Frontier Cthulhu is a rousing trade paperback of all new mythos stories from Chaosium, published in late 2007. I am so happy about this avalanche of new mythos fiction from Elder Signs Press, Chaosium, Mythos Books and Hippocampus in the US, and Rainfall Books in the UK. Every few months us fans have some new book to gloat over; on the horizon are a Nyarlathotep anthology from Elder Signs Press, maybe a mythos sword and sorcery title (the message boards have been buzzing about Eldritch Steel for years) and maybe even a shoggoth anthology. And I know John Sunseri, David Conyers and CJ Henderson are hard at work on a sequel to The Spiraling Worm. List price of the current title is $14.95, discounted to $13.18 from Amazon. It is eligible for free shipping if you order more than $25 worth of stuff. Page count is a generous 266 with text from page 9-261. There are minibios of the authors at the end, but no editor's note or introduction to put the anthology into context for us. It's a great concept for a Cthulhu mythos anthology and I would like to have known more about its development. Just about all these stories are new to this anthology, except the stories by Schweitzer, and Rainey and Haire. These appeared in genre magazines and are unlikely to have been seen except by dedicated collectors. Production qualities are high. Editing was by William Jones, who is helmsman for Elder Signs Press. He has been heavily involved in many fine Cthulhu mythos and horror books from both Elder Signs Press and Chaosium: Horrors Beyond I and II, High Seas Cthulhu and Arkham Tales. I noted a few sentence fragments (which could have been the author's choice) and a few word substitutions, most notably callus for callous. The attractive cover art is by Steven Gilberts, who has given us covers for High Seas Cthulhu and Arkham Tales; it shows some noisome things hopping among the remains of a bleached skeleton. While not depicting any specific story, it is suitably atmospheric. Too bad there was no interior art by Mr. Gilberts!

I very much liked the ordering of the stories in this anthology; this is a book of frontier tales. We usually associate the word frontier with the American west, but for Europeans all of the country was, at one time or another, the frontier. Frontier Cthulhu more or less is organized chronologically, with tales set from when England had no more than a toehold in America to the beginning of the last century. I did have some doubts about the language in a few stories; it seemed anachronistic. I liked the HBO series Deadwood as much as anyone but I don't think even the ruffians of that era cursed like the characters did on that show. Even in WWII the `f' word wasn't used that much by the troops, I don't think. Maybe someone can fill me in on what the vernacular was really like. At any rate, a few authors take a page from a Deadwood script in terms of epithets. It didn't detract from my enjoyment, it just didn't ring true for the era. Surprisingly, there weren't many Yig stories! Here are the contents:

Paul Melniczek: "The Long Road Home"
Angeline Hawkes: "In Waters Black the Lost Ones Sleep"
Lee Clark Zumpe: "Where Men Had Seldom Trod"
Lon Prater: "Something to Hold the Door Closed"
Stephen Mark Rainey & Durant Haire: "Terror from Middle Island"
Stewart Sternberg:"Children of The Mountain"
William Jones: "They Who Dwell Below"
Scott Lette: "Wagon Train for the Star"
Ron Shiflet: "Incident at Dagon Wells"
Rob Santa: "Ahiga and the Machine"
Jason Andrew: "The Deadman's Hand"
Chuck Zaglanis: "Jedediah Smith and the Undying Chinaman"
Matthew Baugh: "Snake Oil"
Tim Curran: "Cemetery, Nevada"
Darrell Schweitzer: "The Rider of the Dark"

"The Long Road Home" - Paul Melniczek has written mythos stories in the past but it is only a fraction of his output. Too bad! He is a terrifically talented author; "Predicting Perdition" is a marvelous story just published in Horrors Beyond II. I was very entertained by "Ensnared" in High Seas Cthulhu, also. I hope some small press such as Mythos Books will compile and anthology of his best work for us! "The Long Road Home" follows a group of Vikings who have been pillaging the new world. They end up wandering further afield than they possibly could have imagined, possibly discovering the truth about Yggdrasil. This was a brilliant start for Frontier Cthulhu.

"In Waters Black the Lost Ones Sleep" - I never read anything by Ms. Hawkes before, although she is on the author list for the eventually forthcoming Ancient Shadows. In this tightly written and wonderfully creepy story, we find out what really happened to Virginia Dare and the original English colonizers.

"Where Men Had Seldom Trod" - And after a great start the proceedings come to screeching halt with the story I liked the least in the whole book. What is more, it takes up a disproportionately long 26 pages. The last thing by Mr. Zumpe that I really liked was "The Breach" in Horrors Beyond. Lee Clarke Zumpe introduced Solditas Invictus, a centuries old secret society dedicated to opposing the Great Old Ones, in "Passage to Oblivion" from High Seas Cthulhu. I cannot come up with a decent translation for solditas, although invictus may be rendered as unyielding or indomitable. The agents of Solditas Invictus are the superhuman Sentinels. While the notion of a shadowy group fighting Cthulhu's minions can provide a background for great fiction (eg: Delta Green), the idea of superhumans does no service to mythos horror, sort of moving beyond science fiction into the realm of comic books. One of the great hooks of Lovecraftian fiction is the notion of ordinary people contemplating alien indifferent immensities. It wouldn't have bothered me so much except that after a decent mood setting paragraph or so, the rest of the story left me completely flat in terms of descriptive prose, characterizations dialogue and plot.

