The Complete Fiction of H. P. Lovecraft Paperback – December 20, 2022

Apparently this anthology is actually missing four stories that appear in other collections, but I'll get to those another time. For all intents and purposes, this book sent me on a full and fascinating voyage through Lovecraft's fiction.Prior to beginning the collection, I had never read a single Lovecraft story, yet I had long been meaning to. I was of course aware of arguably his most famous creation, Cthulhu, the god-like “Old One” with its iconic tentacled head, slumbering through the aeons below the Pacific. What had really got me interested, however, was a synopsis I’d read of the story The Shadow Out of Time, which awakened me to the true wonders of Lovecraft’s imagination–it occurred to me that this horror tale had a pronounced sci-fi element to it, which I hadn’t expected. I wondered at how no story I could think of from this master had every found its way into my hands.What I was most surprised and delighted by was the unexpected variety across his works. A sense of cosmic horror forms the underpinning of his writing, spanning a veritable pantheon of monstrous creatures, extra-cosmic beings, gods, and virtually indescribable lifeforms and other fiends (indeed, unnameable and supposedly indescribable horrors are a common features in these tales)–from the crawling chaos Nyarlathotep, to Cthulhu and his ilk, to alien interlopers, to the Earth Gods of a sprawling Dreamland, to the terrifying Other Gods, and beyond. I loved the lore he created, added to piece by piece across multiple stories, stretching back through a vague history of the earth and its many (non-human) civilizations that have dwelt upon it since primordial times, their ruins now buried beneath the earth and sea in the deep and remote places of the world. Referenced in tale after tale, the widely-suppressed and deathly taboo Necronomicon, a fictional ancient book composed by the “Mad Arab” Abdul Alhazred, is a great element to draw the reader into a literary universe teeming with forbidden elder knowledge.Then there are the stories of his Dream Cycle, taking place in Earth’s Dreamland, explored most extensively in the wonder-filled novella The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath. The journeys through dreamland, often undertaken by characters escaping a dreary Earthly existence into a wondrous and adventure-rich non-corporeal world, are described beautifully. Lovecraft was able to create a sense of cosmic dread–fear for the very experience of the human mind and soul in the face of truths and realities so extreme in their alien-ness and horror that they drive it to utter madness, in addition to mortal terror–but he could also capture through prose a rare and fleeting sensation such as we get in those dreams, often as children, in which we find ourselves for a time in unknown worlds of limitless beauty, mystery and joy.Lovecraft not only takes his readers through the hidden (often subterranean) recesses of fictionalized New England locales, but as far as the unexplored wastes of Antarctica (At the Mountains of Madness - one of my favorites), to Australia (The Shadow Out of Time), to the Congo, to various corners of Europe, to the depths of the ocean, to vast cities that rose on Earth before the evolution of human beings, to the edges of the cosmos and beyond, and to the furthest reaches of Earth’s Dreamland. Almost as a bonus, the third-to-last story, Sweet Ermengarde, which was written under the pseudonym Percy Simple, was a humorous and lighthearted tale, theatrical in nature, and without any supernatural gloom whatsoever.All in all, an awesome tour-de-force through the Lovecraft's body of literature.

I got this for a friend and didn’t wanna give it to them when it arrived lol 😆

So many Lovecraft collections are merely picks by some editor, and not complete. This one appears to have everything - 68 stories in all plus some extra "juvenalia" that I didn't expect. Awesome!After reading some other reviews on here, I was afraid I was going to get some cheap bootleg thing, and incomplete. No, this is a Barnes & Noble edition. Table of contents, stories page separated, and very nicely bound with one of those cloth strip bookmarks. The type is small, but it was either that or a huge dictionary-esque thing. There's a lot here. Reanimator, Kadath, Chtlulu, Mountains, all of it.

H.P. Lovecraft has often been said to be the most influental horror writer of his century, and with good reason. Necronomicon, Abdul Alhazred, Cthulhu, Arkham, it's all Lovecraft. And yes, I am well aware that some of his stories are pushing 100 years old by now. But that's the beauty of it. His stories are a century old, yet they hold up brilliantly even to this day. Just keep in mind the pace is slow. It can be painfully slow at times, perhaps especially if you're a fan of fast action. This is horror that needs time to build up to really get to you, but the payoff is well worth the trouble.The one thing that keeps me from giving this 5 stars is the title. This is NOT the complete works. While it's an extensive collection of his work, there are a few stories missing. Not a huge deal for the price, but if you want a 100% complete collection in one book, look elsewhere. But if 95% complete is enough for you, I highly recommend this one. Easily.

A great collection of stories

Lovecraft has long been a favorite. His fiction is truly mind-expanding: it forces you to think of a colossal cosmos, populated by unspeakably powerful beings, among whom man is but a blip in time. Lovecraft's fiction follows a general trend of a protagonist oblivious to his insignificance and caught up in the hubbub of day-to-day life who must gradually come to terms with how tiny he is in a mad, uncaring universe of Cyclopean scale and hoary ancientness. There's a reason he has inspired everyone from Robert Block to Stephen King.If you don't mind the slow build of Lovecraft's fiction, or his characters, who are more caught up with digging into mysteries they shouldn't dig into but can't pull themselves away from than they are character development or self-discovery, you'll enjoy the slowly unfolding horror on offer in H.P. Lovecraft.Not only is Lovecraft fun to read, but he will permanently alter how you think about man's place in the universe. It remains hard to consider man - or any of his dramas, intrigues, or impacts - all that important in scale after completing a reading of H.P. Lovecraft. Enter at your own risk... and as any Lovecraftian hero might tell you, there are certain truths no sane mind should ever be made to face...