Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos

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Variable - Rated
I bought this book as a sort of nostalgia trip, having read a lot of Mythos fiction a while back, I wanted to revisit it, see how it held up. The result was that the few really good stories in this volume - those by Lovecraft, Campbell, Colin Wilson, CAS - really stood out. These guys knew how to write, and you can tell that HPL and Ramsey Campbell write their horror fiction from a real conviction and deep sense of the meaning behind it. The others, though, were poor. Some better than others - August Derleth can do dialogue better than Belknap Long can write just about anything, but neither can write atmospherically, and they throw around crude horror elements like a five year old throwing around primary colour paint. I expected Robert Bloch to be better, and though he can write, he can't write Mythos with the delicacy and conviction of HPL. The Joanna Russ wasn't really a mythos tale, so disappointed by being something other than what was expected. The Stephen King was his usual "slumming it" in hack-and-slash horror effort, with no surprises. The Robert E Howard was good, but pulpy - but at least you expect that.

Really good mythos fiction is quite thin on the ground. When it's good, it's great, and this book is worth buying for those few great pieces in it, if you don't already have them. The rest merely serve to accentuate the good stuff by being so poor.

All Fans of Weird Fiction Need Apply! - Rated
The Belknap Long story is unique to this collection, and actually made his name - reason enough to buy it! Stephen King, who often acknowledges HPL to be his inspiration, donates a brilliant story as well. In short, of all the modern prose dedicated to Lovecraftian horror, this is the Essential Purchase!

A very good balance of Cthulhu mythos stories and authors - Rated
The editors of this book obviously made a very pointed effort to pick those stories that are not only tied to the Cthulhu Mythos, but are actually worth reading. The stories by Lovecraft, Derleth and Bloch are the best in the book, and even Stephen King gets a short tale in. There probably should be a couple more Cthulhu Mythos follow-ups to this as there are several good selections that didn't make it into the book.