar Allan Poe introduce a character clearly based on Lovecraft himself to a vision of another world. Having these alien creatures adopt the image of Poe makes the story memorable to the reader at the expense of the story’s effectiveness. You really won’t find anything here that did not originate with Lovecraft; Derleth seems to have a literary mold in which he mixes Mythos beings and characters in random fashion from one story to the next. As I say, though, Derleth is a competent writer, so few of these stories are painfully hard to read; judged outside of the context of Lovecraft, they are effective albeit repetitive. As a Lovecraft fan, I enjoy Derleth’s stories (and I might note that his best are to be found not here but in The Mask of Cthulhu and The Trail of Cthulhu), but they are just so lifeless that the memory of them begins to fade as soon as I finish them. I believe there is material here capable of entertaining both the Lovecraft devotee as well as the general horror fan. The important thing to keep in mind, though, is that these stories really should not be attributed in any way to Lovecraft, no matter what the book cover might want you to believe.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Ersatz Lovecraft, but not without appeal, 7 Nov 1998
By A Customer
One should be warned that these stories are mostly not written by Lovecraft, but by his self-proclaimed inheritor, August Derleth. And the discerning reader will notice a difference in the depth and texture of these stories as compared to the real deal. There also is considerable repetition in the themes of these stories. However, one of the odd things about Lovecraft fans (myself included) is that imitation is not necessarily considered a bad thing--the obsessive repetition of Lovecraft's themes seems somehow a fitting homage to his helpless mortals drawn to their doom by forbidden knowledge. My recommendation is to read the real Lovecraft first. If you like it, you'll probably think this is OK too.
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2.0 out of 5 stars
This book is not the work of H.P. Lovecraft, 21 Jun 1998
By A Customer
Despite the book's byline and what some reviewers here are telling you, this book is 99% the work of August Derleth, executor of the estate of H.P. Lovecraft. Derleth merely took a few sentences from Lovecraft's writing journal ("The Common Book") and made stories out of them, claiming collaboration. He used the same ideas over and over again, which is why these short stories begin to humorously resemble on another after awhile (come on, how many stories can you end with a massive run on sentence in italics?). Guy inherits house, guy finds old books, guy goes nuts. Derleth never really understood Lovecraft's appeal. Interesting only if you've read most of Lovecraft's work, and Derleth has done much better mythos pastisches: check out Carroll and Graf's "Mask of Cthulhu" and "Trail of Cthulhu", both of which have Derleth's byline instead of a hoax!
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