Some website tells me that H.P. Lovecraft really had very little to do with this book, even though his name is the only one on the cover. Evidently he had the original idea, but then he died, and August Derleth took over and wrote 98% of what eventually got published. Hmm. I don't know what to think about that.

But whoever wrote it, it was pretty good. I was looking for something short but gripping at the library and this fit the bill just fine. Horror without being too incredibly creepy that I couldn't sleep at night. I like the way horror used to be written; methodical, even-keel, deliberate. Edgar Allan Poe had it down. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Bram Stoker's Dracula also are good examples of what I mean. I'm not sure what exactly the problem is with modern horror but it doesn't usually interest me the way these old-school horror authors do. I blame television.

Judging by the titles of other books and stories by H.P. Lovecraft, it might be a while before I read anything else by him and/or August Derleth. There's a whole elaborate mythology of ancient gods that get introduced here and it seems to me like they star in his/their other stories as well. We'll see.

It was a coincidence, by the way, that I was reading this and Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes right about Halloween this year. I don't like Halloween and was not trying to get into the horror spirit of things. It just turned out that way. For the record, I was also reading plenty of other non-horror stuff around Halloween, such as Lost Horizon, The Hobbit and Kon-Tiki. I prefer to think I've been on an adventure kick, not horror. I wouldn't call Ray Bradbury horror anyway, and although you might be justified in classifying H.P. Lovecraft in the horror genre, I feel that he's sufficiently obscure and opaque enough not to fall under Halloween bandwagon material. If I was a Halloween fan looking for a cheap thrill I'd read some Stephen King or Clive Barker.