The Complete H. P. LOVECRAFT Reader (68 Stories Included)

by H.P. Lovecraft

[HekArtemis]

I'm not going to rate this one, how can a bind up of over 60 stories be properly rated? Some of the stories were amazing - Colour Out of Space and Mountains of Madness for example, so fantastic. Others were not so amazing, I mean what was Azathoth anyway? After a while it got majorly repetitive so that the stories after the 50% mark were seemingly not as good as the ones at the start, but I can't say for sure if they were truly not as good, or if I was just too worn out on Lovecraft to enjoy them properly. If I had read them first might I like them more? I don't know.

And then there is the racism, subtle in some stories and can be easily put down to "it's the time period he lived in" but then others it was blatantly in your face disgusting. When every person who is not quite white is deemed beyond ugly to the point that they inspire horror just by virtue of being not white, it's going way past that flimsy "it's the time period" justification point, and into the realm of, "Oh so Lovecraft was a racist arsehole then?" That's not even bringing up the names of certain black cats.

Also he is not that great at writing sympathetic characters. Almost none of the characters he wrote about made me feel anything for them, the exception being Colour Out of Time where I did feel for them, but every other character, first person POV or not, I felt like I didn't know them at all and so couldn't connect. I was still able to feel the atmospheric horror and dread that the stories are meant to inspire, so it's obvious that Lovecraft was good at writing horror, to make you feel dread when you don't care about the characters facing the dreadful stuff.

So over all, I don't know how to rate this so I won't. I am glad I read it.