Young Writers Society

Well, this was my first introduction into the world of H.P. Lovecraft, and I have to say I am mightily impressed. H.P. Lovecrafts writting is, well, weird and it took a while for me to get used to it. But once I was, I was hooked. THis anthology includes "The rats in the walls," "the picture in the house," "the outsider," "pickmann's model," "In the vault," "the silver key," "the music of erich zann," "the call of cthulhu," "the dunwich horror," "the whisperer in the darkness," "the colour out of space," "the haunter of the dark," "the thing on the doorstep," "the shadow over innsmouth," "the dreams in the witch-house," and "the shadow out of time."

Lovecrafts writting style is very unique. He uses old english spellings (i think he does, maybe its british) such as gaol. He also uses a lot of a lot of words that are found nowhere else except possibly the dictionary. An example of this is the classis "eldritch" which he uses a ton. He writes a lot of description in some of his stories, but it often comes off somewhat vague because of his odd writing style. Dialogue is practicaly nonexistant in his stories. The characters themselves are flat, and have very little development. But despite these apparant flaws lovecraft is absolutely great. This is because of many of his positive writing styles. He often encorporates letters into his work, which add some diversity to the stories. He writes strange rambling philosophical paragraphs, and while they might be annoying, they add to they atmosphere of his tales. But the thing I like most about lovecrafts writing is his presence of science. Many of his stories have unbelievable horrors, which lovecraft explains through science, not random mystical power (although he sometimes uses this). He also created a science-fiction world, the world now called the Cthulhu Mythos. I won't go into detail about this, since I am not very educated in the matter myself. Its a world filled with monstrous alien lifeforms, evil books and evil cults, and many horror stories of his take place in this world.

Anyways, I thought this book was really good, despite lovecrafts overwritting and odd style.