If this seems like a negative review, it is only because I had very high hopes for this novel. It is less of a novel and more of a thinly veiled act of trolling that takes potshots at members of the Lovecraftian lit scene. This is my third time reading a Mamatas novel and I think my problem with it is it seems a little below those books. When I read Bullettime and Love is the Law I was impressed and felt like I was reading works of genius.I enjoyed I Am Providence, but it seems like an idea hatc...

4 of 5 stars at The BiblioSanctum https://bibliosanctum.com/2016/08/02/...Looks like 2016 is shaping up to be another pretty busy year for Lovecraftian horror or Lovecraft-inspired fiction, with even more titles set to hit shelves later this summer and in the fall. If you read only one this year though, I highly recommend making it I Am Providence by Nick Mamatas. I found this part murder mystery, part dark comedy, and part fandom commentary delightfully odd and cheeky! While it doesn’t exactly

There's a scene near the middle of I Am Providence where supporting character R. G. Gonzalez (based on Canadian weird fiction author Silvia Moreno-Garcia) rescues demi-protagonist Colleen Danzig (based on Colorado weird fiction author Molly Tanzer) from the Providence, RI police station. With Gonzalez behind the handlebars of a motorcycle and Danzig in the sidecar, I Am Providence briefly feels like it might become something special and soaring, a Mad Max: Fury Road moment in which two formidabl...

My fondness for Lovecraft and Lovecraft-inspired fiction is not exactly a secret, but I am often amused and baffled by the level to which his work and the man himself, almost as a character, have become part of pop and geek culture. I often wonder what he would think, for instance, of the fact that a couple of (genius) weirdoes decided to Kickstart a recipe book called the “Necronomnomnom” (yes, I totally backed it), or that some hipsters worship his stories so much they decide to get his portra...

I paid 16 dollars for this?So I'll start with what's good about the book. It has a great premise. It has a great title. And the cover design is fantastic. All these added up to a book I was extremely excited to read.Now the bad. The book didn't live up to any of it. The premise was undone by unlikeable and uninteresting characters. The title, which sounded so profound, promised an element of the epic or supernatural that is entirely absent from the story. And while the cover looked fantastic wit...

I'm not even sure where to start with this one. Normally I don't do scathing reviews, because being a writer is tough and I'm not into kicking puppies to make myself look smart, but still... This book got on my nerves more than anything I've read in years. A certain kind of reader is going to love it, but a lot of people will hate it, and the distinction lies somewhere along this reasoning fault line:"Oh, I am SO tolerant of all races, gender preferences, beliefs, and cultures... I am just so 'w...

In this novel, cliches are the order of the day and hackneyed prose rules the night. The protagonist is poorly composed and one is not sure whether to laugh or laugh harder at her.The narrative is flat, without contrast, without authority and out of luck. This author is devoid of energy and that is why this work barely exists in the hands, blink once...gone.Chris Roberts

I AM PROVIDENCE is a book that I feel would really appeal to Lovecraft fans. I can imagine that this book would be a bit confusing to people with not much knowledge about Lovecraft's books. You do get information about Lovecraft, the man, and his books in the story. Especially about the Elder God Cthulhu, who will bring the end to humanity when summoned. And, yes there are those in the book that wants that.READ THE REST OF THE REVIEW OVER AT FRESH FICTION!

When a writer is murdered at the Summer Tentacular, the annual Providence-based HP Lovecraft convention, Colleen Danzig plumbs the depths of the assembled fandom to find his killer. Can she stay alive long enough to find the murderer?I Am Providence is a murder mystery set at an HP Lovecraft convention. It shows the dark underbelly of fandom, putting the fans under the microscope.Colleen Danzig, the plucky heroine, goes through quite a bit of hell over the course of the book, both in her sleuthi...

I'm having trouble writing a review for this book without making people mad or giving people the wrong idea about myself.This book is supposedly about Colleen Danzig a writer who goes to a HP Lovecraft convention and gets more than she bargains for when her roommate for the convention turns up dead.Ugh, ok here we go.... 😩First off, I really do not care for the writing style. This book is written with two different points of view, one in first person the other in third person, and it bounces bac...

