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Title: Cthulhu Lives!
Series: Cthulhu Anthology #1
Editor: Salome Jones
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Cosmic Horror
Pages: 235
Words: 80K

Synopsis:

Table of Contents

FOREWORD by Leeman Kessler

UNIVERSAL CONSTANTS by Piers Beckley

1884 by Michael Grey

ELMWOOD by Tim Dedopulos

HOBSTONE by G. K. Lomax

ON THE BANKS OF THE RIVER JORDAN by John Reppion

DARK WATERS by Adam Vidler

INK by Iain Lowson

DEMON IN GLASS by E. Dane Anderson

SCALES FROM BALOR’S EYE by Helmer Gorman

OF THE FACELESS CROWD by Gábor Csigás

SCRITCH, SCRATCH by Lynne Hardy

ICKE by Greg Stolze

CODING TIME by Marc Reichardt

THE THING IN THE PRINTER by Peter Tupper

THE OLD ONES by Jeremy Clymer

VISITING RIGHTS by Joff Brown

AFTERWORD

My Thoughts:

I rather enjoyed this anthology. Going into Cosmic Horror though, you have to have the proper mindset. There are no heroes overcoming great odds but ordinary people being overcome with hopeless despair and being devoured (whether physically, psychologically or spiritually depends on the story). Madness, mayhem and murder are the key phrases of the day. Finally, the elder gods are dark gods, uncaring, unmoral and barely able to even interact in this reality without destroying it.

If any of those “rules” are broken, it makes for a very unsatisfactory cosmic horror story. Rites of Azathoth was such a book that just didn't work for me. On the other hand, The Private Lives of Elder Things was fantastic and everything you'd want from cosmic horror. I went into this book wondering which course on the path it was going to take. I'm glad to announce it took the better (errr, worse?) path and was truly horrific and terrifying as only good cosmic horror can be!

I did stay up late a couple of nights because I got caught up in the “one more story” syndrome which has come to represent, to me, the pinnacle of the short story collection. If you can't put the book down, it has done its job perfectly.

Salome Jones has done a fantastic job of putting together stories and while some are pushing the edge of graphic, either violently or sexually, none of them go into what I'd classify as gratuitous. After the couple of short story collections at the end of November, I am thankful for an editor who has dash of good taste in what stories are chosen.

The reasons this was 3 ½ stars instead of higher is because in one story the writer specifically states how the puny god of the christians is as nothing before the darkness of the elder gods. It was the specificity that irked me. I probably wouldn't have minded nearly so much if all the religions were lumped together in that statement, but nope, had to specifically talk about Christianity. sigh.

I've got another couple of volumes of cosmic horror anthologies after this one but I might stretch them out a bit. Too much darkness isn't good for the soul after all. Just like eating a whole bag of cheetos isn't good for the body.

★★★✬☆ ( )

Cthulhu Lives!: An Eldritch Tribute to H. P. Lovecraft contains a selection of stories that allude to Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos. Some are creepy tableaux with nights dark and stormy and places dilapidated and haunted. Others explore the creeping existential dread found in the prosaic.

Two standouts are Michael Grey's "1884" and Gethin A. Lynes' "The Highland Air." Both are set in the Victorian era and leavened with small details that add to the stories' atmospherics. A casual implication by Lynes that the influence of Cthulhu is, in part, responsible for the Kelly Gang's rampaging neatly illustrates the timelessness of Cthulhu's power and the vastness of its reach.
Several other stories, while interesting, are too brief or too nebulous to immerse oneself in their creepiness. This vagueness serves to stymie the horror, not enhance it. ( )

My review is up at http://www.innsmouthfreepress.com/blog/column-on-the-marches-of-dreamland-review.... ( )

Cthulhu Lives!
Author: Tim Dedopulos, John reppion, Greg Stolze, Lynne Hardy, Gabor Csigas, Gethin A. Lynes, E. Dane Anderson, Piers Beckley, Joff Brown, Jeremy Clymer, Helmer Gorman, Michael Grey, G. K. Lomax, Iain Lowson, Marc Reichardt, Peter Tuper, Adam Yidler
Publisher: Ghostwoods Books
Published In: London, United Kingdom
Date: 2014
Pgs: 275

REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS

Summary:
Cthulhu lives...is dead...is rising...comes again...is dead. Lovecraft’s elder dead monster god finds expression through the words and deeds of men. Dark visions arise in the imagination of mankind and grow strong. Mankind is a drop of light and life in the endless darkness of the universe. Vast alien horrors await mankind. The darkness is here and it hungers for the light.

Genre:
Apocalypse
Disaster
End of the World
Fantasy
Fiction
History
Horror
Science fiction
Short stories
Vampires
War
Witches, wizards and magic
Zombies

Why this book:
It’s Cthulhu.
______________________________________________________________________________
Universal Constants
by Piers Beckley

Favorite Character:
Professor Glay is coming undone.

