John PelanRecensioni

This collection of Holmes or Holmesian characters meeting the Lovecraftian-themed horror was interesting. The stories were uneven though, with some lacking the feel of Lovecraftian horror and others barely linked to Sherlock Holmes or Watson. Still, I enjoyed the book overall.

Try this book if you enjoy both Sherlock Holmes and H. P. Lovecraft.

Pretty average, except for A Study in Emerald, which works as an affectionate tribute to Sherlock Holmes with a decent twist. It plays a bit loose with Lovecraft but in a good way - some of the stories don't seem to get Lovecraftian horror at all.

The big problem is that the Holmes format and Lovecraft format are totally at odds with each other. Lovecraft stories end with a horror ending where people lose their sanity, nothing is understandable and there's no hope for the future. In a Holmes story the ending is (usually) happy, everything is resolved and everything is explained as being entirely logical, while clues throughout the story make the ending satisfying. These stories typically follow a pretty unhappy medium. Even attempts to portray some permanent effect on Holmes' or Watson's mind falls flat when the next story has them yet again baffled and confused about the idea of Lovecraftian cults existing, despite them having just confronted them. Obviously that's somewhat unavoidable in a short story collection like this but it is a little silly. Most of the stories have unpleasant things happen to the characters yet Holmes and Watson escape mostly unscathed. Multiple stories seem to have a very loose handle on Holmes' character and speaking style, which is pretty jarring. One story dedicates pages to a lovingly described firefight in the London sewers, which is neither very Lovecraftian or Sherlockian. One story is based on Moriarty recording his plans to control the world on a wax cylinder, live, while he's doing them. There's a story that featured something from Jewish folklore that almost felt anti-semitic because of the weird way it was handled.

I feel like more stories could have done with trying to break away from some of the Lovecraft mythology while still keeping some of the spirit. Some of them quote Lovecraft stuff but make it incredibly mundane.

I guess I feel most of the stories failed to work as either a Lovecraft story or a Holmes story and ended up not making much of an impact. It was alright enough but just not exciting and too much repetition of basic story premises.

This large collection of stories that try to combine Sherlock Holmes and H.P. Lovecraft is consistently entertaining, but other than Neil Gaiman's opening tale, which manages to surprise, nothing else rises above the ordinary. Even the few stories narrated by Dr. Watson lack the feel of Doyle's original tales, and in these and the other stories I can't help but feel that these are not the Dr. Watson and Sherlock Holmes I have come to know. As for the Lovecraftian elements in these stories, there are some grim things to be sure, but none of the writers writes like Lovecraft, so the effect of the horrors is less immediate. Even the appearance of H.G. Wells and (the fictional) Dr. Nikola don't liven things up that much. This one is more of a miss than a hit, for sure.

Not his best work.

Unusually weak edition of this usually five star digest. Stories are ho-hum except for the pulp reprint. The Cinema since the the 60s was just a list of films. The Ivanpah essay was, dull, dull, dull and way too long. The writer spent too much time shilling his own books. The Catacombs of Film, The Chesterton article, the Cadabra Records feature, and the Barker BoB essay were good. Otherwise, average to weak(French tv adaptations?).

A lot of filler for a usually excellent yearly. I’ll still buy the next one.

I choose this book to read the Bob Leman story (which I decided to skip :/ ) . I looked through the offerings and picked some more must reads before I give the book back to library. There is no way I'm reading the whole thing. It's almost 866 pages and 50 stories.

Read:
~David A. Riley - The Lurkers in the Abyss - 1
~Gary Brandner - The Price of a Demon - 2
~Dennis Etchison - It Only Comes out at Night - 1
~Elisabeth Massie - Stephen - 4 - I liked until the end which I find unmemorable in comparison to the beginning.
~Thomas Ligotti - The Glamour - DNF
~Poppy Z. Brite - Lord of Nerves - 1
~Lucy Taylor - The Family Underwater - 5
~Jack Ketchum - The Box - 2 - Glad I read it so I can understand when it gets referenced, but I can't say I enjoyed it.
~Caitlin R. Kiernan - Tears Seven Times Salt - 2
~Terry Lamsley - The Toddler - 2
~Karl Edward Wagner - 5 - Sticks I read this in The Mammoth Book of Zombies

2016 Read
~Come by Anna Hunger - 1*

2018 Read
~Stephen King - The Reach (AKA Do the Dead Sing?) - 2*
~Elisabeth Massie - Stephen - 4* Read twice 2015, 2018.
~Robert Bloch - The Hell-Bound Train - 4* Life lesson weaved into a horror story. awesome.
~Michael Shea - The Autopsy DNF. I dnf'd this story in another anthology also but so many people like it so I tried again but still couldn't finish it.

