The Dark Worlds of H. P. Lovecraft, by H. P. Lovecraft.  Narrated by Wayne June.

That is not dead, which can eternal lie,
And in strange aeons, even death may die.-HPL


This is a Kindle Audio Book.  I bought it to test out my new Kindle.  I was very pleased.  All this consists of is two of HPL's most famous stories, The Dunwich Horror, and The Call of C'Thulhu.  They are read by Wayne June, a man with a wonderfully deep resonate voice well suited to reading horror. 

The first story, The Dunwich Horror is my personal favorite among all of HPL's works.  It tells of the strange events in the township of Dunwich that culminated in the fall of 1928, (the same year the story was written.) Up in Dunwich (which is most probably based upon Wilbraham, MA) there are many families who have decayed into decadence and idiocy by inbreeding.  One such family is the Whateleys, old wizard Whateley, and his albino daughter, Lavinia.  When Lavinia bore a son out of wedlock, no one was particularly surprised.  But what did astonish them was the speed with which the child matured.  By the age of ten, he was over seven feet tall, and fully mature, possessing a deep voice, and heavily bearded goatish face.  And while the Whateley's odd purchases of a continuous string of cattle, paid for with ancient gold coins, and their strange rites at the top of Sentinel Hill on the Solstices and Equinoxes, on Beltain, and Samhain, were noted, nothing might have been remarked, if not for Whateley's need to consult a book.

He possessed a copy of the dread Necronomicon, but an incomplete copy of the John Dee English translation.  He needed more exactitude about a particular ritual on page 751, and that is what brought him to the attention of Henry Armitage, and the world.  Henry Armitage was the librarian at Miskatonic University; the closest depository of that horrendous volume to Dunwich, and it was his reluctance to let the repellant Wilbur borrow the book that led to the multitudinous horrors that rocked the village.

While The Dunwich Horror was one of HPL's most commercially successful endeavors it is sometimes discounted as being too "Straight up Good vs. Evil".  I personally think it has that delightful element of cosmic horror, because the Whateley's plans were not rum running, or beating up nuns, or any other malicious act, but merely to usher in the end of the world.  To my mind that is the very essence of the cosmological horror that HPL is known for.  They are not trying to end the world because it is evil and must be cleansed, they are not trying to end the world because they are evil, and they want to see everyone suffer.  They are simply trying to bring back the Old Ones, because they expect to be rewarded for their devotion.  It borrows from much that had gone before; the works of Arthur Machen, particularly the Great God Pan, and the monstrous creature that can't be seen is very reminiscent of Ambrose Bierce's The Damned Thing.

Yet to my mind, he achieves a level of surreal horror the likes of which none of those tales rises.  The image of Wilbur Whateley, diligently trying to complete his researches in time, before the Horror out grew the house, strikes me as the quintessential distillation of desperation.  Like the nuclear power plant workers during a meltdown; can you fix this problem before it's too late?  How do you know if it is too late?  Well, there is an earth-shattering kaboom....

The second story is The Call of C'Thulhu, often called Lovecraft's signature work.  In March, 1925, the stars were right.  Strange things began to happen, and our hero, Francis Wayland Thurston is introduced to two parts of the puzzle.  First, he meets Henry Anthony Wilcox, a young artist, who despite describing himself as "psychically hypersensitive", was a great artist, and as he began to dream of a cyclopean city rising from the sea, inhabited by a monstrous being, his art began to take shape revealing something with aspects of octopus, dragon, and ape.

At the same time, Thurston's uncle, George Gammell Angell, began to correspond with many scholars about the wild visions and madness that had gripped so many primitive peoples and sensitive souls in the world.  Upon his death, in 1926, his papers came into Thurston's hands.  They told of strange rituals observed by degenerate Eskimos, who worshipped a being with a head like an octopus, great dragonish wings, and a massive form.  Their totem of their deity exactly matches the creation in clay by Wilcox.  And there are other tales, particularly of Inspector James Raymond Legrasse.  His tale of supressing a cult in the bayous of Louisiana had disturbingly similar details to the Eskimo tribe, right to the unearthly ruins on the statues, and the strange syllables of their chant; "C'thulu f'taghn, R'lyeh."  For such similarities to appear so far apart, and worldwide...it made for hideous speculation.

But it is when Thurston follows up on a clue that his uncle did not live to pursue that the last piece of the puzzle falls into place, as the adventures of Gustaf Johansen, a Norwegian who had sailed out of Auckland, New Zealand, and what he had discovered in the South Seas...where there should have been no land....

Part of the wonderful joy of this story is it is an archeological puzzle.  Our hero never faces the nameless things that should not be, but instead is driven to desperation, simply because he is the first person who has managed to fit the pieces of the puzzle together.  Most of us are protected by our blind ignorance of the horrors that lurk just outside our perception.  He no longer is.

And he is in real danger because of that knowledge....

It is a delightful case of "Curiosity killed the cat...and let me describe exactly what Curiosity did to poor puss."

Lovecraft is wordy, verbose, and sounds like he had a thesaurus for lunch.  Then again, he has one of the greatest capacities to paint mood with words of any author, especially if those moods are dark, dank, and dreadful.

These are two of his best.  If you want to be introduced to the sheer horror that is H. P. Lovecraft, this is a great gateway vehicle.

This is entered in my Made in the USA Write Off.

This is my first review of a Kindle Book.

The Master of the Macabre: H. P. Lovecraft

The Whisperer In Darkness
The Dark Worlds of H.P. Lovecraft (A Kindle Audible Book)
The Shunned House
The Last Lovecraft: Relic of C'Thulhu
Pickman's Muse
C'thulhu (2000, the bad one.)
Colour from the Dark
Beyond the Wall of Sleep
Dark Adventure Radio Theatre: The Dunwich Horror.
Dark Adventure Radio Theatre: The Shadow Over Innsmouth
Dark Adventure Radio Theatre: At the Mountains of Madness
H.P. Lovecraft Collection III: Out of Mind
H.P. Lovecraft Collection I: Cool Air
Dagon
Die Monster Die!
The Dunwich Horror
From Beyond
C'thulhu
H.P. Lovecraft's Haunt of Horror
The Call of C'Thulhu  (A Masterpiece!)
Dreams in the Witch House

Inspired by the Master's Hand:

The Courtyard by Alan Moore
Hellboy
The Mist
In the Mouth of Madness
Cloverfield

Recommended: Yes