An excellent collection of well executed unsettling tales. There are too many great stories to mention as standouts, and only a couple that fell short of the mark for me. A majority of the stories were subtler and more nuanced than I’d expected or was initially in the mood for, but by the second half of the book I was fully converted. Great storytelling.

I'll admit, at first I was skeptical about the theme of this collection. Autumnal horror is, at heart, about our mortal helplessness to defy the natural rhythms of life and death, whereas I associate Lovecraft with the horror of knowing that the 'natural' world is a tiny, freakish speck adrift in an overwhelmingly alien universe. Yet Mike Davis proved my skepticism unfounded with this well-balanced mix of stories. Autumn Cthulhu is a horror treat that pulls off the trick of being both pleasingly...

One of the better Mythos-related anthologies in recent memory.

A well-rounded collection of stories that move far past Lovecraftian pastiche. Standouts for me include the stories by Gemma Files, Robert Levy, and Laird Barron, and an excellent novella from John Langan. "Anchor" takes up about 20% of the book and is riveting from start to finish. Not just for Lovecraft fans, AUTUMN CTHULHU is a long book showcasing some of the best weird horror writers currently on the scene.

The title of this book is false advertising. This is not a Cthulhu Mythos anthology. As far as I could see, only one single story in the collection refers to the Cthulhu Mythos. (There were several stories I did not finish, so there might be more references I missed.) Most of these stories are not very "cosmic" horror. They are "Lovecraftian" only in the broadest, vaguest sense. These stories are mostly about sadness and loss, especially loss of romantic love - which is not a Lovecraftian topic

It's often difficult to rate a compilation. It is, obviously, a collection of work by different people and as such can be variable in quality. Fundamentally, this is no exception; different work by different people. And that may be why I've taken nearly seven months to get through this; putting it down, picking it up and wandering off to read a few dozen novels between start and finish. That is no criticism though. Compilations are made for the dip in and dip out I think. It would be easy to sta...

I have read a lot of lovecraft/cthulhu short stories. This is one of the best I've read in a long time.

Anthologies are always a mixed bag. I especially enjoyed the stories by Laird Barron, Michael Griffin, John Langan, Trent Kollodge, Richard Gavin, Gemma Files, and Daniel Mills.

John Langan's novella alone is worth acquiring this collection for. Especially for the subtext of the two authors and what one suspects is a little wink-nod to the real life Langan-Barron connection. But there are a few other stories I wish to mention as particularly standing out to me:Cul-De-Sac Virus, by Evan Dicken is like a contemporary suburban Ligotti vibe using the prefabricated house as a portal to otherworldly horror.After the Fall by Jeffrey Thomas has probably the strongest imagery in...

Most stories were not my style. This does not mean they were bad. But I like vague and abstract stories, with a lot of atmosphere, some metaphysics and logically consistent high-strangeness. That is a lot to ask from an author.But there were two stories I liked very much, both by authors previously unknown to me:- After the fall - by Jeffrey Thomas- End of the season - by Trent KollodgeSo at just 5 dollars it's probably still worth the money. Your mileage may vary ...

Autumn is a strange theme for a novel about H.P. Lovecraft's universe. I mean, you can combine Cthulhu with just about anything. Cthulhu has fought the Real Ghostbusters, the Justice League, Godzilla, and a host of other characters once people realized he was public domain. The Mythos has been at the center of Westerns, Space Operas, and even a teenaged romance which parodied Twilight. But autumn? The season? It's a strange combination even as the editor, Mike Davis, explains that autumn is th

A superlative collection of autumnal cosmic horror. To say that John Langan's novella "Anchor", intensely weird and moving in the signature Langan style, is worth the price of admission all by itself isn't to disparage any of the other terrific stories here. There's a great diversity of style, mood, and setting, and plenty of surprises. For my part I particularly enjoyed Gemma Files' "Grave Goods", Richard Gavin's "The Stiles of Palemarsh", Orrin Grey's "The Well and the Wheel", S.P. Miskowski's...

3.5 starsI think the name of this collection is a bit misleading--it is a Lovecraft-inspired collection (kind of... more on that in a bit) but it is NOT a mythos collection. There is much Lovecraftian inspiration here, but little of it is from his cosmic horror stories. I find it strange that some reviews say that there's almost no Lovecraft here, because many of the connections are crystal clear ("The Night is a Sea" - "The Dreams in the Witch House," "The Black Azalea" - "The Colour out of Spa...

In case you fell asleep for the last decade, Lovecraft and the Cthulhu mythos are ascendant. In this golden age, we've seen some of the best Lovecraftian novels and anthologies ever put to print. But that comes with a problem--oversaturation, a flood of more-of-the-same, cut and paste, drivel designed only to capitalize on a phenomenon and make some money. Which is why Autumn Cthulhu is such a pleasant surprise and a resounding success. I'm not going to do that thing where I go through each stor...

You can definitely see some patterns in the stories of the anthology Autumn Cthulhu (edited by Mike Davis). There’s a certain style of horror story where the end feels vaguely… unfinished. There are some good reasons why many horror stories end this way; ending a story before the final moments allows the reader’s imagination to fill in the gaps, and often that can be more horrifying than anything a writer can come up with. However, it can also be a bit of a cop-out: the writer couldn’t quite fig...

I love a good short story collection. Not only am I huge a Lovecraft fan, but I am also a fan of the contemporary Mythos community. I feel today's Mythos writers are stronger than ever; literary and imaginative while also maintaining all of the Lovecraftian tropes we've come to adore. Fans can always count on the editor, Mike Davis, to empower the Lovecraft community with his excellent podcast. Thanks to the Lovecraft eZine podcast I learned about many of the writers who are featured in this gre...

This is a great selection of Lovecraftian tales that just beckons to be read in the halloween month or the later darkening days of late autumn while the chill of the seasonal days carries the scent of drying leaves on the breeze and the light rustle of remaining leaves in the near bare trees.To even try to relate a brief summery of a few of the stories would be a disservice to the reader.Its best to just jup in and read.I Usually take this volume out foor October every year. As i do with several...

And in the autumn of the year, when the winds from the north curse and whine, and the red-leaved trees of the swamp mutter things to one another in the small hours of the morning under the horned waning moon, I sit by the casement and watch that star. — H.P. Lovecraft, Polaris I finally finished this book, which I swore I would read and complete in autumn, as is appropriate for its theme. Autumn Cthulhu is an anthology I backed on Kickstarter a couple of years ago, largely because Laird Barron

Hmmmm... First off, this book has dick-all to do with Lovecraft except for one bizarre story where Nyarlathotep gets revenge for this woman against her rock star ex (I'm serious). Hahaha. Most of the stories in this collection also, for some reason, had something to do with a broken relationship. That's the most un-Lovecraft thing ever. EVER. The description of the book (I guess what's on the back of the book, I don't know, I have the Kindle version) is almost comically dark and serious. The sto...