2023
~Stephen Laws - The Crawl - 4* - Classic kind of horror I grew up on. No matter what you do, it keeps following.½

This is an excellent collection with a very good set of stories. If you like either Sherlock Holmes, or the works of H.P. Lovecraft, then you will like this anthology. The writers capture both the traits of the great detective with the ambiance and feel of Lovecraft's mythology. This is a good book to just immerse yourself and escape reality for a while, even if it can be scary at times. The stories range from Holmes early career all the way to the time after his retirement. This is definitely one to recommend and share.

Just a bunch of mediocre horror stories. I was disappointed.

The well must be running dry on the Darkside because each one of these anthologies is less interesting than the last.

Wow just finished reading the story The Night City by Wilum Pugmire and Chad Hensley and it was so beautiful and sad it made me cry.

18 Geschichten, in denen Sherlock Holmes auf übernatürliche Schrecken trifft, die der Phantasie H. P. Lovecrafts hätten entstammen können.

Ob diese Kombination Sinn ergibt oder nicht, darüber lässt sich sicherlich streiten, aber mittlerweile hat man versucht den Meisterdetektiv in jedes erdenkliche Milieu zu verpflanzen, warum also nicht den Ctulhu-Mythos in die Baker Street tragen, dachten sich die Autoren vermutlich.

Wie jede Anthologie hat auch diese ihre Höhe-(und Tief-)punkte. Ich beschränke mich hier auf die gelungeneren Beiträge:

A Study In Emerald von Neil Gaiman gewann 2004 den Hugo-Award. Gaiman präsentiert ein viktorianisches Paralleluniversum in dem die europäischen Königsfamilien bizzarre Tentakelwesen mit übersinnlichen Fähigkeiten sind. Leider erlaubt es die Kürze der Erzählung nicht diese Idee zufriedenstellend auszuführen. Trotzdem eine reizvolle Hommage an Eine Studie in Scharlachrot.

Tiger! Tiger! von Elizabeth Bear muss ganz ohne Sherlock Holmes auskommen, dafür erleben wir Moriarty-Handlanger Colonel Sebastian Moran und "die Frau" Irene Adler auf Tigerjagd im indischen Busch. Das besagter Tiger sich als ein weit schrecklicheres Wesen entpuppt ist der nette Twist dieser Kurzgeschichte.

The Case Of The Wavy Black Dagger von Steve Perry macht Holmes mit einer außergewöhnlichen Dame bekannt, die durchaus das Zeug dazu hätte, Irene Adler als seine Lieblingsfrau abzulösen. Ein Beitrag, der ganz ohne Action oder Grusel auskommt und doch höchst amüsant zu lesen ist.

The Weeping Masks von James Lowder ist eine herrlich schaurige Story, in der wir mehr über Dr. Watsons Kriegserlebnisse in Afghanistan erfahren. Einer der wenigen wirklich gruseligen Beiträge.

Art In The Blood von Brian Stableford konfrontiert den britischen Geheimdienst um Mycroft Holmes mit derart furchtbaren Gräueln, dass ausschließlich Bruder Sherlock helfen kann.

The Mystery Of The Hanged Man's Puzzle von Paul Finch ist eine bombastische Mär in der ein Virus aus dem lovecraftschen Insmouth die britische Hauptstadt bedroht und ihre Opfer in ekelerregende Fischwesen verwandelt. Holmes und Watson liefern sich mit ihren Gegnern eine explosive Verfolgungsjagd in der londoner Kanalisation.

The Drowned Geologist von Caitlin R. Kiernan setzt vor allem auf eine sehr dichte Atmosphäre, und kommt durch diese subtile Art Conan Doyles Originalwerken am nächsten.

