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New Cthulhu: The Recent Weird (2011)

by Paula Guran(Favorite Author)

3.9 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

1607012898 (ISBN13: 9781607012894)

languge

English

genre

Horror

publisher

Prime Books

review 1: Anthology collections like this one always tend to be a mixed bag. This one is no exception to that rule. There were a few particularly exceptional stories but by and large in my opinion the collection as a whole had more misses than hits (though the quality of the best stories was such that I gave the anthology as a whole a passing grade). Given that whether a story works or not is subjective your mileage may vary. AS to the particular stories, for me the most successful ones were Neil Gaiman's brilliant "A Study in Emerald" - a Shelockian tale told in a Lovecraftian Victorian England (what's not to love?); John Langan's Mr. Gaunt (I wouldn't have pegged it as particularly Lovecraftian but it is a solid and well written tale of horror); Nick Mamatas & Tim Pratt's The ... moreDude Who Collected Lovecraft (an interesting tale that explores some of Lovecraft's more unsavory opinions on race); W.H. Pugmire's The Fungal Stain (great mood and well written though perhaps a bit more Robert Chambers than Lovecraft); China Meiville's Details (again a great piece of horror/weird fiction writing but perhaps a bit less than Lovecraftian); and finally Charles Stross' A Colder War (a very Lovecraftian reinterpretation of late 20th Century history through a Lovecraftian lens - how can you not love a story where during a Congressional hearing they discuss our Shoggoth Gap versus the Soviets?). Two more mentions for authors that I usually quite enjoy but for whatever reason didn't grab me this time, I really wanted to like Caitlin's Kiernan's Pickman's Other Model - it had all the pieces and was a wonderful Lovecraft homage but it might have been too faithful to Lovecraft's writing style and left me more bored than enthralled; and Kim Newman's Another Fish Story - I generally love Newman's alternate history horror/comedy work but this tale of Deep Ones, the Manson Family and Lon Chaney Jr just didn't work for me. At any rate those are my highlights from this collection. I would recommend it for the strong stories but be prepared to slog through the chaff to get to the wheat.
review 2: Any story that references tentacles or a green glow is just blatantly derivative, and that was most of the stories in this book. There were a few that I really liked. "Pickman's Other Model," "Mr. Gaunt," "Bringing Helena Back" and especially "Another Fish Story" which featured Charles Manson, Lon Chaney, Jr., Russ Tamblyn and Squeaky Fromme. "The Essayist In The Wilderness" was funny. Also, I was glad that a couple of the stories inspired by H.P. Lovecraft, a notorious racist, featured black protagonists. less

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