Rating: 
Summary: eclectic mix of horror and fantasy
Review: Everything you expect from Lovecraft, and some stuff that's just plain weird. Even some 1930's style amazing stories.
Rating: 
Summary: gothic fun
Review: For whatever reason, and I have no ready theory for why it should be so, Horror has proven to be one of the most novel and enduring of America's literary forms. From Washington Irving and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow to Edgar Allan Poe's stories and poems, to The Turn of the Screw (Henry James' only worthwhile work), on to the great pulp writers like Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard, right on up to the overrated but ridiculously successful Stephen King and the innovative but underappreciated Dan Simmons and Robert McCammon, we just keep churning out great horror writers and stories. HP Lovecraft earned his place in this company with his supremely creepy short fiction, which injected both intergalactic elements and the mythos that he created involving the dread text of the Necronomicon. At the Mountains of Madness is perhaps his finest work and is obviously the forerunner of such subsequent horror staples as The Thing and Alien. It tells the story of a doomed party of Antarctic explorers who uncover the remains of a lost civilization, the Old Ones. Turns out, these Old Ones bioengineered the Earth, but were vanquished by their own creations, who have now been reawakened by these unwitting explorers. Lovecraft's writing is mannered and affected, which may keep him from a mass audience, but it retains a certain gothic power and he continues to be a cult favorite. GRADE: B+
Rating:
Summary: A step away from madness in what can only seem a dream.
Review: From a time well beyond the scope of humanity steps an evil that has lain dormant for aeons. Ancient cities of other-wordly wonder hold horror best kept locked in darkened fantasy. Across the mountains of madness the shoggoth awaits the unnwary explorer who would dare enter his icy tomb. Att he Mountains of Madness is a work of horrible genius revealing a race of beings that dwarf humanity into insignificance. Lovecraft was an absolute master of gothic horror whose talent can only be compared to that of Edgar Allan Poe
Rating:
Summary: Perhaps the best horror story ever written!
Review: H. P. Lovecraft's "At The Mountains Of Madness" could be the best horror story ever written. For the time period it was written in it is unsurpassed. For originality of the storyline and the sheer terror it inspires it stands next to if not above Stoker's "Dracula", and Stephen King's "The Shining". Lovecraft boldly went where few other writer's dared to follow by creating an entire Universe of unspeakable horrors. The mastery of his chosen craft lies in his ability to hint subliminally at the fears he was writing about, then letting his reader's imagination take over from there. Serious students of the Horror and Supernatural genre who overlook Lovecraft have missed the entire boat. Read and enjoy this book and Lovecraft's other stories but be careful, the fear you find will be in your own mind. Happy Halloween!
Rating:
Summary: Perhaps the best horror story ever written!
Review: H. P. Lovecraft's "At The Mountains Of Madness" could be the best horror story ever written. For the time period it was written in it is unsurpassed. For originality of the storyline and the sheer terror it inspires it stands next to if not above Stoker's "Dracula", and Stephen King's "The Shining". Lovecraft boldly went where few other writer's dared to follow by creating an entire Universe of unspeakable horrors. The mastery of his chosen craft lies in his ability to hint subliminally at the fears he was writing about, then letting his reader's imagination take over from there. Serious students of the Horror and Supernatural genre who overlook Lovecraft have missed the entire boat. Read and enjoy this book and Lovecraft's other stories but be careful, the fear you find will be in your own mind. Happy Halloween!
Rating:
Summary: Cthulhu History, 101
Review: H.P. Lovecarft's "At the Mountains of Madness" is pivotal to the Cthuluh Mythos stories. It is a short novel about an expedition to Antartica. Inside a huge frozen city underneath the mountains they find the entire history of the Old Ones. You must read this one if you are going to understand anything about the ancient monsters (or about Robert E. Howard's "Kull" or "Conan" time period). There are a few problems with this story. Once again Lovecraft uses an obscure vocabulary, and it is a little hard to initially get into. Also I found it a little hard to except that the scientist was able to decipher the alian hieroglphic so quickly. But those are only minor complaints. The other stories are ok. "Dream in a Witch-House" is pretty good, the others are just ok. But "Mountains" is the reason to get this one.
