The Dreams in the Witch House and Other Weird Stories

Rating:
Summary: Third Collection
Review:
Having read the two previous collections it was a logical step to go on and get the third (and apparently final)one. So what to expect with this book? Some really good stuff and some really bad stuff (my opinion).

Various kinds of stories are gathered here, as was the case with the previous publications by Penguin; that is, there are some "macabre tales", "dreams and fantasies tales" and some "Great Old Ones tales".

"Polaris", the first story, really gave me a bad impression. It's a short piece but its worthiness is just as short. The second tale is not great either. Fortunately this goes up with the third "The Terrible Old Man," though it's nothing properly astounding.

One of the biggest stories in this collection (100 pages or so), namely "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath" is the only Lovecraft story I did not finish after having started it. But this one is just too much. It's a dream tale, lots of beautiful imagery with flowery descriptions, weird names of people and towns and god knows what else, etc... etc... The problem is that its length is way too much for a tale of that kind. The fact that it's all a dream completely kills any kind of suspence or tension or expections: in a world where cats can jump off roofs to go behind the moon to gather is a world where you expect absolutely anything. And that's where the weak spot is. If anything can happen then you're just expecting anything and whatever happens is not surprising. So that is not your usual Lovecraft story; but I expect some readers may like that kind of thing; it's not bad it's just so incredibly long that in the end the potential power of such a tale is flattened entirely because of its unfit length and crowding stuff. I only read half of it but after that my interest was so lacking that I just found it useless to go, besides I had lost the thread of what was going on.

I would say this collection is slightly weaker than the two first ones. It's still worth getting if you like Lovecraft. I was just a bit disappointed by some stories in there that are really weak. Yet there are also some good surprises: "The Nameless City", a kind of pre-At the Mountains of Madness is a very interesting story; "In the Vault", however simple and classical it is, still is a pretty good tale.

I'd recommend you check out "The Call of Cthulhu" if you have never read any Lovecraft before and are interested in doing so. Otherwise this book is worth getting (even if some tales do suck).

PS: the footnotes and individual presentations on each story is as always very interesting and informative.