Lovecraft-Anhänger werden vermutlich eher von dieser Sammlung angetan sein als Holmesianer. Der kriminalistische Scharfsinn Holmes' gerät zugunsten des phantastischen Elements in den Hintergrund. Aber wer sich gerne an Ausgefallenem versucht, könnte durchaus Freude an dieser Kollektion haben.½

Es sollte eigentlich ein netter Ausflug werden, bei dem der berühmte Fernsehkoch Ashton Morrone eine Menge hochwertiger Muschelknacker-Aale fangen und sich so die Bestplazierung in allen gängigen Medien der Kochbranche sichern wollte.

Ein idyllischer See irgendwo im Nirgendwo. Alles läuft wie am Schnürchen, doch dann wird es Nacht und die Hölle bricht los. Denn die beiden einzigen Bewohner der Insel haben ein dunkles Geheimnis.
Enoch und Esau leben schon ewig nur auf diesem Flecken Land. Ihr größtes Vergnügen ist dabei das Quälen, Vergewaltigen und Zubereiten von menschlichen Wesen, die ihnen mehr oder weniger zufällig begegnen.
Und in dieser Nacht gibt es ein wahres Festmahl an Menschen, die sich auf ihre Insel verirrt haben.

Edward Lee ist der Meister des Perversen und der ausufernden Sexszenen. Dem Namen wird er in diesem Buch mehr als gerecht. In Zusammenarbeit mit John Pelan treibt er den Leser bis zur Grenze des Geschmackvollen und darüber hinaus. Es ergießt sich eine wahre Orgie aus Gewalt und Sex. Dinge werden beschrieben, die sich ein normales Gehirn nicht einmal vorzustellen wagt. Dabei rauscht die Geschichte nur vor sich hin, eine Gewalttat jagt die nächste.
Es ist abartig, es ist ekelerregend, gewaltverherrlichend und brutal. Genau das, was man von einem Extrem-Band erhofft.
Wer zu einem solchen Buch greift, sollte wissen, was ihn erwartet. Oder es zumindest akzeptiert haben.
Hier bekommt man keine Geschichte mit Tiefgang oder vielschichtige Charakterbeschreibungen, denn die Menschen sind nur Statisten, die der Geschichte helfen, sich von (Gewalt-)Akt zu (Gewalt-)Akt zu schwingen.

Dieses Buch ist nichts für schwache Nerven und einen empfindlichen Magen. Edward Lee beweist hier einmal wieder seinen Hang zum Perversen und FESTA einen guten Riecher für das Extreme.
Der Muschelknacker ist wirklich harte Kost.
Ich mochte es, denn aus keinem anderen Grund kaufe ich diese Bände: um mich an meine Grenzen zu treiben. Und genau das erwarte ich von einem Extrem-Band.½

I have a confession to make. I am not a huge H.P. Lovecraft fan. I've read his stories (and the stories of innumerable pastiche-ists and pretenders), and I understand his importance and influence on other writers. He's just not my cuppa tea, is all. So when the time came around to review this collection, I was a little apprehensive. As it turns out, I needn't have worried. The Children of Cthulhu is a stellar collection, well worth the time and effort of reading it.

At it's best, in stories like China Mieville's wickedly disturbing "Details," James Van Pelt's "The Invisible Empire," Meredith L. Patterson's dark academic satire "Principles and Parameters," and Matt Cardin's chilling "Teeth," the reader is reminded forcibly why Lovecraft has remained popular. It's a matter of atmosphere, mostly -- a general, vague creepiness that you can't quite shake, even when nothing overtly terrible is happening. But it's also the knowledge that, no matter how horrible the incident is that is being described, there's something even worse lurking in the shadows, waiting for an opening.

Not every story is a home run. Some, like Richard Laymon's "The Cabin in the Woods" or Caitlin R. Kiernan's "Nor the Demons Down Under the Sea," are just too . . . well . . . Lovecraftian for my taste. And, yes, I do recognize the irony of saying that a story in an anthology devoted to Lovecraft is too Lovecraftian for me. What can I say? Occasionally, I’m callous and strange.

But every story is readable and each serves to highlight the sheer scope of Lovecraft's influence on modern horror. From Paul Finch's epic "Long Meg and her Daughters” to Brian Hodge's darkly thrilling "The Firebrand Symphony" to W.H. Pugmire, Esq.'s "The Serenade of Starlight" the Lovecraftian influences are clear, but the storylines and styles of the writers couldn't be more different.

If you love Lovecraft, you can't afford to pass this one up. But even if you don't, I think you'll find something here to please.

