Acolytes of Cthulhu by Neil Gaiman, S. T. Joshi

Acolytes of Cthulhu

by Neil Gaiman and S. T. Joshi

These are twenty-eight works in the vein of the master, H. P. Lovecraft, by some of his greatest disciples. It is a volume of treasures from modern masters such as Neil Gaiman (American Gods) and S. T. Joshi (Black Wings of Cthulhu), to famed storytellers including Jorge Luis Borges (The Aleph), Edmond Hamilton (The Star Kings), and Pulitzer Prize nominee Manley Wade Wellman (Rebel Boast).

Reviewed by HekArtemis on

3 of 5 stars

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Some of the stories in this book were good, some were okay, some were boring, and several were good but I am not sure that they belonged in a "Cthulhu" book - they were supernatural horror but not really cosmic.

There was an unfortunate amount of racism in the book too, and while that is generally historically accurate, I am not sure that it was done right. While white people may have been racist, that doesn't mean that every black, Asian, or "Indian" person was actually a worshipper of evil monsters who sacrificed innocent white people. In most cases for this book, if it had a non-white person in it, they were somehow evil or responsible for evil. A couple of the stories didn't have this, but most of them that had non-white characters had those non-white characters as the bad guys in some way. I mean there is a difference between "white people were racist" and "white people had good reason to be racist because non-white people are going to raise Cthulhu to devour us all!" If you want to be historically accurate, and not just true to Lovecrafts racist attitude, then you might want to try the former and not the latter. Just a suggestion.

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  • Started reading
  • 27 January, 2020: Finished reading
  • 27 January, 2020: Reviewed