Children of Lovecraft

In the introduction, the editor tells us that she encouraged her contributors to create stories using the best of Lovecraft (the terror of the cosmic unknown, and his vision) to explore new themes, new horrors; don’t just rehash the existing mythos. She found 14 writers who did a wonderful job of exceeding her expectations.Ranging from medieval times to the dust bowl to a strange future world to a police ride across the SF peninsula and a visit to NOLA; some of the strangest takes on the Lovecraft team are presented within. Their scale ranges from the small, a police car, to across the universe as a young girl is planted in a foreign galaxy to be educated a while and then returned to the earth to handle a local representative of the old gods. Several of the stories returned and took up space in my head as nightmares the evening I read them; something that has not happened in a long time.Enjoy. I did! There is not a bad one in the bunch.

There are a lot of great stories in here. Aside from great stories, there's also usually a wealth of atmosphere that is really well designed. Even though that's true, there are some stories that don't really for in clear ways, so they end up falling short while also not being as engaging.

This is like most Ellen Datlow-edited anthologies - lots of great stories and a couple where the writer has a story because it will help sell the book. The stories are definitely not hard-core Lovecraftian stories. Nor are they just pastiches. Some of the stories are inspired by ideas that Lovecraft explored in his writing, while others deal explicitly with Lovecraftian gods - Nyarlathotep, for one. Typical to a Datlow anthology the stories cover a wide range of topics and settings. There is a far future tale of life after the oceans rise that looks at how life evolves in response, and the importance of memory. There are also stories with very narrow scope- what would you give up if you could experience a version of your life where something catastrophic didn't happen. My personal favorites were Gemma Files' Little Ease, Orrin Grey's Mortensen's Muse, A.C. Wise's When the Stitches Come Undone, Brian Hodge's On These Blackened Shores of Time, and Livia Llewellyn's Bright Crown of Joy. The less said about Laird Barron's Oblivion Mode the better - the one stinker in the bunch - full of plot holes.

Often, these anthologies have a few great stories at the beginning of the book but end up being filled with dull, predictable pieces afterwards. This anthology was superb from start to finish and turned me on to a number of new writers. Well worth the money.

I've read all of HPL' s stories and lots of imitation HPL...but without giving anything away in this compendium of cuthulu...the second story is pretty cool to this old-mage...as 30 years ago my web site was" drdees/channel7 "...and that story is worth the price of admission.

HP Lovecraft is Awesome. This books proves how Lovecraft inspires.

Some of these stories May stand on their own as light horror and fun loving short stories, but a few of them are just so obsessed with being clever and complicated that they make the entire book unbearable... !

One of the best collections of Lovecraft-inspired stories I've read.

i bought it for one story which uses a narrative device I've not seen before it didn't disappoint

There are some real cracking tales in here and a couple of duds which is to be expected of any short story collection. Eternal Troutland, The supplement and The Secret of Insects are all excellent attempts to bring Lovecraft into the present day.

Datlow does it again! She curates a delicious blend of subtlely Lovecraft-inflected tales. All these courses are superb. Often in edited volumes, I find one or two dishes stand out. Not so in this one. They are all yummy.[Edited to remove crazed auto-corrections]