The Feel:
There is a science creep factor here that is awesome.

Favorite Scene:
Where Professor Glay has come to the point chasing the shifting results from the Super Collider where he is trying to map the shifts with strings and is sitting at the center of a web of strings attached all over his office where he is trying to map in 4 dimensions the shifts in the numbers, he tells the narrator that the universal constants are shifting and that is what’s causing the results to be different. And he’s going crazy.

That scene where he’s locking himself in and smiles big when she helps him dog the hatch shut so that he can “escape.”

Pacing:
Well paced.

Casting call:
Jeffrey Combs would be awesome as Professor Glay. Of course, he’s awesome as everything he plays.
______________________________________________________________________________
1884
by Michael Grey

Favorite Character:
Officer Martin Fisher

The Feel:
This is creepy alternate history.

Favorite Scene:
When Officer Martin is called before Her Most Ancient and Imperial Majesty, Queen Victoria, and gets his first look at what she has become.

Pacing:
The pace was good.

Hmm Moments:
Tesla’s experiment and the sinking of his ship and the consequences of his experiments in the deep ocean.

Why isn’t there a screenplay?
Considering that we live in an era when Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter made it to the big screen, why couldn’t 1884. Would have to be expanded seriously and it would need an ending.

Casting call:
Would love Ewan McGregor as Officer Martin Fisher.
______________________________________________________________________________
Elmwood
by Tim Dedopulos

Favorite Character:
Robert, the narrator.

The Feel:
I like the central conflict of this. Didn’t expect the Lovecraftian menaces to be in opposition like that.

Favorite Scene:
The fish/frog man driving the bus spying on the paranoid man is a great scene.

Pacing:
Page turner.

Plot Holes/Out of Character:
With as paranoid as Phillip is, why does he trust? Doesn’t fit with the character. Same with all these guys. Conspiracy theorists by definition think everyone is out to get them or part of the conspiracy. Paranoia may destroy you...but it may keep you alive.

Hmm Moments:
Naval livefire exercises in the Gulf of Mexico that have a suspicious number of friendly fire incidents...at least reportedly friendly fire. And a contagious element. And a fear that the Mexican Navy may have bitten off more than it can chew.

The flip is awesome. Great climax and anticlimax.

Why isn’t there a screenplay?
Would end up bastardized if they tried to pad it out to movie length. Awesome just like it is. The CGI budget to make it feel as big as it is wouldn’t convert to a ½ hour show in a Twilight Zone vein.
______________________________________________________________________________
Hobstone
by G. K. Lomax

The Feel:
You can feel the narrator’s obsession building in the story.

Plot Holes/Out of Character:
I would love one of these Cthulian horrors that ends in government coverup to show how the government is involved and doing what it does over time in a denouement / anticlimax.

Hmm Moments:
See...if I opened up a wall and found a glowing stone with alien script on it that looks ancient but neither I nor any of my friends can identify, I’m thinking I’d get myself the hell out of there as opposed to sitting there staring at it and/or trying to sleep in the same room with the stone.
_____________________________________________________________________________
On the Banks of the River Jordan
by John Reppion

The Feel:
I like the format of the email correspondence.

Favorite Scene:
When the fox is revealed to not be a fox on the pond’s edge by moonlight.

Plot Holes/Out of Character:
The mysterious ending is a great trope, but it’s misused here. There isn’t enough to it to give the reader a line on what happens next.
______________________________________________________________________________
Dark Waters
by Adam Vidler

Least Favorite Character:
Ray knew and he ran, very chickenshit.

The Feel:
The spirits of the hole using Ray’s anger to manifest gives us a look in at destructive emotions acting through the ethereal. Course her getting sucked down and devoured slowly over eternity makes his anger seem misplaced and childish.

Favorite Scene:
When the spirits of the waterhole awoke and sucked Kat down.
______________________________________________________________________________
Ink
by Iain Lowson

Favorite Scene:
The idea of a huge paper art construction that has unnatural folds that seem to call infinity and such is awesome.

Pacing:
Very short. Pace is a non-issue due to the brevity of the story. This is more a vignette calling up a Lovecraftian concept than an actual story.

Hmm Moments:
The final ink stroke on the blank paper pulling the critic into the “art” before falling back into its blank shape.
______________________________________________________________________________
Demon in Glass
by E. Dane Anderson

Favorite Character:
The photographer.

The Feel:
I like the old time photographer / darkroom pretext.

Favorite Scene:
The climactic scene when he looks at the overall image of the burnt asylum / sanitarium building.

Pacing:
Well paced. But too many of these leave the open ended ending hanging there.

Hmm Moments:
When the photographer saw what the negatives revealed.
______________________________________________________________________________
Scales from Balor’s Eye
by Helmer Gorman

Favorite Character:
The Old Man at the boarding house seems very Gollum-like, what with his mannerisms and his trunk full of his precious under his bed.