I dont know anything about john pelan except that a search of his name here on goodreads just came up with a list of anthologies that he edited, I dont know if he edited this book or wrote half of it but if he wrote half I cant tell which half it is. For being one of edward lee's more extreme gross out type of books I am definitly impresed with anyone who can write on his level. This is a fairly short novel but the size seemed perfect to tell the story, it had a bit of graphic violence but was mostly sex and gross out material. All in all it was a fun and fast read.

see http://www.sfsite.com/11b/last69.htm

Absolutely amazing. Best horror short story collection I've read in a long time. Found a lot of author's I've never read before that I'll have to track down. If you love horror, this is a collection to try to track down.

I just wish it wasn't so expensive, I'd get a personal copy. Might save up for it.

Originally I was going to pass on this collection since the concept sounded too gimmicky. But then I read and was impressed by the odd mood of Neil Gaiman's award-winning "A Study in Emerald", so I decided to give it a try. Besides no less reverential a Lovecraft scholar than Peter Cannon combined the two mythos in his The Lovecraft Papers. It's not at all certain Lovecraft would have minded either since he was taken with Sherlock Holmes at an early age and allowed his friends to play in the horrible funhouse - especially the library annex - he created in his Yog-Sothory.

While I've read and enjoyed Arthur Conan Doyle's Holmes stories, I'm not very familiar with the many additions to that literary universe by other authors. (This one is authorized by his estate.) So, I approached this as a Lovecraft fan and not a Holmes fan.

The stories are arranged in chronological order of setting, and the most striking thing about them is how many don't feature the standard pairing of Holmes and Watson.

The London of Gaiman's story is a strange, uneasy place where the monstrosities of famous Victorian fantastic literature often are referenced in handbills, and we don't follow Holmes or Watson but another doctor and detective. All is explained in a disturbing ending. Holmes and Watson don't even get a mention in Elizabeth Bear's "Tiger! Tiger!". Instead, in India, we follow Irene Adler and Colonel Moran, two of the more famous minor characters in the Holmes series, on a tiger hunt with a strange, unseen menace, Great Game machinations, and Afghan magic all playing a part. I liked it better than Bear's more famous Cthulhu stories, "Shoggoths in Bloom" and "Mongoose". Like the Gaiman, it works in plot and as a mood piece.

The same is not true of Steve Perry's "The Case of the Wavy Dagger" which strikes me as more a martial arts warrior babe story and Cthulhuish only via the context of being included here. No Watson again in Steven-Eliot Altman's "A Case of Royal Blood". Instead, H. G. Wells plays Holmes' assistant as the two investigate a poltergeist haunting the royal family of the Netherlands. A fruitful conflation of Wells and Lovecraft though not as stunning as what Brian Aldiss did with "The Saliva Tree". Watson doesn't have to share the stage at all with Holmes in James Lowder's "The Weeping Mask". More Conan Doyleish adventure than Lovecraftian horror, it's an effective account of Watson's encounter with a strange Afghan cult.

And no Watson again in Brian Stableford's "Art in the Blood". As usual, when he puts his had to working in a classic fictional setting, Stableford delivers in a superb effort which has the Diogenes Club investigating the death of one of its agents and trying to help a seaman suffering a crippling disease.

Finally, Holmes and Watson show up together in a Poppy Z. Brite's and David Ferguson's rather perfunctory "The Curious Case of Miss Violet Stone" which features Lovecraft's the Great Race.

Barbara Hambly throws William Hope Hodgson's Carnacki into the blender with a little referenced Lovecraft story, "The Rats in the Wall", and pours out the effective "The Adventure of the Antiquarian's Niece". I think John Pelan's "The Mystery of the Worm" is doing something similar with a Fu Manchuish villain and another, less famous Lovecraft story, "The Nameless City". It's another involving story though more on the scientific detective side of things than horror.

Paul Finch's "The Mystery of the Hanged Man's Puzzle" is just good pulpy fun with Holmes delivered a taunting challenge by an executed criminal on his last morning, a challenge to avoid worldwide destruction. The action in London's sewers reminded me a bit of that classic Dr. Who episode "The Talons of Weng-Chiang". However, a bit of high implausibility involving a Gatling gun took me right out of the story towards the end.

Nothing explicitly Lovecraftian shows up in Tim Lebbon's mood piece "The Horror of Many Faces" which involves a rash of vicious murders in London - all committed by formerly upstanding citizens.

