I was hooked ever since I read Ligotti’s philosophical treatise The Conspiracy Against the Human Race. You see, Nothingness was a concept that struck me to the very core of my being. His stories have that quality to them, drawing on the terror of emptiness and nothingness. This is something most horror writers don’t touch with ten-foot poles. Having said that, I jumped into his short story compilation with trepidation, not knowing what to expect. Color me impressed: his stories caused me nightmares.

You see, Ligotti doesn’t really do the whole black vs. white story of good winning over evil. In his world, evil isn’t something tangible, rather it’s a philosophy that permeates our very existence. It’s the nothingness and the foulness in our very beings, lurking just beneath the veneer of humanity we put up on display daily.

He finds horror in the bleakness, the pointlessness of existence. It could be a day full of sunshine and flowers, or a dark, stormy night alone in a mansion. It doesn’t matter.

His horror is expressed through the idea of the self, which is enhanced through his academic prose. It causes the reader to go into a sort of trance, focusing not just on the words but the feelings behind them. It slithers its way to the very core of your being. It fills you with a sense of unease, a dread that claws its way into you. It’s the sense of isolation, of being disconnected from the world, feeling completely empty and devoid of meaning.

Of course, there’s the external horror too, and by the gods, they’re fantastic. There are malevolent gods who reward the banality of existence, monsters who hatch out of your head, and a pan dimensional entity who literally tears apart the fabric of reality.

If you’re looking for weird fiction that’s going to truly weird you out, then you’re in the right place. Go read this right now and have some sweet, sweet nightmares. ( )

Since the stories are arranged in chronological order, the collection essentially gives a condensed overview of Ligotti's growth as a writer, and his progression over the years is quite noticeable. The earlier stories aren't 'worse' than later ones, per se, but they differ significantly in their methods compared to his more recent ones. All of the stories are effectively different expressions of the same obsessively-composed bleakness that is quite unique to Ligotti, though on a surface level they're varied enough that reading several in a row never feels tedious. ( )

You really feel like you're entering a different world when you read a Thomas Ligotti story. It's a world that is oddly familiar but decidedly foreign and uncomfortable. Each character is dense and complex. Not easy reading but so very worth it.

The Shadow at the Bottom of the World is a collection of short stories that absolutely reek of bleakness and sheer horror, but not horror in the same sense of the more mainstream type of horror novels. Ligotti connects all of his stories with an overaching theme of evil that "may show itself anywhere precisely because it is everywhere and is as stunningly set off by a foil of sunshine and flowers as it is by darkness and dead leaves." (145) This is probably one of the darkest collections of horror I've ever encountered, but the stories contained within this book are truly excellent. These aren't the kind of horror stories you're going to find on supermarket shelves, though, but more of a thinking person's horror. I think you have to read them to understand, because I think each reader is going to find something that resonates on an individual level. The other overall statement that I want to make about this book is that it is clear that while Ligotti is an excellent writer, there are shades of influence in her from writers like HP Lovecraft and others, that allow the darkness to take you in its grip right away. Very well done, and highly recommended, although mainstream horror readers may not like it because there are no gory parts or whatever it is that a lot of modern horror fiction readers are looking for.

In the list of what I would consider excellent stories:
"the last feast of harlequin,"
"dr. locrian's asylum"
"vastarien"
"the spectacles in the drawer"
"the shadow at the bottom of the world,"
"nethescurial"
"the bungalow house"

The others are good, too, but these were my favorites.

Very highly recommended; if you read Lovecraft,you will appreciate this one very much. ( )