[books 2013] Cthulu tales
75. New Cthulu: The Recent Weird edited by Paula Guran
A collection of short stories all based somehow in HP Lovecraft's universe that have been published since 2000. Amazingly, even though it contains stories by a lot of authors I read, the only one I'd read before was the Neil Gaiman one (A Study in Emerald).
This book is absolutely enormous. I can't believe how long it took me to read - I read it in the airport and on the plane to Iceland and again on the train to and from Leeds, and I still had 100 pages left!
Overall the quality of stories is really good here, and they represent the full range of different "types" of Lovecraft stories, and a stunning variety of takes on the mythos.
Like any collection of this type, some are better than others, but I don't think it's a coincidence that the ones I failed to engage came when I'd had just about enough but was stuck without anything else to do.
One near the end blew my socks off though - Mongoose by Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette - set on a space station that looked in my mind like a slightly gloomier Babylon 5.
Well worth it if Lovecraftian mythos is your thing, but it'll take some time!
A collection of short stories all based somehow in HP Lovecraft's universe that have been published since 2000. Amazingly, even though it contains stories by a lot of authors I read, the only one I'd read before was the Neil Gaiman one (A Study in Emerald).
This book is absolutely enormous. I can't believe how long it took me to read - I read it in the airport and on the plane to Iceland and again on the train to and from Leeds, and I still had 100 pages left!
Overall the quality of stories is really good here, and they represent the full range of different "types" of Lovecraft stories, and a stunning variety of takes on the mythos.
Like any collection of this type, some are better than others, but I don't think it's a coincidence that the ones I failed to engage came when I'd had just about enough but was stuck without anything else to do.
One near the end blew my socks off though - Mongoose by Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette - set on a space station that looked in my mind like a slightly gloomier Babylon 5.
Well worth it if Lovecraftian mythos is your thing, but it'll take some time!