We always suspected Watson was a bit modest in the matter of the ladies, so it was nice to see an old lover, an Afghan princess, show up in "The Adventure of the Arab's Manuscript" by Michael Reaves.

Former paleontologist Caitlin Kiernan puts her training to good use in one of the very best stories in the book, "The Drowned Geologist". A story told via letter and hints of a horror from deep time - to say nothing of the lurking, nagging unease generated from a nearby shipwreck, this is another Kiernan story which uses the vitality of Lovecraft's themes without slavishly copying the plots and style.

John P. Vourlis' "A Case of Insomnia" is merely ok, a story of mysterious plague of insomnia. Better is Richard A. Lupoff's "The Adventure of the Voorish Sign". Lupoff has done some stunning takeoffs on Lovecraft in all kinds of veins from silly to experimental science fiction. This story is Lupoff mostly in his mystery writer mode and told in a straight detective style as Holmes searches for a missing husband.

I did not like F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre would be humor tale "The Adventure of the Exham Priory". It was yet another example of that author's nostalgic Victorianism.

While I did like David Niall Wilson and Patricia Lee Macomber's "Death Did Not Become Him", it seemed Lovecraftian only by virtue of a couple of paragraphs wedged in at the last moment.

Simon Clark's "Nightmare in Wax" borrows a stylistic trick from Lovecraft's "A Whisperer in the Darkness" - partially telling the tale through the wax cylinder recordings of one Professor Moriarty and his work at draining a flooded village to uncover ...

Three weak stories and excellent work in the Gaiman, Stableford, and Kiernan pieces. Not a perfect collection judged by any measure but good enough for a Lovecraftian to pick up.

Wonderful new twists on the adventures of the Great Detective. A Lovecraftian taint squirms through out each. Be prepared to jump at shadows while you read this dark collection.

An anthology of Sherlock Holmes pastiches, in which the great detective's investigations lead him into the dark world imagined by H.P. Lovecraft.

The book starts off well, as "A Study in Emerald" (the only one of the stories I have read before) has a satisfying twist in its tail, and it finishes equally satisfyingly with "A Nightmare in Wax". Holmes faces a wide variety of cases, but it was interesting that more than one author suggested that Dr. Watson had come across the Old Ones before, during his time as an army surgeon in Afghanistan, and several managed to fit in bees and beekeeping. There is one story featuring Colonel Sebastian Moran and Irene Adler, in which Holmes and Watson don't appear, and there are references in others to characters from other Victorian fantastic fiction, such as Dracula and Caresco Surhomme.

The only problem with the book is that I didn't find any of the stories particularly frightening. I suppose that's bound to happen when you involve Sherlock Holmes, since the reader is expecting things to turn out more or less okay in the end, which is not something you can rely on when reading Lovecraft!

The Colour Out of Darkness by John Pelan is the latest novella in the Cemetery Dance series, # 17 I believe. Cemetery Dance is a well respected small press that regularly publishes a horror magazine that frequently features (but is not dedicated to) Lovecraftian fiction. I have never read any of the other novellas in the series as I don't think any of them have been related to the Cthulhu mythos, however the high qualities of this volume make me think general horror fiction fans would do well to seek them out. The complete list of titles can be seen at their website. I don't know what the industry technical definition of a novella is; I usually go with a short novel. Maybe a long short story? After a little reflection this book worked best for me when I thought of it just like that, a longish mythos short story. John Pelan is well known to the mythos community. The back cover leaf of the slip cover has a small biography of Mr. Pelan. Alas there are no author's notes on the text so all my inferences are just that.

Some housekeeping: Production qualities are high. This book is a very attractive hardcover with a slipcover. Mine was #468 of 750 (The total number of books in the (hopefully) first print run?), and signed by the author. Total page count was 153. But closer inspection shows it to be actually less. Dimensions are 6 X 8.8 inches, so the pages are not so large. Line spacing seems about 1.5. The first printed page of story was 9, the previous 8 being publishing information and dedication, etc. The back page of each picture was blank. Irregularly after a chapter or interlude would be another blank page, although this was not systematic in any way I could discern. I counted about 13 such blank pages throughout the book, so the real page count was 6 for art and 125 for text. What with the line spacing and all, the book was actually a very quick read. List price is $30, a bit steep for a book so small! Fortunately it is heavily discounted by Amazon to a more realistic $18.90, and you can get "free" shipping if you order more than $25 worth of stuff. The cover and interior artwork were by Allen Kozowski. I was not previously acquainted with Mr. Kozowski's work but the cover was very attractive and spot on for the story's theme: A Cthulhu-like head appears to spring from a nude human body's shoulders. The human form is probably female but there is a bit of deliberate androgynousness (is that a word? If not, it should be.). But actually the Great Old One is engulfing the human, probing it with tentacles. I found the image creepy and effective. I also enjoyed the interior art and wished there was more.

