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Shoggoths In Bloom And Other Stories (2012)

by Elizabeth Bear(Favorite Author)

4.13 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

1607013614 (ISBN13: 9781607013617)

languge

English

genre

Fantasy

publisher

Prime Books

review 1: If we assume for a moment that Lovecraft was a long way from the best Lovecraftian author, we must then ask ourselves: who was/is? This collection bring Elizabeth Bear into the same league as Ligotti and more than a step above Lumley in that competition. Her work evokes a sense of brutal hopefulness in which there is only light that lets you see how terrible the odds stacked against our existence are, and her characters explore the dark corners of this shadowy hope in new ways in each story. The title story deserves the praise it has received for the subtlety with which the horrific realizations were made, but I would argue that "The Horrid Glory of It's Wings" is the greatest accomplishment of this collection.
review 2: Despite the title, this is not a col... morelection of "lovecraftian" style stories. This is a collection of Elizabeth Bear's sci-fi and fantasy short stories. One of them ("Shoggoths in Bloom") is inspired a bit by lovecraft, but has a completely different attitude towards the material. The quality of all of the stories in this volume is top notch but the range imagination for each of the different settings that Bear conjures with these stories is amazing. Of all of them, my favorite was hands down "In the House of Aryaman" - which is at least on the surface a sci-fi murder mystery, but Bear does so much worldbuilding in just one short story that I was dying to read more about Inspector Ferron and her world at the end. Easily one of the best short story collections by a single author I've read in years. less

Download links for: Shoggoths in Bloom and other stories

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