An uneventful weekend

I don't usually read so-called Lovecraftian horror, but I admit that these tales were pretty entertaining. Well, after a fashion! The tentacled horror Cthulhu and his evil eldritch cousins are, of course, creations of H P Lovecraft. Robert Howard was a friend of Lovecraft, and the works of the two authors contain frequent crossovers. Howard is otherwise mostly known for his sword-and-sorcery tales about Conan the Barbarian.

“Tales of Cthulhu” contain five short stories. Most of them are pretty similar in outline. A scientist or explorer comes across a copy of the Black Book by one Von Junzt, who went mad and slit his own throat while writing it. The book's bizarre tales of Satanic cults turn out to be true. The brave researcher travels to Transylvania or some other outlandish place, is confronted by various horrid paranormal happenings, and gets a short glimpse of the monster behind it all. The monstrosities worshipped by the Satanists are presumably distant relations of Lovecraft's Cthulhu. They belong to the Great Old Ones, evil gods from another world who firmly believe that Earth belongs to them and that man must perish as a result.

Only one story deviates from this general plot. “The Challenge from Beyond” (co-authored by Howard, Lovecraft and three other writers) is a tale of an alien abduction, but ends with an unexpected twist. “The Children of the Night” is also relatively interesting, being inspired by troll lore and Howard's own Conan stories. One of the gods mentioned in this story is called Il-marinen, after a character in the Finnish national epic Kalevala.

Although I probably won't re-read these tales any time soon, I will give them three stars for getting me through an otherwise uneventful weekend. My main problem with this Kindle edition is that it contains frequent spelling errors, and at one point several paragraphs seem to have mysteriously vanished…

Perhaps that was to be expected? Mu-ha-ha-ha!