A decent collection of short Lovecraftian fictions that, at times, couldn't captivate my interest or imagination. I felt a majority of the stories in this anthology just felt flat, and weren't indicative of the Lovecraftian universe. That being said, I still liked the book, and the stories were edited well, if not curated a bit poorly. Your mileage may vary.

Another Lovecraftian anthology I picked up for $1 at a Dollar Tree (sadly, they did not have volume 1) . . . as with most anthologies, it's a little hit-or-miss, but far more hits than misses. There are some really enjoyable and wonderfully creepy stories in this one. I enjoyed it.

A collection of really excellent disturbing short stories, some of them directly linked to Lovecraftian tropes and references, but most of them just saturated with the atmosphere, but original. These are all quality stories and not pastiches or 'tribute' stories.

I read this a bit ago, during the proofing stage. Once again, Joshi proves why he is the master of recognizing the weird in modern literature. Do yourself a favor and pick up this book!

Lovely collection of Lovecraftian stories.

Most anthologies are hit and miss. Sadly, I skipped along through this one as a good deal of it just didn't catch my fancy. I'm admittedly a fan of Lovecraft specifically and not horror generally. It's not fair of me to demand Lovecraft knock-offs from authors, but when things stray too far outside the Cthulhu Mythos I start losing interest. I was disappointed at the fact that several stories included in this lacked a Lovecraftian feel, in my opinion, which really undercuts an anthology with "Lo...

Anthologies are always a mixed bag, and this one is a mix of good stuff and great stuff. Of all of the Lovecraftian collections, these two books would be the ones I would recommend to people wanting to know what the adjective "Lovecraftian" should mean.

This book is a great read!

I received this book from a Goodreads giveaway to read and review. When I seen this collection was being edited by S.T. Joshi I was rather excited and had really high hopes for the quality of tales to be read, what I got was rather middle of the road. I felt that he would of been better able to piece together a solid book of stories than he did. With that being said, it is true every story can't be perfect, especially with such a diverse bunch of writers, and there are some really solid stories

S.T. Joshi is a double-edged sword. On one hand, his standards for what even qualifies as mythos fiction, let alone good Mythos fiction, make him seem like a real literary curmudgeon. This is the guy who won’t even give interviews if any of the questions are about Lovecraft’s racism.On the other hand, his very high standards means that when he compiles an edition of mythos stories, the quality of all of them is very high. This is a great collection.

A few good stories, a few meh

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There are a few good stories in here definitely interesting and well worth reading, with twists I didn’t see coming, —- but they weren’t many.

As previous collection, this books offers stories inspired by legacy of H.P.Lovecraft. And as in most collections, quality varies. There are some good ones and some forgettable ones. Some of them are using verified motives of old artefacts, ancient ruins and evil gods and they are able to bring up that old school horror atmosphere. Other are more experimental and sometimes you are not sure what is actually happening - same as in some HPL stories.

Embryonic Lovecraft geek that I am, it was high time I tried one of the billion or so Cthulhu anthologies on the market and Black Wings of Cthulhu 2 happened to be the first to hand. Here we have eighteen authors with as many stories and as many radically varied interpretations of what it means to be ‘Lovecraftian’. The commonality here is certainly thematic rather than stylistic.Some take it quite literally by openly discussing the author – to the extent that two stories feature characters chan...

This collection of short stories are not all based on the style of HP Lovecraft, but more in the tradition of spooky/eerie tales that Lovecraft explored. In other words, it is sometimes said "Lovecraft never met and adjective he didn't like." The writes of these 18 shorts do not try to mimic his writing style, but used Lovecraft's themes to create unique, updated stories based on Lovecraft (the man) , the region (New England), and themes.I bought this book for $1.00, and got far better stories t...

Like the first volume of Lovecraftian short horror stories this second entry in the "Black Wings of Cthulhu" was a mixture, some stories closer to Lovecraft's style and others not so much. All stories covered a take on a dive into madness for the main protagonists. There was one story IMHO, 'The Wilcox Remainder' by Brian Evenson, that I would have added something extra to the ending to make it even more creepy. The story that stayed with me the most was 'The Skinless Face' by Donald Tyson. Thou...

I could only give it three stars. Too many weak stories to offset the good and mediocre. It becomes difficult for authors once confined to a sub-genre to really excel. There are just too many Cthulhu books out now, it's almost like zombie fare, there just cannot be that many good stories in a sub-genre like this. I'll stick to Laird barron and Caitlin Kiernan. My favorite was actually the Jason Brock story.

There are some outstanding stories here but the overall standard is slightly uneven.http://opionator.wordpress.com/2012/1...

This fine collection of stories covers a good range of Lovecraftian themes, from the horrors of the cosmos to those of the backwoods. As might be expected, a good deal of intertextual references and metanarrative commentary play out, none better than Rick Dakan's "Correlated Discontents." The creepiest stories are Steve Rasnic Tem's "Waiting at the Crossroads Motel," Donald Tyson's "The Skinless Face," and John Langan's "Bloom." The best stories in the collection, with their mix of weird humor,