Mieville doing Cthulhu? Sold.

The creativity of these authors expanding on Lovecraft's mythos is extremely cool. This anthology brought together some well known authors and introduced others that I'm looking forward to reading their works. No, I didn't love every story, but all in all a great read, so long as you are familiar with the mythos.

In the introduction to this book, the editor quotes a statement from China Miéville's intro to Lovecraft's The Mountains of Madness: The Definitive Edition, where he notes the following: "Traditional genre horror is concerned with the irruption of dreadful forces into a comforting status quo -- one which the protagonist scrambles to preserve. By contrast, Lovecraft's horror is not one of intrusion, but of realization. The world has always been impeccably bleak; the horror lies in us acknowledgin...

What a hoot! Being a fan of Lovecraft, I can easily submerge myself in the murky depths of his stories. But there comes a time when you have read it all to death. I have read a few works that are based in the Cthulhu Mythos but it is great when you get a collection like this, written by some of the best authors of the modern weird-horror genre.New Cthulhu is a collection of short stories all based in the Lovecraftian Mythos. Some are a-typical horror inspired directly. Some are modern socio-poli...

New Cthulhu: the Recent Weird boasts a mostly stellar array of stories for fans of the Lovecraftian weird. Some require fluency in the master's work; for example "Pickman's Other Model (1929)," by Caitlin R. Kiernan is a sequel and picks up very shortly after the events of the original (one of my favorites, incidentally), and several others play explicitly in the fields of the Elder Gods, so some familiarity with the pantheon helps. (As does Paula Guran's skillful and cogent introduction, which

I’ve read a few other Cthulhu compilations and this one is by far the best.Stories by Gaiman, Bear, and Stross are standouts.Btw the Bear story is a retread from about 2009. I say this bc I read it back then in the Dozois yearly best of sci fi compilation.And definitely to brag, I remembered the story after just a few pages. I goggled it to make sure.

No one can deny that HP Lovecraft is one of the most influential horror authors of all time. In his works he created a new view of the universe, one filled with the unnerving and the strange, a view of the universe where humanity is insignificant in the face of vast incomprehensible forces, a universe which many many horror authors base their works from to this day. This latest short story collection, New Cthulhu: The Recent Weird is a collection containing 26 works written after the year 2000,

New Cthulhu: The Recent Weird is a collection of almost 30 short stories of current authors take on Cthulhu mythos. My reason for reading it was interest in how the work of Lovecraft and his contemporaries can be used in modern storytelling. This collection was an excellent tool for this purpose, as the settings and themes used in the stories had great variation.Reading the collection took long time and it is impossible for me to review each story. The strongest ones were Pickman's Other Model b...

I was really excited when I ordered this book and as a Lovecraft fan I expected a lot from it. I didn't get my money's worth though. For me the most distinct problem was the inability of the stories to make me feel this uncertainty and fear of the unknown that make HPL's stories unique. Some stories were exactly the opposite and felt more like B-movies rather than Lovecraftian tales. The best examples are "Bad sushi" (a guy armed with knives conforting a tentacled monster) and "Lesser demons" (a...

Umm this was amazing!? I originally planned to reread Lovecraft's whole body of work this year, and while that's been cool, and his personal cosmology is like no other, it has been a little repetitive. You can't fault a writer for that when you are reading literally everything they've ever written, much like you can't fault him for the latent racism & xenophobia that laces most of his works (but honestly, you know what, I can, HP sucked as a person). I loved loved loved that this anthology only

neil gaiman's entry is the best, and all of the others are at least decent.i'm glad i read it, but goodness -- the slovenly devotion to lovecraft is the least interesting, while the stories which range far afield are the most interesting.

As someone whose read scores (100+?) of Mythos fiction collections, this is one of the best ones I've ever come across. A few of the stories were rather weak (as is invariably the case), but the best stories were real stand-outs, including "Fair Exchange" by Michael Marshall Smith, "The Oram County Whoosit" by Steve Duffy, "The Disciple" by David Barr Kirtley, "Details" by China Mieville, "A Colder War" by Charles Stross, and certainly one of the very finest (possibly even THE finest) piece of n...

I was looking forward to reading this collection, it proved to be mightier than I initially thought but overall I think it was deserving of 3.5 stars.  It's good, but not great.  As in every H.P.L. Collection, there are gems and there are duds, here is my quick description of all storiesPickman's other model:  So-so. Kind of a boring start for a collection.Fair exchange:  So-so. As a few other stories, seems out of place for me (not "Lovecraftian" enough?)Mr. Gaunt:  Very good. One of my favorit...

A good collection of stories I really enjoyed most of these; oddly, the story that led me to this book left me rather cold. This was a good sample of weird fiction.

H P Lovecraft fest. Don't know what the Ood is doing on the front though. I'm sure all will be revealedOh my. I don't think I'm ready for this much literary and sci-fi geekery.This book of short stories were all "after" HP Lovecraft. And it is obvious that all the authors have a great affection for his writing. Unfortunately, I also now think that some of them need to get out more.Depending on the story my rating ranged from 1 to 3 stars.What I now know is that I don't want to read any Lovecraft...

The vast majority of these stories are fine, with a smattering of good here and there; it almost didn't warrant a review. But there's a couple of shorts in here that should be sought out, even if you don't want to read the rest.A Study in Emerald, by Neil Gaiman - I'm usually left entirely cold by Gaiman, but this is truly excellent. He pulls Lovecraft and Holmes together into a story that becomes so much more than the sum of it's parts - and managed to surprise me. She was called Victoria, beca...

A collection of recent Mythos fiction by divers hands. I will give an overall review when I am finished, but I will also add smaller reviews of each of the stories as I read them.Too long didn't read review: All told, an average anthology that succeeds very well in one thing; collecting new lovecraftian and weird short stories. There have been several of these anthologies in the past two decades and editor Paula Guran has does a decent job of scouring them for the gems.That said, the quality of

This is an incredibly extensive anthology, raging from the good, to the really good, to the just excellent. Some of the stories I read once; others have stuck post-it notes in my mind to be rereaders. One such is Caitlin Kiernan’s incredible knock-out offering, “Pickman’s Other Model (1929).” Wow! In my mind, essence of Lovecraftian. But don’t stop with that, even if it is the first offering in the anthology. There are many: “The Dude Who Collected Lovecraft” is both in the spirit of the Master,...

Enjoyed this collection and had a chance to read several pieces that I had missed over the years, some of them quite good. Editor Paula Guran definitely cherry-picked several stories which were important to establishing certain men and women as "Mythos Writers" of note, even if they mostly write other things.Just a few personal notes on the TOC so that I can remember lately what I've read.“Pickman’s Other Model (1929)” by Caitlin Kiernan - A friend of a friend tracks down a woman who was represe...

This dire tome avoids the pitfalls of being squamous, rugose and antediluvian. That is because the anthologist succeeds brilliantly at reaching her announced goal of presenting a collection of stories that capture essential Lovecraftian themes in modern language and idiom. Absent are tired efforts to immitate Lovecraft's purple prose (though memorable it was), or to perpetuate outdated hints of bigotry. What is kept are Lovecraft's fictional New England, his eldrich beings and forbidden tomes, a...