More than most of the Chaosium "Call of Cthulhu Fiction" volumes I've read, this one is tied down to the pulp-era setting of the Call of Cthulhu role-playing game. The tales share a common emphasis on the presence of cults dedicated to the praeternatural entities of Yog-Sothothery. There is a fair amount of variety among the contributions, and some of them are genuinely disturbing.

Many of these stories use ethnicity and "race" as a distinction in order to foster fear by "othering" the cultists. Every central protagonist, without exception, is white (although there are a couple of darker-hued sidekicks), and villainous cults include Arabs, Chinese, tribal Africans, etc. As if uneasy with this feature himself, editor David Conyers makes an apology for it in his foreword, mentioning that it follows from the culture of the period in which the stories are set. Still, the argument falls flat with me. To recognize and illustrate the racism of the period does not mean that fantasy horror narratives need to validate it in the way that these do.

My favorite story in the book, which did not partake of this particular fault, was Penelope Love's "The Whisperer of Ancient Secrets." Conyers supplies the final story of the volume, in which he explicitly ties together most of others into a single continuity. I was impressed with how artfully he pulled that off.

The flavor of most of these stories is that of a pulp adventure story, with occult overtones, rather than horror. But that’s ok. The 1920s and 1930s, the setting of all these stories, was a grand time for those kind of stories. There were plenty of unexplored corners of the world. Transportation virtually anywhere was available – but not easy or common. Communication meant finding a local radio station, telegraph office, or pay phone – not whipping out your cell phone. There was the political and human wreckage of one world war with sides being drawn up for another.

Rich enough by itself but throw in some sinister cults, extraterrestrial “gods”, blasphemous books, and strange sorcery and you’ve got the potential for some good stories. And that potential is realized with most of the stories here even if, as I said, not all are really horror stories.

Conyers has even arranged some crossover unity in the stories which, while all standalones, sometimes reference characters and events of other stories in the collection.

Familiarity with the inspiration for the project, the Call of Cthulhu role-playing game, is not necessary to enjoy any of these stories.

“The Eternal Champion” in David Conyers’ story is one Lang-Fu (I assume a recurring character from the game). He wants a magic talisman back. The narrator, a sailor handy with a knife, has been hired by his magician cousin to stop him. This was just an ok story with the main interest being one Mama Tropos who runs a club in San Francisco which is sort of neutral ground for the warring parties.

“Captains of Industry” by John Goodrich interestingly sets itself against the labor unrest of the 1920s in the United States. A couple of labor organizers infiltrate a club to get warning of the next move in a brutal campaign of union suppression by the club’s members. Of course, there is a bit more going on at the Lodge of the Hermetic Order of the Silver Twilight.

David Witteveen’s “Perfect Skin” is a nice atmospheric effort set in 1922 Istanbul. A newlywed woman begins to learn all sorts of unpleasant things about the activities of her new – and now vanished – husband.

Rudolph Pearson, hero of William Jones’ The Strange Cases of Rudolph Pearson, tangles with a race of ghouls in 1923 New York City. Professor Pearson’s fight with the ghouls has an unusual – but quite Lovecraftian – ending in “Covenant of Darkness”.

The ending of Penelope Love’s “The Whisperer of Ancient Secrets” may be hurt by its vague ending but the story, the surrealistic account of a man changed by his encounter with a meteorite and the experiments he is performing in an underground facility in the Australian Outback (this collection has a group of strong Australian writers), is disturbing in its casual depravity and madness.

Told in the letters of the hero to his dead wife, Peter Worthy’s “Old Ghost” is one of those stories with a strong mystery pulp feeling except here, of course, there really is something supernatural going on. The narrator, an ex-minister, is befriended by an old sea captain. But, when the captain disappears, he begins to learn about something called the Order of the Bloated Woman and a Chinese gangster who has risen from the dead.

While Oscar Rios’ “The Nature of Faith” is set in Dunwich about the same time as Lovecraft’s “The Dunwich Horror” there is little reference to that story, and the settings of the stories do not seem to share much in detail or atmosphere. This is one of those man-wanders-into-small-town-with-a-secret stories. Here the man is a college professor who thinks Dunwich may have evidence of an ancient Celtic migration to America. And then he meets an exotic and beautiful looking girl and love seems possible.

“The Devil’s Diamonds” from Cody Goodfellow was one of my favorite stories. A British Army officer is dispatched to Kenya to investigate the mistreatment of native workers in the Lucky Kate diamond mine. Oh, they’re digging for something there, but it isn’t diamonds. And the investors in the mine are unusual too.

Continuing the trend of saving the best stories for last is Shane Jiraiya Cummings’ “Requiem for the Burning God”. Its hero is an ex-British aviator from World War One who joins a mercenary company to help New World Incorporated take back a mine from insurgents in Peru. Of course, almost nothing good is done underground in a Cthulhu Mythos story, This is also another story where the horror element was almost entirely overshadowed by a well-done action adventure plot.

