No one does Lovecraft like Lovecraft, alas. But since I've pretty much exhausted that well, I gave this a try. The stories get better as they go along -- these were written over a considerable timespan and you can see Derleth improve as a storyteller and prose stylist from piece to piece -- but he never quite gets the Lovecraftian atmosphere right. Partly, I think, it's because he's an over-explainer. Lovecraft's narrators stumble on ancient horrors and don't really know anything about them, but...

I know that modern fans of Lovecraft owe a lot to Derleth, but let's be honest. This is boring, repetitive crap.

Everyone knows who is HP Lovecraft.Every one knows who is Edgar Allan Poe. Don't you? Poe and Lovecraft are the masters of horror. They are what other writers read and judge. I don't think that there aren't any like him. I enjoy reading Ligotti but he is too unknown. It's hard as hell to get a book by him. Of course Stephen King is the one who should sit nowadays at the throne vacant since Lovecraft removed Poe. But even Stephen King doesn't write the same way as Lovecraft. Even Derleth his prot...

A collection of Lovecraftian short stories by editor supremo August Derleth that seek to build on the Cthulhu Mythos in various ways. The general consensus among Lovecraft scholars is that these are a load of tosh, and while Derleth is indeed the inferior author, I think they're a lot of fun. The stories are as follows:THE RETURN OF HASTUR - a man moves into the home of a deceased relative and uncovers a mysterious, water-filled subterranean tunnel and a library of ancient, evil texts. Business

A bit repetitive and formulaic as some others have said but its enjoyable like a lower budget version of something I enjoy (Lovecraft). A few stories werent bad and there were some good moments.

August Derleth saw himself as H.P. Lovecraft's natural heir, weaving his stories into the Cthulhu Mythos and incorporating the 'dreadful events in Innsmouth' and other incidents from the original corpus. At one moment, he suggests, in a fit of in-joke paranoia, that Lovecraft and others died young because they knew too much - a nice little conceit.He has been much and rightly criticised on two grounds - for being derivative but, more seriously, for attenuating the raw cosmic horror of the origin...

Not a review, but more my notes and thoughts as I read each story."The Return of Hastur" - "He Who Is Not To Be Named""The Whipporwills in the Hills" - The human body and mind can tolerate only so much before oblivion comes, and with oblivion that night came a dream-structure of unutterable power and terror. I dreamed I was in a far place, a place of vast monolithic buildings, inhabited not by men, but by beings apart from the wildest imagination of men, a land of great unknown tree ferns, of Ca...

A quick run down of every story in this collection:I arrive at the house of some long dead/estranged/missing relative. The neighbours hate and fear the house, and don't trust me. When I poke around, I find the secret occult library with every book H.P. Lovecraft ever mentioned in his stories. Somebody/something dies, and all eyes turn to me. I know not why.I have dreams about Cthulhu.When I awaken, I find those dreams are real!!!!The end.Maybe I should have written ***SPOILER ALERT!!!*** across

2.5 stars

The common criticisms of August Derleth are completely valid, in my opinion. The stories in this collection are not terrible, but they come up short compared to the original Lovecraft stories that inspired them. Derleth seems to have written them with a checklist, because the same plot points recur over and over. "The Seal of R'lyeh" is less formulaic, and the best of the collection. In general, the stories are not very scary or creepy. Derleth's conception of the Mythos tends toward pulp-style

I don't despise Derleth the way some Lovecraft fans seem to, and I've read one or two of his Mythos stories that were quite good in my opinion. However, this collection of short stories seemed more like fan fiction and were highly repetitive in their name dropping and plot structure. I don't regret reading it, but it's not one I would rush back to re-read.

Very repetitive, you can tell these stories were written for individual consumption. The House in the Valley is really atmospheric and presents the narrator as being caught between a human threat and the cosmic terror beneath the house.

Yeah, yeah, I know, minds says that this is four stars maximum. But I was so, so happy to read new creepy stories about Cthulhu that managed to ignore that retcons which Derlecht did to Lovecraft's original creation. You know, Lovecraft's works give you an itching from the teases of cosmic horrors and ancient mysteries. Derleht give you the opportunity to scratch that itching. For that, he deserves five stars!

so derleth is clearly not lovecraft, but i still mostly enjoyed reading these stories..i don't really remember the first few all that well, as he tends to use the same story structure in each one..they all kinda blend together. However, The House In The Valley and The Seal of R'yleh both deviate enough from the formula to be compelling additions to the HPL mythos.

Six Cthulhu mythos stories by August Derleth, and they aren't bad. Probably includes the best ones he did in the mythos. Includes "The Whippoorwills in the Hills," and "The Return of Hastur."Pretty good stuff.

A collection of Cthulhu mythos stories not quite the caliber of Lovecraft's writing but still enjoyable if you like Lovecraft's work.

Perhaps the original successor to Lovecraft this tale perfectly captures the dark sense of foreboding as the existential dread begins to set in.

A slightly strange but by no means terrible pastiche of Lovecraft with a bit too much of Cthulhu coming from behind every door and having them casually slammed in his face.

Derleth is Derleth, and I get why a lot of people dislike his take on the mythos. But I found these stories to be a ton of fun, pastiche and all!Diving into the Trail of Cthulhu next.

Mediocre pastiches can potentially be impressive to new readers, but if you're familiar with the pastiched author's style you begin to see that this is not art, and the reader can perhaps visualise the author flicking through a Lovecraft story as he writes, cribbing arbitrarily an unintentional parody of that great author's style to create a jumble of gibberish purely for commercial purposes...but wait?I can hear the piping of the whippoorwills outside and the gelatinous footsteps on the boards