Aaron J French

Its an anthology, so there are inevitably going to be hits or misses. For me, its a surprisingly good amount of hits. Nothing swept me off my feet, but some solid entries.

The premise is that each god/creature in the Lovecraft 'pantheon' is featured in its own story, after which is an aside that provides an encyclopedia-like overview of the creature. I largely found these overviews unnecessary - presumably if you are interested in this book you already have at least a passing familiarity with the subject, and it didn't provide much beyond what the short story included.

Some of the stories were very self-aware. I know this is a Lovecraft-inspired collection, but don't include him in your story. Don't reference him as a prophet. Don't bring him up and say "But his works were all true!!" Its so, so overdone and unoriginal by this point. It snaps me out of the story. Its clunky. Its distressingly close to 'memberberries and the wink-wink-nudge-nudge-get-it? humor of Big Bang Theory. Just don't.

Stories I Enjoyed:
Call the Name by Nevill and A Dying of the Light by Caine. Different tones, different monsters, but both stories really effectively tied the mythos to dementia in a way that was sentimental and haunting. Bonus points to A Dying of the Light for how it integrated the real-world Voynich Manuscript into the story. These two were my favorites of the whole collection.

Petohtalrayn by Little was straightforward but gave its monster a vicious and otherworldly intelligence. It was okay.

The Apotheosis of a Rodeo Clown by Talley. This probably coasts a lot on novelty but c'mon, rodeo clowns and Lovecraft are so disparate ideas I kinda have to love it. Great voice to it, great action, but it doesn't quite stick the landing.

Rattled by Wynne. Short. Felt very much like a Stephen King story.

Dream a Little Dream of Me by Adventure. Noir detective meets urban fantasy meets Lovecraft. It was fun, although purists are going to bitch about the tone and the ending being wrong for the Lovecraft genre. I wouldn't mind a full-length novel of this one.

Down, Deep Down, Below the Waves by McGuire. Solid. I liked the juxtaposition of science and tradition, modern schooling and old values, different definitions of beauty and familial love.

One running theme is most, if not all, stories included a graduate student/professor studying too much and too deep and paying the ultimate price, with some being good with the cost and others not. Its always been common in Lovecraftian fiction but it stuck out to me here. I sometimes wonder, growing up on a steady diet of these kinds of protagonists in my sci-fi and horror novels, if that says something about me.
… (mer)

A genuinely impressive and entertaining collection of weird and esoteric horror stories. Most of the stories within contain a blend of occult ideas mixed with SF/F concepts and suffused with a outr̩ dream imagery. Some standouts to me were the weird-western purgatorial sojourn �ÛÏWhat Lay East, Lay West,‰Û the moving story of a disillusioned seeker in ‰ÛÏDoubting Thomas,‰Û the weird murder mystery ‰ÛÏDweller in the Cracks‰Û (which features a pretty unique body-swap sequence at the twist), the fever-dream fairy-take ‰ÛÏMy Stalk,‰Û and the world-ending by way of a Jack-Kirby-monster tale ‰ÛÏ{(California Sea Cosmic Man) - Humankind} Anadyr, Russia = Apocalypse‰Û. Many of these stories deal with apocalypses, though, in both the commonly understood Biblical reference and in it‰Ûªs truer etymological form of an ‰ÛÏuncovering,‰Û or ‰ÛÏrevelation,‰Û as characters are dislocated from their everyday lives by strange and profound phenomenon they can only struggle to understand. All-in-all I would highly recommend this collection to those who are fans of grand cosmic-scale SF horror, and / or those who have an interest in occult and esoteric concepts.… (mer)