Editor David Conyers references a lot of the earlier stories with his “Sister of the Sands”. Its hero, a British intelligence officer, encounters a strange, beautiful, and naked woman in the Egyptian desert. Of course, she’s not what she seems. And this story ends on an oddly hopeful and human moment for a Mythos story. Another enjoyable effort.

So, gaming considerations aside, this collection is worth a look for all Mythos fans – as long as they don’t insist on horror, cosmic or other wise, in every story. ( )

This started with an interesting & informative introduction by David Conyers, setting the scene & premise nicely. As with all anthologies there are good, bad & Indifferent items to be found in here. Most of the authors seem to have written their entries like a Cthulhu scenario was being played, which is fine if you are playing a role playing game, but not so hot, if you are writing a short story. There was a lot of action in places, which is great when appropriate, but is was only about a third, that had the imagery & the nilism of Lovecraft's best work. I didn't feel as though we were being shown the cold unfeeling universe of hard science, but rather, in places, cheering on the closest that Cthulhu gets to Indiana Jones type characters. Not bad, but not as good as it could have been. ( )

Cthulhu's Dark Cults is the latest offering from Chaosium in the Call of Cthulhu fiction series. Lovecraft is getting more attention than ever before, CoC has been a popular role playing game for years, the
Cthulhu fiction market is booming and Dungeon & Dragons based books are best sellers, so it was only a matter of time before Chaosium took the plunge. In Cthulhu's Dark Cults, as explained in editor David
Conyers' introduction, the stories are based on classic Chaosium gaming scenarios. The author list includes many of those who helped create some of these same COC scenarios or who regularly enjoy the game. The best CoC type fiction has been the Delta Green anthologies and novels from Pagan Publishing. The first such book from Chaosium, Arkham Tales, was pretty successful. The main difference was the generally higher quality of the writing from Delta Green. Except for a few clunkers I was very entertained by Arkham Tales, so I was eager to read Cthulhu's Dark Cults. Here are my up front caveats. I am a Cthulhu mythos fiction fan so I am predisposed to like this genre. However, I do not play any rpg (my D&D days are long behind me and I never played CoC). I am completely unfamiliar with any of the scenarios these stories were based upon. A die hard CoC aficionado might have a different perspective than me, with a better grasp of the background. This is like Arkham Tales. The stories stand or fall on their own merits as far as I'm concerned; their connection to CoC does not influence my opinion.

Cthulhu's Dark Cults is a trade paperback typical for Chaosium. There are 235 pages of text, plus an informative introduction from Mr. Conyers and a few pages of minibiographies about the authors (good
luck ever reading a serious bio about Cody Goodfellow). List price is $14.95 with a discount to $10.17 by Amazon; it is also available for free shipping if you order more than $25 worth of stuff (with, say, The Tindalos Cycle). All in all this is a pretty good buy for the money. The cover art is pretty attractive, silhouetted cultists dancing before an idol (*maybe* it's an idol...) but the name of the artist is not listed in the book as far as I can tell; I think it is David Gilberts but hopefully someone can enlighten me. Production qualities are good but there are some word substitution typos. For the most part I enjoyed reading this book with a few exceptions noted below. The best stories are as good as those in any Cthulhu mythos anthology around these days. Minor spoilers may follow so skip the rest if that bothers you. Here are the contents:

The Eternal Chinaman by John Sunseri - Mr. Sunseri has co-edited the very successful Cthulhu Unbound anthologies, had appearances in Hard Boiled Cthulhu and Horrors Beyond II, and co-wrote a story collection with David Conyers, The Spiraling Worm. Set in 1920's San Francisco, this story follows a rough and tumble sailor who returns to the US and falls in with his cousin, who has made the mistake of acquiring an item from the menacing figure of the title. I pretty much enjoyed The Eternal Chinaman well enough, particularly the action bits and the vivid final conflagration, but if I have to nitpick, in some ways I found that it was too obviously derived from an rpg scenario, particularly at the end. Some of the phrases fell clangingly on my ear considering the first person viewpoint was an uneducated sailor: "...aware that I might instantly burst into flames and disintegrate by the godly powers that suffused the joint -" Suffuse and joint? How many sailors say 'suffuse?" The confrontation between two of the stock characters from the gaming scenario felt sort of forced.

Captains of Industry by John Goodrich - Mr. Goodrich is just starting his career as a published author. The Patriot was among the many highlights of Cthulhu Unbound 1. Two impoverished immigrant factory
workers, struggling to live and struggling in the battle for workers' rights, infiltrate and industrialists' dinner party to try to get some leverage. They run afoul of the Hermetic Order of the Silver Twilight.
Once again Mr. Goodrich gives us a rousing story of superior quality. His characters come alive on the page and the action is actually heart wrenching.