My take on this story is that it took some inspiration from HPL's classic "The Colour Out of Space" but was by no means a sequel to it. I know of two efforts at a true sequel. "A Little Color in Your Cheeks" is a very agreeable short story by Mike Minnis in the anthology Horrors Beyond. The Colour Out of Time by Michael Shea is a novella length sequel dating to the early 1980s. It was a bit more schlocky than HPL and, while it's worth seeking out, it dragged on a tad too long for me and had very derivative prose (it was from very early in Mr. Shea's career). I often think the mythos is best served by short stories rather than novels. In the HPL story a meteor falls from the sky to land in Nahum Gardner's property. A globule in the meteor has a strange color: "They had uncovered what seemed to be the side of a large coloured globule embedded in the substance. The colour, which resembled some of the bands in the meteor's strange spectrum, was almost impossible to describe; and it was only by analogy that they called it colour at all". This idea of a color not really perceptible by humans, not in the visible spectrum but not really in the infrared or ultraviolet, perhaps more extrasensory, is used very effectively by Mr. Pelan. Only those who have ingested the strange drug essence can perceive this color, described as an unidentifiable shimmering radiance. However perhaps more than the color, the author uses the idea of a completely alien sentience split into lesser parts, each of which acts independently, trying to regain enough power/energy by manipulating humans to rejoin itself, patiently doing this over unthinkable millennia. You probably recall how a fragment of the color in HPL's story fell back to earth and still lurked in the well.

Note: minor to major spoilers may follow, so don't read further if this bugs you.

Mr. Pelan turns away from the conventional mythos. He takes the very Derlethian idea of a cosmic war between outre entities where one was a distinct loser. It was rent into parts which were scattered about the earth. The chiefest part was entombed under the sea. Each part is now manipulating human psyches with the ultimate aim of reuniting and seeking its revenge. Here was an original twist for this book: there were not multiple Great Old Ones, rather they were all different ways these fragments were perceived through the limitations of human thought. There isn't even a Cthulhu, per se. The entity has no specific name. Rather, Cthulhu is how Lovecraft was manipulated into perceiving the largest part of this sentience under the sea, which was in turn interpreted as R'lyeh, and this was just one such example of many such influences of the alien on human thought. Parenthetically, I really dislike the plot device that Lovecraft was writing the truth disguised as fiction. This book deftly sidestepped that mortal sin; I'll call it venial and note I was not too annoyed with it. To extend human perceptions it gives its chosen acolytes a drug, essence. I won't give away the source of essence as it is one of the central shocks of the story. Unfortunately for the imbiber, in addition to unusual health and enhanced senses comes an inability to resist the unspeakable psychic commands of the alien. In fact, between each chapter is an interlude describing the actions of some famous person under the influence of essence. Let's just say Jack and Vlad had a little help from their friends.

The plot revolves around a Goth-ish Seattle nightclub, Cafe Sepulcher. To start with, the story is told from the perspective of a down on his luck hanger-on named Josh, one of a crowd of former street people who depends on the owner, Lara. After she was disabled in an accident she got some windfall money and now provides jobs for her friends, Byron, Brian and Sheree, as well as Josh. Josh has been carrying a torch for Lara but now seems to be out of the inner circle. He also starts to note weird scars on the others. About the same time, terrible things start to happen on the streets of Seattle. Josh is invited to try a new experience with Lara and the inner circle: essence. About midway through the book detective Joe Callaway comes on the scene investigating gruesome crimes. He starts to get an inkling of a new cult in Seattle and begins to trace it to its source, setting up a final vivid confrontation.