The Feel:
There is a sense of the other shoe about to drop all through this, but it also fits predictably into the tropes of the Cthulian genre.

Favorite Scene:
When he realizes that he almost drove his car off the cliff in the fog the night before.

The ancient broken steeple tip revealing the depths hid the city that he had come looking for. His family’s history stood drowned below the clifftops and in the depths just there off the slimy, murky beach below the boarding house.

The innkeeper’s daughter sneaking into the traveller’s room in the wee hours of the night and taking what she wants from him physically. The bite that won’t heal. And the town lit up under the waves and the whatever the tentacled thing was.

Pacing:
The pace of this one is just okay.

Casting call:
I’d say Billy Crystal as the Old Man, but I’m not sure how well he can play creepy.
______________________________________________________________________________
Of the Faceless Crowd
by Gabor Csigas

The Feel:
The emptiness of this story, the attempted stillness of the narrator’s mind, not wanting to connect to anything around him. The nihilistic nothingness of it all. This is a dark story that I’m really glad isn’t longer.

Hmm Moments:
The narrator’s daughter being a member of a, shhh hush, sweeper team. A cryptic piece dropped into the middle of this introverted, brain damaged narrator’s day in the life.

______________________________________________________________________________
Scritch, Scratch
by Lynne Hardy

Favorite Character:
The ratcatcher on his lonely, hereditary job.

Least Favorite Character:
The idiots on the Town Council who make the mistake of not respecting the Old Ways and the position of ratcatcher.

The Feel:
Telegraphing hard.

Plot Holes/Out of Character:
Amazing how many of these stories start or end with a drowned town.
______________________________________________________________________________

Unfortunately, my Kindle crashed and I lost the remainder of the book. I’m posting the review through this point pending my repurchasing the book and completing it at some point. Review based on what I’ve read through this point.
______________________________________________________________________________

Last Page Sound:
Ah...dammit. (see above)

Author Assessment:
There are some very well plotted shorts here. Some derivative. A mixed bag. Some of these authors are on my definitely look at again while some are on my meh list.

Editorial Assessment:
Some of the stories left the ending too much up in the air.

Knee Jerk Reaction:
glad I read it

Disposition of Book:
e-Book

Would recommend to:
genre fans
______________________________________________________________________________ ( )

“I’ll go and get someone.” She stood, backed away. Glay made no move to follow her, sat there staring at his scarlet threads, looking lost in the corner of his web, connected to the walls of the office by lines of gossamer. Spider or fly? she thought.
“It won’t help,” he said.
“What won’t help?”
“We’re moving away. The planets are spinning and the stars are moving and we’re moving too, farther and farther away from what we were. The Earth moves around the sun, and the sun moves around the centre of the galaxy, and the galaxy moves within the centre of the universe, wheels within wheels within wheels, all moving and changing and altering as we’re altering. And it’s the universal constants, Rebecca. They’re changing.”
She was at the door. “I’m going to the medical centre. I’ll be back in a bit.”
He didn’t move. Sat there. Looking down at the carpet, the drawing pins pinning the red string to the floor. He muttered something.
“What was that?” she said.
Glay looked up at her. Rebecca had never seen his eyes so sad. “Everything will be different now.”
She walked quickly to fetch the doctor, but Glay was gone when she returned.

I do not expect all short stories to have their endings wrapped up neatly, and that goes double for Cthulhu Mythos stories, but I don't like stories to stop dead with no explanation at all and there were a couple of stories early on that I felt left the reader high and dry. On the other hand, "Ink" handles an enigmatic ending very well, as I found it one of the most powerful stories in the book even though nothing is really explained.

My other favourites are towards the end of the book, where there were a few stories with a lighter, humorous take on the Cthulhu Mythos, and I especially liked "Visiting Rights". I thought it was just going to be about the conflict between the boy's divorced parents with his mother's boyfriend bringing the mythos into the story via his spell book, and it is about that, but everything else that is going on came as a big surprise.

With a themed anthology there is always a risk with that the stories will not be different enough, but Chulhu Lives! is an enjoyable collection with a good variety of stories, some strongly linked to Lovecraft's stories while others were linked more subtly, some frightening, others humorous, stories set at different time periods, and even a couple from the point of view of non-human entities.

My other favourites were "Coding Time", "The Thing in the Printer" and "Highland Air", while "Scritch, Scratch" was also very effective although I can't say I actually liked it due to the forests full of mouldering rat skeletons (what were the council thinking of to get rid of the rat catcher when it should have been obvious he was needed by the huge amount of rats he was catching every day!).

Note: I read an uncorrected proof copy, but the quotation above is taken from the published book, via the sample available on Amazon's Look Inside. ( )