this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2023
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H.P. Lovecraft - Tales of Horror
I've been blown away by all of this, up until the one I'm currently powering my way through (Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath). It isn't terrible, though. It just feels very out of place after the overall tone and flow of all his other stories within the volume.
I love his dream cycle stuff, it's so vivid, but it's definitely jarring read alongside the horror.
It certainly has its moments, when his description of something really stirs something inside of you and lights up your imagination. I loved this one:
"There is a great canal which goes under the whole city in a tunnel with granite gates and leads to the inland lake of Yath, on whose farther shore are the vast clay-brick ruins of a primal city whose name is not remembered. As the ship drew into the harbour at evening the twin beacons Thon and Thal gleamed a welcome, and in all the million windows of Baharna's terraces mellow lights peeped out quietly and gradually as the stars peep out overhead in the dusk, till that steep and climbing seaport became a glittering constellation hung between the stars of heaven and the reflections of those stars in the still harbour."
That one really put me there. But then you get to the space cats and it kind of brings you out again.