Showing posts with label Will Murray. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Will Murray. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 01, 2025

The Wild Adventures of Cthulhu #2 (Cthulhu Anthology #22) 1Star

 

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress, Blogspot, & Librarything by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: The Wild Adventures of Cthulhu #2
Series: Cthulhu Anthology #22

Editor: Will Murray
Rating: 1 of 5 Stars
Genre: Cosmic Horror
Pages: 210
Words: 77K


The first story in this anthology ends like this:

All mysteries are contained in the Great Mystery. The Great Mystery has authority over all lesser mysteries. Lesser mysteries have no power over the Great Mystery. Wakan Tanka is far more powerful than they. I walk with Wakiya medicine. So I partake of that power.

Thus, the Great Spirit is elevated so far above Cthulhu and his ilk that humanity doesn’t need to worry. Then you have a later story about a preacher of Christianity and it goes as you’d expect. God and Jesus are denigrated and spit upon and shown to be impotent and powerless before Cthulhu.

I’m stopping reading these anthologies. The hypocrisy shown here finally pushed me over the edge. I’ll revisit the idea of reading more cosmic horror later this year or early in ‘26.

Not exactly the way I wanted to start the month.

★☆☆☆☆


Table of Contents

Introduction             5

God General Nakji             7

Evacuation Day             31

The Hindmarsh Abomination             46

Moonday             60

Smoking Mirror             88

In The Lightless Chambers of Hellish N’gah-Kthun  100

The Purple Emperor              127

The Cow-Men of Coburn             134

The Arcade             149

The Wild Ones of Weirport             158




Wednesday, March 12, 2025

The Wild Adventures of Cthulhu Vol 1 (Cthulhu Anthology #21) 3Stars

 

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress, Blogspot, & Librarything by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: The Wild Adventures of Cthulhu Vol 1
Series: Cthulhu Anthology #21
Editor: Will Murray
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: Cosmic Horror
Pages: 199
Words: 66K


Will Murray wrote Cthulhu short stories for various magazines and collections and they all had the overarching element of being connected by an organization that was trying to prevent the intrusion of the elder gods into our dimension. Each story was standalone, not necessarily dependent on previous stories OR future stories and if one story contradicted how our world ended, it didn’t matter, because what did matter was that the elder gods WOULD break through, period.

I had only read one of these stories before, so the novelty of them all was pretty good. My usual complaint occurred, which didn’t surprise me. One of the top men of the top secret organization (CEES? I can’t remember what ridiculous thing it was called. It made sense when reading but as soon as I stopped I simply forgot because it had no real world application) was a devout Christian and when the elder gods broke into our world and were eradicating humanity, said leader went insane, spouted some specific blasphemies about God and Jesus and then blew his head off with his service pistol. What concerned me about it was that it didn’t concern me.

I am thinking that I have gotten too used to such things, and that isn’t good. So I’ve got one more Cthulhu anthology on my ereader and once I’ve read that, I’m going to take a break from the cosmic horror for the rest of the year. Let my standards reset to what they should be. Repeated exposure to blasphemy is doing what it always does, it dulls and I refuse to accept that in my life.

★★☆☆


Table of Contents

Introduction

To Clear the Earth

The Eldridge Collection

Rude Awakening

A Trillion Young

Static

The Sothis Radiant

Dark Redeemer

What Brings the Void

The Hour of Our Triumph

Black Fire