Into the Abyss of Eldritch Horrors from Beyond

Rachel Boudreau

Great Tales of Horror

By H.P. Lovecraft

The world and stories of H.P. Lovecraft are not for the weak or faint of heart, proceed with caution if you think ye fit to journey into a world of madness and horrors too great for the mortal mind to bear.

So please continue if you dare……. 

“Do not think from my slavery to morphine that I am a weakling or degenerate. When you have read these hastily scrawled pages you may guess, though never fully realize, why I must have forgetfulness or death” (Lovecraft,73) 

This book is a collection of stories from H.P. Lovecraft over the years. It has many of his popular stories including but not limited too, Call of CThulhu, The Colour out of Space, and The Lurking Fear. Each story has a paragraph explaining when and why it was written. It has a total of 20 stories ranging from pages to chapters in length and each is unique in its own way. By the end of this book you will be more paranoid than you think but in a good way. 

When I first began reading this book I was a little hesitant but as soon as I became adapted to the writing style I soon enjoying the full extent of the stories. There were a vast amount large words and many mentions of drugs, graphic violence/descriptions, suicide and mental illness. My overall opinion of the book is it's a great book but as I said before not for the faint of heart or easily scared. It is for those curious about the unknown and are okay with reading a bit of classic horror. 

A large theme of the book was fear of the unknown and madness. Many of the stories deal with people trying to cope with the horrors they have uncovered/seen/summoned. Another  large theme is the unknown, it is used by not revealing the monster until the end of the story but only catching glimpses or flashes of the true horror. It keeps the reader on their toes and makes them keep reading. 

I recommend this book to horror lovers. People who love to read people like Stephen King or fans of the podcast Welcome to Night Vale. It mixes the frightening aspect of both making it a great read. 

“Loathsomeness waits and dreams deep, and decay spreads over the tottering cities of men. A time will come—but I must not and cannot think! Let me pray that, if I do not survive this manuscript, my executioners may put caution before audacity and see that it meets no other eye” (Lovecraft 25)