Maybe we should talk about how this book was super hard to find and that might be because it was kinda crappy.

Not amazing, but easily the best of the 4 Lovecraftian books I've read by Derleth.

While Derleth's preaching and adoration did much to raise Lovecraft on his pedestal, his 'clarification' and contribution to the Cthulhu Mythos might have done as much harm as good. The Trail of Cthulhu has some nice parts, like a follow-up to what became of Innsmouth, and some faux-ethnographic/folklore explorations of Cthulhian (Cthulhean? Cthulhuous?) worship (that is also not quite racist like Lovecraft's, as Derleth focuses exclusively on the Deep Ones to be the Old Ones' agents, rather tha...

I liked it but many chapters were for all intent and purpose copies of each other. Also trying to make the Cthulhu mythos an elemental bases thing doesn't sit well with me. But until I believe that I can write my own I must explore other authors visions of Lovecraft's universe. So happy that I read it but I enjoyedother works more.

Derleth never really understood Lovecraft's mythos, with a cold, unfeeling universe and humanity as an afterthought. But Derleth did understand a derring-do adventure with good guys versus bad guys, and that's exactly what he wrote here. Laban Shrewsbury is probably the only real hero in the Mythos and in him we see the terrible costs of staring into the Void. This book is a treat for all fans of the Cthulhu Mythos.

Derleth's pale, weird imitation of his hero's anti-epics (esp. the decades-ranging Shadow Out of Time) is curious for several reasons, a few of which being: All of the characters are essentially the same; they know about the Cthulhu mythos and yet do not go insane; they speak at length about Cthulhu and only have to escape Deep Ones, who are also easy to identify (frog-fish people? check) and timid. Anywho, still a fun, easy read, for all the other reasons, all typical of HPL's successors (of wh...

THE TRAIL OF CTHULHU is a companion anthology to THE MASK OF CTHULHU and another example of the way in which August Derleth continued the Cthulhu Mythos after the death of Lovecraft. Collected here are five stories from the pages of WEIRD TALES, all of them connected chronologically and containing a recurring figure in the form of Professor Shrewsbury, a man determined to take the fight to Cthulhu and the Deep Ones himself with the aid of various associates.Two of the stories are above average a...

An interesting book in that it can be considered either an episodic novel or a series of linked short stories, tells the typical Derlethian story of Great Old Ones trying to bust out of their confinement and the human beings who struggle to defeat them. Although the theme is heroic, the stories could use a little more action and less exposition. It's also hard not to compare Derleth's fictions to those of Lovecraft he so closely models on, and Derleth's suffer in the process.

This was a fun read for someone who has read a lot of Lovecraft and was looking for an expanded universe. Some die hard Lovecraft fans will be horrified to realize Derleth combines Dagon and Cthulhu. Others will feel a good-evil dynamic erases what made Lovecraft's work so weird and unique. On the other hand it has aspects of adventure that Lovecraft's stories lack. It's main pitfall is it's repetitiveness and a wealth of identical boring characters.

Good adventure stories collection, based on the classic tale "The Shadow over Innsmouth". Derleth develops his Cthulhu fanfiction nicely, although it grows further apart from the original Lovecraft than his previos anthology, "The Mask of Cthulhu". Still, it was enjoyable and entertaining, although not particularly scary.

Derleth embraced Lovecraft's work well and this novel stays true to the Cthulhu mythos.

I've generally avoided August Derleth's Cthulhu work, since what little I'd heard about it indicates that it's not as good as Lovecraft's, and that Derleth is more notable for keeping Lovecraft's works alive than for what he added. When Ken Hite mentioned he liked this book, I figured I'd check it out, especially since the Gumshoe Cthulhu game was named after it. It does definitely have some fun points, and this volume, at least, was lacking much of Lovecraft's crazypants level of racism. Howeve...

Meh... Derleth’s prose is good when it really gets going. The problem here is that these are five short stories published at different times and perhaps not meant to be published together. They do work as a single narrative I suppose, only not in the sense that the stories are all pretty similar. They start out with Professor Shrewsbury telling them their meeting is not coincidence, convincing them to join him on some quest, and then they end with the protagonist (who is practically the same cha...

Once more I haunted Innsmouth - I scratched parchment with a desperate quill - I heard voices in the sea

That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange eons even death may dieAugust Derleth is Lovecraftian, but he doesn't do Lovecraftian horror. His is more an action-adventure tale, with good guys versus evil beings. In the same vein, Derleth writes a direct narrative with a sense of immediacy that doesn't give you the creepy, foreboding sense of doom that Lovecraft can do so well. Does that make him less of a writer? No, that makes him different.

One reads HP Lovecraft and struggles to imagine what kind of person would attempt to reach the same horrifying peaks of literature. With a name that seems to have jumped straight out of one of Lovecraft's novellas, August Derleth takes Lovecraft's wickedly weird beasties out of the box, makes some tweaks and repackages them in a whole new series. This is generally an entertaining read, envisioning a Magnificent 7 scenario wherein various experts on the strange and peculiar team up to stop the fo...

The best thing about this book is the cover by Bruce Pennington. The stories were a disappointment.Most of the stories are appropriated from the original Lovecraft. I expected something original and new with some of the Lovecraft mythology as a background, but I was mistaken.

Really on the nose and reads like fan fiction that misinterprets what makes Lovecraft's original work great, but at the same time there's a lot of genuine enthusiasm in play so it's hard to dislike. I can certainly see how Dertleth's stuff has managed to inspire both hate and a role-playing game.

To start with, I really wanted to enjoy this tale – despite the fact that August Derleth had always written a lesser imitation of Lovecraft’s works and subverted HPL’s Cthulhu Mythos (a term Lovecraft didn’t invent himself) from alien creatures/a universe that were indifferent to mankind to a good guys vs. bad guys God/Satan overture that was as far away from Lovecraft’s concepts as one could go, the basis of this book seemed to promise quite the adventure – a mysterious wizard-like professor, p...

Over-rated writer . . . basically "fan fiction"