The characters in this are nonexistent. Yes, there are characters, but they are interchange for each story. most of the time the character has no time, fears something, and ends up getting mauled by that something. There is no character development, and they are all one dimensional if even that.
The stories are usually set with Lovecraft’s native New England. Sometimes we will see stories set in other places like England or Egypt but for the most part, expect the United States. I have nothing to say about the setting, it was there and that’s that. You will see throughout much of this review, I do not have any major thoughts.
At first, I enjoyed the writing. It was descriptive and I was wanting full novels out of the first few short stories. As the collection went along though, the writing just felt as though it was getting lengthier and with little to no dialogue it was growing to be tiresome. a lot of the stories were told in first person, but I feel like so much more could have been done to them if third person had been used as a lot of the time the author used fade to black and we did not really get to see much of these monsters. I think that Lovecraft has a nice writing style but at times he got too carried away with it.
As stated before, I really enjoyed the plot of the first few stories that are in this collection. My favorites being Celephaïs, Dagon, and The Rats in the Walls. Since I enjoyed a few of the stories that is why I am adding half a star to the two-star rating. The descriptions of the monsters or other scary things were quite vague so I could not have a definite picture of them in my head. I do think at the time that these stories came out that they must have been shocking but for the most part they were lackluster for me.
The characters in this are nonexistent. There is no character development, and they are all one dimensional if even that. The stories are usually set with Lovecraft’s native New England. At first, I enjoyed the writing. I think that Lovecraft has a nice writing style but at times he got too carried away with it. I really enjoyed the plot of the first few stories that are in this collection. I do think at the time that these stories came out that they must have been shocking but for the most part they were lackluster for me. It was interesting to see the stories that inspired much of our modern-day fantasy and science fiction stories, but I will not be continuing with Lovecraft.
2.5 out of 5 stars.
Izzy Reads 