At the Mountains of Madness and Other Weird Tales (Barnes and Noble Edition) by HP Lovecraft

At his best Lovecraft is very very good. This collection was weaker overall than the Call of Cthulhu Barnes and Noble edition. Still, there were some really good stories in here. I think that I prefer a lot of the work that Lovecraft influenced more than the man himself, especially Caitlin R Kiernan, but I’m glad to have a lot more context for those works. And, again, at his best Lovecraft was amazing!

The title novella was one of only two Lovecraft works that I’m certain I had read before this summer. It holds up to a second reading. It is not the same story as The Thing, but you can really see how Carpenter was pulling from this. It’s quite good.

The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath was positioned as the other centerpiece of the collection. It had some really good moments, but it was a real slog at times. I was glad when I realized that it was essentially an unedited first draft. The high points were really high, though. I’m glad to have read it, though, as a reread of Kij Johnson’s novella The Dream Quest of Vellitt Boe will likely make much more sense when I get to a reread of it.

The short stories The Music of Eric Zann and Pickman’s Model were probably my favorite of the bunch.

Recommended.