The prose is quite good, very readable and descriptive. Seattle's seamy underside comes alive under Mr. Pelan's pen. The author does not shy away from graphic language, either for violence or for sex, un-HPLish, but it works here. I finished the book in one night, so obviously it grabbed me. The ending was jarringly abrupt but very satisfying to the mythos fiction fan. Initially the characterizations were very good; in fact the story was very cohesive and compelling while we followed Josh's slow realization of what was happening to Lara and his friends. His character development was a strong point. But maybe two thirds through we suddenly abandon Josh to the machinations of the cult and start switching point of view characters rapidly. This allows the plot to move forward at the expense of cohesiveness. I found this disconcerting; to me it was the biggest weakness of the book.

So what's a mythos fan to do? Buy it, by all means! The price is very reasonable at Amazon for such a handsome hardcover, the story is not just a pastiche knock off, and the writing is quite good. I think you'll like the original take on the mythos as well. I am very happy to have this title in my library.

Varying quality by author. Occasional skanky race issues seemed to be inherited from Lovecraft himself.

Bestimmt kennen alle, die jemals eine Holmes-Geschichte gelesen haben dessen berühmtes Paradigma: "Wenn man das Unmögliche ausschließt, muß das, was übrigbleibt - so unwahrscheinlich es auch sein mag - die Wahrheit sein". Schön und gut, Mr. Holmes. Aber was, wenn die alptraumhafte Wahnsinnswelt der Großen Alten über die Baker Street hereinbricht? Was, wenn die Naturgesetze nichts mehr gelten? Wen das Unmögliche möglich wird? Mit diesen Fragen setzt sich diese Anthologie auseinander. Die Geschichten sind von unterschiedlicher Qualität und bieten für jeden Geschmack etwas. Sowohl Holmes-Freunde wie Lovecraft-Verehrer kommen hier voll und ganz auf ihre Kosten. Ein Buch, das wirklich in keiner Sammlung zum Genre fehlen darf.

These 15 Horror shorts were edited by John Pelan. He threw in one of his own,"The Last Stop" which I thought was a good idea, but quite abecedarian in composition. He fits the word Schumann in as many places as he can in 20 pages--which is a lot. Tony Richard's "At the Circus of the Dead" looks at the consequences of postmodern entertainment. Maria Alexander's "This Body of Death", I just didn't care for at all. Joseph A. Ezzo's "The Blood of Ink" is reminiscent of "The Twilight Zone" in style. Ramsey Campbell's "Unblinking" is quite schitzo--and we like that. David B. Silva's "The Dirty People" is a nice cultural statement for us anti-socials. Mark Samuels "Glyphotech" is a nice bit of corporate conspiracy. Michael Reaves "Spider Dream" is a nice little gem that arachnophobics and those who feel trapped in life will enjoy. Jeffrey Thomas' "Behind the Masque" has a bit of a sci fi taste. Jessica Amanda Salmonson's "A Bottle of Egyptian Night" starts out quite gay and ends up lesbian--made me want to go antiquing. Joseph Nassise's "Roadside Memorials" was a favorite. Michael Laimo's "Comforts of Home" was unique and well written. David Niall Wilson's "The Call of Farther Shores" was quite a little epic sea tale. Paul Melniczek's "Our World, How Fragile" is a very nice piece for creators to ponder on. Gerard Houarner's "The Crawl" is for those who carry sin and guilt.½

An uneven collection, with the elements from Lovecraft's work and the Sherlock Holmes canon mixing well only occasionally.

Highlights are: Steve-Elliot Altman's "A Case of Royal Blood" (atmospheric, with a mystery at its center rather than just the appearance of one), James Lowder's "The Weeping Masks" (a nice lead-up to truly horrific happenings, keeping me engrossed until the end), Barbara Hambly's "The Adventure of the Antiquarian's Niece" (Masterful use of the bait--n-switch. Poor Watson), and John Vourlis' "A Case of Insomnia" (creepy and chilling, with elements from Lovecraft and Doyle mixed very well).

Honorable mentions: Neil Gaiman's "A Study in Emerald" (wonderfully done, but too reliant on a reader's intimate knowledge of the source material, for which I docked points), Elizabeth Bear's "Tiger! Tiger!" (more Lovecraft meets Indian Safari Adventure, but Irene Adler is a force to behold), and Poppy Z. Brite & David Ferguson's "The Curious Case of Miss Violet Stone" (so much a companion/counter piece to "The Shadow Out of Time", but with the inherent hopefulness that results from introducing a hero - Holmes - to the universe).