Perfect Skin by David Witteveen - Mr. Witteveen co-wrote Devil's Children, a CoC scenario from the early 1990s. The only other story I ever read by him was Ache, a pretty good yarn in Hard Boiled Cthulhu.
In Istanbul a newlywed English couple, the Drakes, come to enjoy the exotic sights but alas the husband, unbeknownst to his wife, has had underhanded dealings with the Brotherhood of the Skin. As Mrs. Drake tries frantically to discover what has become of her new husband a military officer attaché to the British embassy strives to keep her from harm. The pacing and action are quite good and the ending was jarringly unexpected. Perfect Skin is a winner.

Covenant of Darkness by William Jones - Here I have some heartburn. Mr. Jones, head honcho at Elder Signs Press (one of my favorite companies), works tirelessly in the field of dark fiction. He has
edited quite a few anthologies I have enjoyed, including Horrors Beyond and Frontier Cthulhu, and has written fiction and CoC scenarios. My issue is that Covenant of Darkness has been previously published. While I liked the story, I was not thrilled that we didn't get something new, like everything else in Cthulhu's Dark Cults, and I also think Covenant of Darkness works better in context, that is with the other stories in his book about Rudolph Pearson, than as a stand alone.

The Whisper of Ancient Secrets by Penelope Love - Years ago I read Unseen in Made in Goatswood but heck if I can remember it. I definitely will dig up my copy and re-read it because The Whisper of Ancient Secrets was outstanding, placing us in the mind of a dabbler in ancient secrets who has lost most of his humanity in his struggle to complete his experiment. The viewpoint and structure were strikingly vivid and original.

Old Ghost by Peter A. Worthy - Mr. Worthy has made numerous contributions to Lovecraftian and related fiction, notably editing the anthology Rehearsals for Oblivion, which was a rousing success. He had
proposed an anthology devoted to Nyarlathotep a few years ago but apparently never found any publisher, which is really too bad for us fans. While some of his stories have not jazzed me, Old Ghost was pretty darned good, my favorite story by Mr. Worthy. An ex-minister comes to Shanghai mostly because he is at a loss with what to do with himself in the aftermath of the Great War. By happenstance he ends up in the middle of the machinations of the Bloated Woman, a secretive cult. I was absorbed beginning to end.

The Nature of Faith by Oscar Rios - Mr. Rios has written CoC scenarios but this is the first story by him that I have read. An ancient history professor at Columbia comes across a Celtic coin that appears
to have been minted in the New World. He traces it back to Dunwich. While I liked the plot and the ending, I wasn't convinced by The Nature of Faith. The characters were pretty much one dimensional; dialogue and behavior didn't jive with what I would expect for residents of Dunwich. Similar to The Eternal Chinaman there was a very `lifted from a rpg scenario' feel. The politics in the cult didn't read true and was pretty much irrelevant window dressing.

The Devil's Diamonds by Cody Goodfellow - You never know what to expect from Cody Goodfellow. I view Radiant Dawn as a towering masterpiece of Cthulhu mythos fiction and I have pretty much enjoyed
everything he has written. His Perilous Press has some good things on the horizon as well. Set in the Galla tribal lands of Kenya, a representative of the British crown is sent to investigate excesses at
a diamond mine. While readable, I liked this story rather than loved it. I think the constraints of dealing within a rpg scenario shackled him too much, like some others here.

Requiem for the Burning God by Shane Jiraiya Cummings - Mr. Cummings has published quite a few short stories but I swear I can't think on any that I have read. Some mercenaries are hired to provide security at a mine in Peru. One finds out more than is good for his health. This was an action story more than suspense or mystery; as such I liked it but I think the canvas was too broad. First the main
character, Max Calder, leads his small band expertly in infantry operations and then he pilots a small plane to attack a ship. After that he is able to use an antiaircraft weapon. OK, this is too much scrutiny for what is actually a fun bit of pulp fiction.

Sister of the Sands by David Conyers - I really like David Conyers' writing. Impossible Object, published in several places, is a brilliant little piece. Sister of the Sands is just great. An Australian intelligence officer based in Cairo assists a woman lost in the desert and becomes mixed up with the Brotherhood of the Black Pharaoh. This was a bang up way to close a successful anthology.

On the whole I really enjoyed Cthulhu's Dark Cults and thought it was worth the money; most of the stories were very good and I did not dislike anything. I doubt anyone will come to it de novo, as their
first experience with modern Lovecraftian fiction. Certainly CoC fanatics all already bought a copy. For more casual mythos readers I still think there are plenty of good reads here. While Goodrich,
Witteveen, Conyers and Worthy particularly shine, pride of place has to go to The Whisper of Ancient Secrets by Penelope Love. I hope she writes more Cthulhu stories for us soon. Due next from Chaosium is R'lyeh Rising; I would love to read it but there is often a lag of several years from when a Chaosium title is submitted to when it gets published. ( )