Author Archive: NealeMonks
Dungeon Twilight: Vol. 4: The End Of Dungeon by Sear, Trondheim, Alfred and Mazan (graphic novel review).
Diving into a comic-book series with the final collection is probably not the best approach, and to be fair to this book, it is very much about tying up loose ends from the earlier stories. On top of this, the book is very much a European graphic novel rather than one from the English or […]
Creature Feature by Steven Paul Leiva (audio book review).
Set in the early 1960s, ‘Creature Feature’ kicks off in a Chicago TV studio where Kathy Anderson is playing Vivacia the vampire woman. Vivacia is the host of a late night horror movie show, hence the title of the audiobook, and making a fair living that way but, yearning for more challenging roles, she quits […]
Cthulhu: Dark Fantasy, Horror & Supernatural Movies by Gordon Kerr (book review).
From the striking front cover painting of Cthulhu literally eating the world through to the mind-flayer smoking a pipe on page 89, ‘Cthulhu: Dark Fantasy, Horror & Supernatural Movies’ is a richly and sometimes bizarrely illustrated guide to the most famous godlike entity in popular culture. It really is popular culture we’re focusing on here, […]
A Monster Of Voices: Speaking for H.P. Lovecraft by Robert H. Waugh (book review).
When it comes to the deeper criticism of HP Lovecraft, there’s little out there to match Robert H. Waugh. What sets Waugh apart from, say, S T Joshi, is his willingness to explore what Lovecraft’s stories mean, not simply where they came from. It’s this that makes this collection of Waugh’s essays so enjoyable. Take, […]
The Annotated Supernatural Horror In Literature written by HP Lovecraft and edited by ST Joshi (book review)
In 1927, an essay was published in ‘The Recluse’ magazine in which its author, HP Lovecraft, described the development of what we broadly call horror fiction. Over the years, the essay has been accepted as one of the best reviews of the subject, partly because of its terrific breadth, but also because of the insightful […]
Lovecraft Annual #14 (2020) edited by S.T. Joshi (book review).
Each year, the ‘Lovecraft Annual’ collects various essays, reviews and articles by or about H.P. Lovecraft. As such, it’s a heterogenous mix and, while not every piece included will appeal to everybody, there’s bound to be a few pieces that justify the modest price of admission. Certainly, this year’s collection is as varied as ever, […]
The Rise, Fall, And Rise Of The Cthulhu Mythos by S.T. Joshi (book review).
As undoubtedly one of the foremost experts on the life and works of H.P. Lovecraft, S.T. Joshi has a problem with the Cthulhu Mythos. In short, he doesn’t like it. Here’s the problem: Joshi believes that Lovecraft was a writer of great intelligence and philosophical depth, who through his short stories and novellas explored what […]
Collected Essays Volume 3: Science by H.P. Lovecraft edited by S.T. Joshi (book review).
One of the things that isn’t well known about H.P. Lovecraft is that the first thing he ever had published wasn’t a story or even a poem but a letter to the editor of the ‘Providence Sunday Journal’ pointing out the scientific impossibility of the ‘transit of Mars’ that had been described by an astrologer […]
The King In Yellow by Robert W Chambers and illustrated by I.N.J. Culbard (graphic novel review).
The original ‘The King In Yellow’ was published in 1895 as a collection of ten short stories, of which the first four are loosely connected examples of weird fiction. They share a number of motifs, including references to a play, the eponymous ‘The King In Yellow’, that causes anyone to read the second act to […]
Dune: The Duke Of Caladan (The Caladan Trilogy book 1) by Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson (book review).
To paraphrase Liet-Kynes, ‘Against all better judgement, I liked book.’ Put another way, there’s a fair deal of antipathy directed at Messrs Herbert and Anderson for the way they’ve plundered Herbert Sr’s universe for the material needed to pump out, on a literally industrial scale, one pot-boiler scifi novel after another. Where the original ‘Dune’ […]
