Author Archive: NealeMonks
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’ […]
The Ankh-Morpork Archives by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Briggs (book review).
If you’ve ever read one of those books about some exotic country filled with photos and essays about the lives of the people living there, you’ll have some idea of what ‘The Ankh-Morpork Archives’ is all about. The central conceit, if you will, is that the inhabitants of the city of Ankh-Morpork are worth reading […]
The Case Of Charles Dexter Ward by H.P. Lovecraft and illustrated by I.N.J. Culbard (graphic novel review).
Alongside the simultaneous re-releases of ‘The Dream Quest Of Unknown Kadath’ and ‘The Shadow Out Of Time’, SelfMadeHero have republished another of the I.N.J. Culbard graphic novels in a slightly smaller paperback format. Again, the adaptation is basically sound but having read through all three of them now, the quirks, if not quite limitations, of […]
The Dream-Quest Of Unknown Kadath by H.P. Lovecraft and illustrated by I.N.J. Culbard (graphic novel review).
Because ‘The Dream-Quest Of Unknown Kadath’ was never finished in his lifetime, many fans of H.P. Lovecraft have tended to pass over this novella in favour of his more polished and accessible works. In doing so, they miss out on some of Lovecraft’s most intense imagery and exotic ideas. It tells the story of a […]
The Shadow Out Of Time by H.P. Lovecraft and illustrated by I.N.J. Culbard (book review).
One of Lovecraft’s final works, ‘The Shadow Out Of Time’ is widely considered a masterpiece of the genre. It tells the story of an economics professor, Nathaniel Peaslee, trying to reconstruct the missing years of his life of which he has no memory. Half-way through giving a lecture in 1908 he passed out and, so […]