"Something to Hold the Door Closed" - Lon Prater is new to me, but has a story in the upcoming Ancient Shadows. "Something to Hold the Door Closed" is set against the interesting historical backdrop of the North Carolina gold rush in the late 1700s, using real events and characters. Thar's gold in them thar hills....you just shouldn't go digging for it...

"Terror from Middle Island" - Durant Haines is a new name to me, while Mr. Rainey is a well established author. "Terror from Middle Island" is an excellent story! The descendent of a victim of an Indian massacre investigates the truth behind the legends. What a great denouement!

"Children of The Mountain" - Stewart Sternberg wrote "The Others," a gripping story of a slaving vessel in High Seas Cthulhu. :"Children of The Mountain" - is another wonderfully creepy read about some rough mountain men who find some creatures that are servants of Ithaqua.

"They Who Dwell Below" - Editor nonpariel William Jones gives us a tense, claustrophobic exploration of Zealia Bishop's (...well, HPL's) mound.

"Wagon Train for the Star" - The story is from Scott Lette who contributed the enjoyable "The Lady in the Grove" to Arkham Tales. Mr. Lette gives us another fine read, where a two bit wrangler is hired to lead a wagon train of settlers who are members of an obscure religious cult.

"Incident at Dagon Wells" - I was given the opportunity to read an early draft of "Incident at Dagon Wells." I am pleased to say that this final version is better, more compactly written. It is another excellent story in a highly successful anthology. Some hard bitten, hard drinking, hard shooting cowboys are pursued by Comanche, almost herded by them toward an obscure and disreputable outpost called Dagon Wells.

"Ahiga and the Machine" - Rob Santa had another story in the short lived anthology Cthulhu Express. His contribution here is very good. Ahiga is a young Native American on a vision quest who is confronted with an immense metal object that falls from the sky.

"The Deadman's Hand" - Jason Andrew is becoming more widely published, with "Geometry of the Soul" in Arkham Tales and, I think, another story in Hell's Hangmen. Two pair, aces and eights, is the legendary hand of Wild Bill Hickok when he was shot (although maybe it's just a myth). Here we are more concerned with another man who is as good as dead, a poker player who is sponsored into a game, competing for Tituba's deck (Tituba is an actual person, the original slave girl accused of witchcraft in Salem, whose actual biographical details are obscured by the mists of history). While I liked the story in some ways it was too much in medias res for me, and could have done with some more background.

"Jedediah Smith and the Undying Chinaman" - The last thing I read by Mr. Zaglanis was the very enjoyable "The Isle of Dreams" from High Seas Cthulhu. I wasn't so enamored of this title, although others might like it better. It was very pulp-fictiony, an over the top piece about the preternaturally deadly gunman Jedediah Smith and his adventures.

"Snake Oil" - Matthew Baugh has been busy with stories in Arkham Tales, High Seas Cthulhu (the excellent "Clownfish"), Hell's Hangmen and In Lovecraft's Shadow issue #1. I wonder if Dave Mather, descendent of Cotton Mather, will become a fixture in Mr. Baugh's stories? Dave Mather is a deputy marshal in Nevada who gets mixed up in some mysterious goings on. As you might surmise from the title, this is the Yiggiest story in the book.

"Cemetery, Nevada" - Mr. Curran is widely published in the horror genre. While I liked the story well enough, about a tough gang of railroad regulators tracking down even worse criminals in a town where reality seems frayed around the edges, the format didn't work for me. It was presented as a letter but sure didn't read like a letter, and maybe would have been better as a taped interview. Once past this nitpicky detail, I was entertained as I usually am by Mr. Curran's fiction.

"The Rider of the Dark" - Mostly over the top and played for humor about some hapless cowpokes, I liked the ending of this story more than the rest of it.

In summary, this book is practically self recommending. I mean, with this title and this cover, Cthulhu mythos fans have already bought a copy! I was mostly entertained with the exceptions noted above. Frontier Cthulhu starts 2008 off with a bang for the mythos genre. Almost all of the stories were good and some were real gems. For context, I would put it at about the same level as High Seas Cthulhu, and a little below Hardboiled Cthulhu (which was such a treat to read!), Rehearsals for Oblivion and Arkham Tales. Well worth spending your hard earned Cthulhu bucks! ( )

A collection of horror stories set on the American frontier from 1000 A.D. to 1900 A. D. by many of the best modern horror fantasists.

One decent short story by Curran, and the rest of them worse.

Do not buy. Do not borrow. Do not read. ( )