Scott's Reviews > The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories

"Gentle reader - what I saw that night was so horrifyingly horrible, such a cavalcade of horrid, horrific horror, that I cannot describe its horrendousness to you. I pen these words whilst I foam at the mouth in a padded cell."

That is what almost all of The Call of Chthulu and Other Weird Stories felt like to me - a terrified narrator recounts a scarring encounter with an evil force as overwhelmingly powerful as it is vague. And I mean vague- trying to get a feel for the nature and appearance of the evil forces in Lovecraft's stories is a little like wearing dark glasses while trying to spot a green dog in a forest on a foggy night.

I thought I would love Lovecraft. I genuinely dig some of the mythos that has built up around his work. I have (and love) Fantasy Flight's Eldritch Horror boardgame, and have played and enjoyed Arkham Horror. Furthermore, I was keen to explore the early years of the horror genre and experience writing that has influenced later authors such as Richard Matheson and Stephen King.

I went into this book knowing that some of these stories may not have aged well, but I expected to enjoy them far more than I did. In all truth several of the stories in this collection were downright hard going, and it was only respect for Lovecraft's influence that kept me slogging forward on the months-long journey between other books that it took for me to knock this one off.

These days writers are told to show, not tell, but Lovecraft is the king of telling, resisting every temptation to show the reader anything much at all, in favour of repeated extended circumlocutions around the awfulness or terror induced by seeing something that is so awful that it cannot be described. Monsters are so horrifying as to be beyond description. Horrifying artifacts are so horrifying as to beyond description. Ancient rituals are... you get the gist. As a storytelling technique this might work once, but it is a common feature in many of the stories in this collection and I grew very, very tired of the paucity of description.

I don't need to see a knife slowly cutting through someone's carotid artery in all its bloody detail, but for goodness sake, at least show me what sort of knife it is, and the approximate appearance of the person it is going to be used on.

In saying all of that I did enjoy visiting some of the locations I've seen in Lovecraft-based games, such as Arkham and the Miskatonic university. I enjoyed some of the stories, such as The Colour From Space, and really liked The Shadow over Innsmouth- a story with a bit more description and action than many of Lovecraft's other works.

I can't recommend this collection as a whole but if you're interested in tackling it I strongly recommend reading each story separately over a longer period of time. Read too closely together their similar tone and style can become grating, and Lovecraft's writing tics can quickly become dull.