The New Lovecraft Circle

Rating:
Summary: aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah
Review: price follows up his tales of the lovecraft mythos, going to the newer pulp writers. still excellent. great stories. especially good as an introduction to pulp: good plots, not too weird, great descriptions. great stories. the best of the best. loved glasby and rainey. loved a lot.

Rating:
Summary: Uneven but plenty of chills for horror aficionados
Review: The world that Howard Phillips Lovecraft created continues to exert its spell decades after his death. This collection brings together twenty-five tales by authors spinning their own variations and extrapolations of Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos, which postulates the existence of an ancient, evil race of beings outside the generally known dimensions of time and space that lurks in the shadows, constantly waiting and watching for its chance to reconquer the earth and destroy humanity.

It's a creepy thought, and the best tales in this collection are those that filter this paranoia in new and unexpected ways: "The Horror on the Beach," by Alan Dean Foster, for example, transplants the monster to the sunny California coast. "The Stone on the Island" by Ramsey Campbell is a masterpiece of understatement, all the more terrifying for its low-key, economical prose. "The Kiss of Bugg-Shash" by Brian Lumley is more in the classic Lovecraftian vein of the disgusting, slimy, implacable enemy, but chilling for all of that. Less successful are entries that ape Lovecraft's over-the-top and frankly dated writing style, or that stick too closely to his original concepts and geographical settings. Nevertheless, as a whole this collection offers plenty of skin-crawling reading. Don't read it when you're alone, or during a power outage.