Rating:
Summary: Cthulhu History, 101
Review: H.P. Lovecarft's "At the Mountains of Madness" is pivotal to the Cthuluh Mythos stories. It is a short novel about an expedition to Antartica. Inside a huge frozen city underneath the mountains they find the entire history of the Old Ones. You must read this one if you are going to understand anything about the ancient monsters (or about Robert E. Howard's "Kull" or "Conan" time period). There are a few problems with this story. Once again Lovecraft uses an obscure vocabulary, and it is a little hard to initially get into. Also I found it a little hard to except that the scientist was able to decipher the alian hieroglphic so quickly. But those are only minor complaints. The other stories are ok. "Dream in a Witch-House" is pretty good, the others are just ok. But "Mountains" is the reason to get this one.
Rating:
Summary: Cthulhu History, 101
Review: H.P. Lovecarft's "At the Mountains of Madness" is pivotal to the Cthuluh Mythos stories. It is a short novel about an expedition to Antartica. Inside a huge frozen city underneath the mountains they find the entire history of the Old Ones. You must read this one if you are going to understand anything about the ancient monsters (or about Robert E. Howard's "Kull" or "Conan" time period). There are a few problems with this story. Once again Lovecraft uses an obscure vocabulary, and it is a little hard to initially get into. Also I found it a little hard to except that the scientist was able to decipher the alian hieroglphic so quickly. But those are only minor complaints. The other stories are ok. "Dream in a Witch-House" is pretty good, the others are just ok. But "Mountains" is the reason to get this one.
Rating:
Summary: "Probably it had more than five senses."
Review: H.P. Lovecraft is a writer I've been curious about for a long time. I finally bought "At the Mountains of Madness" after reading several customer reviews that pointed me towards this book as a good place to start if selecting a first Lovecraft novel. "At The Mountains of Madness" is the tale of a research group heading for the Antarctica on an expedition to collect geological samples. The men split off into two teams, and one group is led by a biologist named Lake, while the narrator remains at base camp and receives reports of the findings. Lake and his men find some odd specimens of other life forms, and these specimens are dragged off to Lake's camp. Lovecraft's story is suspenseful, and builds with this tremendous sense of dread and impending doom. The story is crafted and paced very cleverly. The narrator is the recipient of news of the findings--just as we are. He feels this uneasy dread--just as we do, but he is powerless to stop it. The placement of the narrator as a bystander with no initial visual involvement--just reports of Lake's expedition, places the reader right next to the narrator. As events unfold, the suspense is almost unbearable. The descriptions of the terrain are stupendous, and Lovecraft's portrayal of the idea of specimen collection is at once acceptable, and mind-boggling. The book also contains three short stories "The Shunned House", "The Dreams in the Witch House" and "The Statement of Randolph Carter." The first story is really demonic in nature, and I really enjoyed it. The other two stories did not grab me in the same way--hence the 4 star rating. Horror is not my favoured sort of book, but after reading this Lovecraft novel, I am going to revise my opinion about the genre. I have to be honest and say here that I haven't glanced at a horror novel in several decades, and I was most pleasantly surprised by this book. This is a blend of the supernatural and science fiction, and not at all what I expected--displacedhuman.
Rating:
Summary: "Probably it had more than five senses."
Review: H.P. Lovecraft is a writer I've been curious about for a long time. I finally bought "At the Mountains of Madness" after reading several customer reviews that pointed me towards this book as a good place to start if selecting a first Lovecraft novel. "At The Mountains of Madness" is the tale of a research group heading for the Antarctica on an expedition to collect geological samples. The men split off into two teams, and one group is led by a biologist named Lake, while the narrator remains at base camp and receives reports of the findings. Lake and his men find some odd specimens of other life forms, and these specimens are dragged off to Lake's camp. Lovecraft's story is suspenseful, and builds with this tremendous sense of dread and impending doom. The story is crafted and paced very cleverly. The narrator is the recipient of news of the findings--just as we are. He feels this uneasy dread--just as we do, but he is powerless to stop it. The placement of the narrator as a bystander with no initial visual involvement--just reports of Lake's expedition, places the reader right next to the narrator. As events unfold, the suspense is almost unbearable. The descriptions of the terrain are stupendous, and Lovecraft's portrayal of the idea of specimen collection is at once acceptable, and mind-boggling. The book also contains three short stories "The Shunned House", "The Dreams in the Witch House" and "The Statement of Randolph Carter." The first story is really demonic in nature, and I really enjoyed it. The other two stories did not grab me in the same way--hence the 4 star rating. Horror is not my favoured sort of book, but after reading this Lovecraft novel, I am going to revise my opinion about the genre. I have to be honest and say here that I haven't glanced at a horror novel in several decades, and I was most pleasantly surprised by this book. This is a blend of the supernatural and science fiction, and not at all what I expected--displacedhuman.
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