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Title:
Book of Cthulhu
Series: Cthulhu Anthology
#17
Editor: Ross Lockhart
Rating: 3.5
of 5 Stars
Genre: Cosmic Horror
Pages:
564
Words: 225K
This was published in 2011. I can
believe it was quite the collection then. I would have really enjoyed
all the brand new stories. Sadly, because I read this as the 17th
installment in the Cthulhu Anthology series, I had already read
several of these. Let me name them for your reading mispleasure.
A Colder War
Fat Face
Black Man with a Horn
The Shallows
Not a single one of those stories is a
bad story. I dutifully read A Colder War in its entirety. Fat Face I
began to skim. Black Man with a Horn I skipped whole sections. The
Shallows I skipped right to the ending to make sure it was the story
I thought it was (it was). It made me realize something, about myself
but mostly about the Cthulhu Mythos. Its appeal is the newness of the
stories, nothing more. The existential dread one might have felt upon
reading A Colder War for the first time went up in a cloud of poofy
smoke upon this re-read. It wasn’t grim, it wasn’t dreadful, it
didn’t make me shiver or go “brrrrr”. It bored me.
Some books and stories have
re-readability and some simply do not. Those that do not, they are
the paper plates of the book world, use once and dispose of
immediately. They have no lasting value, nothing to offer besides
new’ness. Once that new’ness is gone, all you are left with is a
pile of words that sit there like a lump of garbage. You might ask
“Bookstooge, WHO ARE YOU to pass such judgment?” and here is my
humble reply. I read over 150 books a year. Over 25% of that, on
average, is re-reading. I fething know what I’m fething saying
because I’m a fething Book-Authority and don’t you forget it! But
seriously, I read and re-read enough to know what I am talking about.
If someone eats soup for breakfast, lunch and dinner, even the most
dimwitted clodhopper at some point begins to realize some of those
soups are much better than others. I am no dimwitted clodhopper. Far
from it. I am genius enough to know that the tall sunflower falls the
farthest while the humble grass simply soaks up the sunshine. I’m
down here on purpose folks.
In previous collections, I have
complained about Jehovah and Jesus being trampled underfoot by the
authors and Cthulhu’esqu gods simply obliterating them as powerless
and empty human abstracts. That didn’t happen here. But what did
happen was that a Muslim Jihadist was the goodguy and Allah gave him
the power to overcome the Cosmic Forces arrayed against him because
he, Allah, was such a kind and benevolent and POWERFUL being. Equal
treatment folks, that’s all I ask for and I didn’t get it, not
even close.
Ok, that was a powerful load of
complaining. Even I acknowledge that. You might be wondering why in
the world I gave this 3.5stars with those paragraphs and paragraphs
of whiny complaints. The reason is simple. The rest of the stories
were really good.
Calamari Curls was
a story about a new restaurant opening up and taking business away
from the old grumpy and cantankerous jackass who owned a soup shop.
Only to have everyone go insane as the building was a weakspot and
cosmic horror regularly broke through every couple of decades.
Bad Sushi dealt
with a Japanese World War II vet trying to stop the takeover of a
town that was being fed elder god in the new sushi menu. He’s like
80 years old and dies. But he stops it.
The Fairground Horror was
all about two brothers that allowed greed and fanaticism to destroy
them both when they confront Cthulhu and try to use him as a vending
machine, metaphorically speaking.
The Doom That Came to Innsmouth was
a wonderful tale of descendant of Innsmouth making his way back and
escaping to the sea, as the Federal Government once again tried to
wipe out Innsmouth. It was diabolical how twisted the main character
was and how he used every means possible to present himself as
“normal” even though he was a sick, twisted, perverted murderer,
as was every other Innsmouth inhabitant.
The
rest were just as disturbing and shiver inducing. That is the exact
reason I read these.
★★★✬☆
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