While most Lovecraftian stories can be summed up to: "something unspeakably terrifying happened but it was so horrible that I cannot actually describe it", his ideas, weird universes and the beings within are unique. What seems cliche to us now is largely thanks to him (except maybe Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!). This 1936 novella sees Lovecraft return to writing about strange creatures, namely the Great Race of Yith, aliens who can travel through space and time. The main human character of the story is Professor Nathaniel Wingate Peaslee, who unexpectedly finds his own consciousness linked to that of a Yithian. Though at first Peaslee worries that he is losing his mind, he’s reassured by the existence of many similar cases before his… and then plunged into terror again, when he realizes the identity of the culprit. I’m going to assume that most people who buy this book are already Lovecraft readers or that it is a gift for someone who already knows Lovecraft and has some of his books, so I’ll just focus on this edition. I already have Lovecraft’s books and e-books and I like them.

The H. P. Lovecraft Collection: Deluxe 6-Volume Box Set

Before Lovecraft, horror was about killers, kidnappers, ghosts - human faults and sins and divine (or other) punishment in the sense of you reap what you sow. Lovecraft instead creates a vision of a vast cosmos completely indifferent to humans, and their earthly bullsh*t, filled with forces before which we are helpless, which we cannot hope to understand, and which would destroy our minds if we only saw or knew. We could categorize him as a writer of cosmic horror. Hopkins-Drewer, Cecelia (2020). "Yuletide Horror: "Festival" and "The Messenger" ". Lovecraft Annual (14): 57. ISSN 1935-6102. JSTOR 26939809. I want to start by saying that I can totally grasp and appreciate the astonishing genius of the seminal work by HP Lovecraft . I read the entire book. I get it. That's why I rounded my rating up to three stars. After reading each story I gave an individual 1-5 star rating. The mean, median and mode scores were respectively 2.7, 2.5 and 2.5 stars. There were more stories that scored below 3 stars than ones that scored 3 stars or higher. I even did a weighted ranking where I gave more importance to his more popular and/or longer stories, but the result was still only 2.9 stars. The Call of Cthulhu is probably Lovecraft’s most influential story, serving as the basis for his epic “Old Ones” mythos. It centers around an ancient dragon-sea monster hybrid that implants itself subconsciously into human minds, driving them slowly insane. The cultists who worship Cthulhu commit ritual killings and chant in tongues. As more details of the creature and its history come to light, our narrator realizes that no one can possibly be safe from such a powerful entity — not even himself. When you enroll in Pagan Worship 101 at the local community college (perhaps the only class I actually attended) this promising-looking volume is thrust upon you and heralded as the True Testament of the gods. It doesn’t even take until the conclusion of the Preface or Introduction to immediately recognize that this is not the truth, and you’re immediately crushed that “Evil Dead” is no longer the cinematic embodiment of the ruling truths as to the profundities of existence. It might be just as well that this is the case; the invocation of a reality-warping and vengeance-seeking ‘ancient one’ is probably not the type of s--t that I need going on during my weekend, especially when the alleged banishments of these unfathomable horrors are deemed wholly ineffective.

If you want a Lovecraft primer, this is a good start. I'd read all these stories before, but many of them I had not read for years, so I enjoyed going through the classics again even if they don't bring me quite the same feeling of existential horror they did when I was a teenager.

H.P. Lovecraft Books for New Readers - Reedsy The 10 Best H.P. Lovecraft Books for New Readers - Reedsy

You also have Lovecraft to thank for a raft of awesome boardgames and RPGs, from the classic Call of Cthulhu to Eldritch Horror and Cthulhu Wars.Verses Designed to Be Sent by a Friend of the Author to His Brother-in-Law on New Year's Day [n.d.] Il volume contiene le opere di H. P. Lovecraft scritte tra il 1917 e il 1935. È perfetto per chi voglia immergersi nella sua produzione letteraria e conoscere appieno i suoi incubi e il suo collegamento con i simboli dell'inconscio.