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chuckroAn anthology of Lovecraft-inspired fiction, by and starring women and addressing the paucity of female characters in Lovecraft’s original works.
The more character / personal-based stories, the ones a little more divorced from the original Lovecraft stories, are generally better. Though by “better” I generally mean that they were more touching or more interesting to read. (“Eight Seconds” is a good example of that, as is “Bitter Perfume.”) Nothing really worked for me as horror, and I suspect much of that is the pop culture mutation of Lovecraftian horror, that it’s very hard to take seriously at this point. I felt like many of these authors weren’t actually trying to write something that could freak people out, because they don’t approach the source material (or other derivative works) in that manner. These generally are parodies of Lovecraft; his actual heirs are in things like Creepypasta.
That said, some of them are decent ideas but needed better editing: “Cthulhu in the Dead Sea” stands out for that—the setup is great but the scary climatic scene doesn’t really work. “Queen of a New America” is a great start…but that’s all, there’s no payoff to it. The ones that try to hew too closely to Lovecraft’s original work (basically retelling the same story from a female perspective) tend to neither work as horror nor as particularly good stories—and I don’t think I’d even really want to call them “feminist”, because the woman is still the monster in the manner of Lovecraft’s main fears.* ”Violet is the Color of Your Energy” is basically “The Colour Out of Space,” which is one of my favorite of Lovecraft’s stories, but it doesn’t actually add anything new to it.
Overall: This has what Puel referred to as “the anthology problem”, where the quality is a highly mixed bag and the editing needed to be more heavy-handed on nearly everything. There are some interesting ideas, but nothing scary enough to keep you up at night.
* H.P. Lovecraft was afraid of three things above all others: Water, minorities, and women. Everything scary in his stories comes down to one of those three things.
The more character / personal-based stories, the ones a little more divorced from the original Lovecraft stories, are generally better. Though by “better” I generally mean that they were more touching or more interesting to read. (“Eight Seconds” is a good example of that, as is “Bitter Perfume.”) Nothing really worked for me as horror, and I suspect much of that is the pop culture mutation of Lovecraftian horror, that it’s very hard to take seriously at this point. I felt like many of these authors weren’t actually trying to write something that could freak people out, because they don’t approach the source material (or other derivative works) in that manner. These generally are parodies of Lovecraft; his actual heirs are in things like Creepypasta.
That said, some of them are decent ideas but needed better editing: “Cthulhu in the Dead Sea” stands out for that—the setup is great but the scary climatic scene doesn’t really work. “Queen of a New America” is a great start…but that’s all, there’s no payoff to it. The ones that try to hew too closely to Lovecraft’s original work (basically retelling the same story from a female perspective) tend to neither work as horror nor as particularly good stories—and I don’t think I’d even really want to call them “feminist”, because the woman is still the monster in the manner of Lovecraft’s main fears.* ”Violet is the Color of Your Energy” is basically “The Colour Out of Space,” which is one of my favorite of Lovecraft’s stories, but it doesn’t actually add anything new to it.
Overall: This has what Puel referred to as “the anthology problem”, where the quality is a highly mixed bag and the editing needed to be more heavy-handed on nearly everything. There are some interesting ideas, but nothing scary enough to keep you up at night.
* H.P. Lovecraft was afraid of three things above all others: Water, minorities, and women. Everything scary in his stories comes down to one of those three things.