Two Lovecraftian writers at a Lovecraftian conference become roommates. One of them is murdered and partially skinned. The other tries to solve the mystery of who murdered him. They both snark over the other attendees. One of them is dead and can't stop snarking over the other attendees.This was a complex book to read, partially I think because the marketing was so weird. This isn't a horror novel, but a mystery--a dark cozy. There are a limited number of suspects, the gory violence (oddly) tend...

Review copyI can't say I read a lot of Nick Mamatas, but what I have read, I've certainly enjoyed. Nick's most recent work is dissimilar from anything I've read before. Set at the fictional, annual Summer Tentacular, "Providence's premiere literary conference about pulp-writer, racist, and weirdo Howard Philips Lovecraft," the book is an inside look at the craziness such an event would give rise to.The attendees at said conference seem to be based on a combination of real writers and an amalgama...

Review: I AM PROVIDENCE by Nick MamatasAuthor H. P. Lovecraft' s headstone epitaph reads "I am Providence." Certainly he is that for his subset of fans. Come witness the antics, tragedies, and utter sneakiness and ego-posturing on display throughout the "Summer Tentacular," the annual fan convention held in Providence for writers, readers, fanzine publishers, and dealers in Lovecraft Mythos memorabilia. I learned much about Lovecraft' s fiction and life while following the convolutions of the mu...

Nick Mamatas, if you've read his blog posts and other social media commentary, seems to have a love/hate relationship with Lovecraft and Lovecraft fandom (and fandom in general); an affectionate regard for the old WASPy racist's squamous prose and cyclopean imagination (yes, I know I'm misusing those words) while being fully, critically aware of his faults. And he takes the same attitude towards Lovecraft's fandom, though with perhaps not quite as much affection.I Am Providence reminded me quite...

I was not sure what to expect with this book, as I had heard a lot of hype about it on various podcasts and internet circles prior to the book's release. Although I appreciated the insiders experience and humor of some of the ridiculousness that goes on at a genre convention, the constant poking fun of nearly everyone that was not 100% politically correct got old very quickly, and more than a little annoying. The writing, technically, was solid and the scenes and chapters flowed nicely into the

Is it too much to ask for a good modern novel that incorporates Lovecraft and his mythos into it? Carter & Lovecraft wasn't it, and this certainly wasn't it.The book began brightly and I had high hopes, but none of the characters are well rounded, particularly the protagonist, and after a few pages the constant standing around talking about their fiction and asking who murdered the dead guy, etc, got very old and tiresome. The novel moves at a snail's pace and nothing of particular note or excit...

This will teach me not to rush to read Lovecraftian-sounding books. In short: I hated it.The book cover is great, though. The premise is interesting, but the book gets worse as you go along. And the resolution is embarrassing at best.The story features one of the worst female characters I've come across. Ever. God, I was sick of her self-righteous and dumb behaviour. She sees every single flaw in other people but misses her own. It got so bad, I wished someone would just kill her. She stumbles a...

When I first became an internet reviewer on my website, THE UNITED FEDERATION OF CHARLES, I had one simple rule: don't review stuff you hate. It was something of a self-imposed rule because there was a temptation to exaggerate the negatives for publicity. A negative review inherently got more interest than a positive review--it was just one of those rules. I didn't want to be unfair, though, or crush another author's dreams. Besides, if I hated something then wasn't contributing to its obscurity...

Panossian was dead, to begin with.Panos Panossian, esteemed (well, self-esteemed) writer of the literary pastiche The Catcher in R'lyeh (bwah-ha-ha), has been murdered, in fact, and rather gruesomely at that: (view spoiler)[the skin of his face sliced off cleanly and gone missing, most likely taken for necromantic purposes (hide spoiler)]. He's laid out cold in a drawer in the morgue in downtown Providence, Rhode Island—H.P. Lovecraft's old slithering grounds. The scene of the crime was the Hote...

Nick Mamatas, who I know and once upon a time had actual face time with will be glad to tell you that the writer's life is not a glamorous one. And that's the underpinning theme of his novel I Am Providence, a title inspired by one of the least glamorous of writers of his time. Of course of our time the publishing world has realized that there are many nerds and geeks they can sell repackaged versions of the old horror geek H.P. Lovecraft's writing to, as well as pastiches of/homages to same by