{"id":557,"date":"2011-04-25T09:00:43","date_gmt":"2011-04-25T16:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theunspeakableoath.com\/home\/?p=557"},"modified":"2011-04-23T15:47:20","modified_gmt":"2011-04-23T22:47:20","slug":"black-wings-new-tales-of-lovecraftian-horror-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/theunspeakableoath.com\/home\/2011\/04\/black-wings-new-tales-of-lovecraftian-horror-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Black Wings: New Tales of Lovecraftian Horror (review)"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\"Black<\/a>

Black Wings, from PS Publishing<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Black Wings: New Tales of Lovecraftian Horror<\/strong><\/em>
\nPS Publishing, $40.00<\/strong>
\nEdited by S. T. Joshi<\/strong>
\nReviewed by Brian M. Sammons<\/strong> <\/p>\n

There is nothing more icky, awe-inspiring, mind-blowing or disturbing than a good Lovecraftian tale. Luckily for all of us Cthulhuheads, Black Wings<\/a><\/em>, a collection of authors playing in the huge, lantern-jawed shadow cast by Uncle Howard, was headed up by S. T. Joshi, a man who has chronicled the life and works of HPL for years. If anyone knows what it takes to make a good Lovecraftian story, it\u2019s got to be Joshi, and he proves it with this anthology of twenty-one terror tales wrapped up in a beautiful, hefty tome with Big Daddy C proudly displayed on the front.<\/p>\n

Black Wings<\/em> runs the gamut from pastiches to \u201csort of\u201d sequels of some of HPL\u2019s stories, plus tales that use the feel and flavor of Lovecraft as seasoning for their own well-cooked nightmares. Oddly enough, whatever their take, all of these stories work, something I found as a delightful surprise. Even the couple of stories that mention H. P. Lovecraft as a character who wrote his weird tales from real life, as opposed to his own creative genius, I liked quite a lot, and usually I hate such things. No matter what kind of Lovecraft fan you are, there are going to be stories in this book that speak to you.<\/p>\n

Do you love HPL\u2019s flesh-eating ghouls? A number of tales here pick up where \u201cPickman\u2019s Model\u201d left off, most notably Caitlin R. Kierman\u2019s fantastic \u201cPickman\u2019s Other Model (1929).\u201d \u00a0Another story I really dug, Nicholas Royle\u2019s \u201cRotterdam,\u201d uses Lovecraft\u2019s lesser-known \u201cThe Hound\u201d as a jumping off point.<\/p>\n

David J. Schow has written many stories that I\u2019ve loved, but his is not a name I would have thought of if someone came up to me and said, \u201cname some Mythos writers.\u201d I\u2019m going to have to rethink that. His \u201cDenker\u2019s Book\u201d is a wonderful addition to the Lovecraft milieu, while it still sings with Schow\u2019s very distinct voice. I adore all of Michael Shea\u2019s Mythos tales, and his \u201cCoping Squid\u201d found here is no exception. Like Ramsey Campbell before him, Shea takes the Mythos out of the creepy countryside and firmly plops it down right in the middle of an urban nightmare.<\/p>\n

Damn it all to R\u2019lyeh, there are so many other great stories to highlight but I\u2019m running out of space. \u201cLesser Demons\u201d by Norman Partridge; Michael Marshall Smith\u2019s \u201cSubstitutions\u201d; \u201cEngravings\u201d by Joseph S. Pulver, Sr.; Jonathan Thomas\u2019 \u201cTempting Providence\u201d; and of course the always enlightening Ramsey Campbell with \u201cThe Correspondence of Cameron Thaddeus Nash.\u201d<\/p>\n

If you are a Lovecraft lover, a Mythos maven, or just an old Cthulhuhead like me, you\u2019ll like each and every story found within Black Wings<\/a><\/em>. I\u2019ll even go so far as to say that you might love some. I know I did. Nine phobias.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

This review appeared in The Eye of Light and Darkness in The Unspeakable Oath<\/em> 18<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Reviewed items are rated on a scale of one to ten phobias:<\/p>\n

1-3:<\/strong> Not worth purchasing.
\n4-6: <\/strong>An average item with notable flaws; at 6 it\u2019s worth buying.
\n7-10: <\/strong>Degrees of excellence.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Black Wings: New Tales of Lovecraftian Horror PS Publishing, $40.00 Edited by S. T. Joshi Reviewed by Brian M. Sammons  There is nothing more icky, awe-inspiring, mind-blowing or disturbing than a good Lovecraftian tale. Luckily for all of us Cthulhuheads,…<\/p>\n

Read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":558,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[97,61,9],"tags":[83,87,88,90,95,94,93,91,89,92,85,96,86,84],"class_list":["post-557","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-9-phobias","category-eye-of-light-and-darkness","category-tuo-18","tag-black-wings","tag-brian-sammons","tag-caitlin-r-kierman","tag-david-j-schow","tag-jonathan-thomas","tag-joseph-s-pulver","tag-michael-marshall-smith","tag-michael-shea","tag-nicholas-royle","tag-norman-partridge","tag-ps-publishing","tag-ramsey-campbell","tag-s-t-joshi","tag-tales-of-lovecraftian-horror"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/theunspeakableoath.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/blackwings.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2OyM1-8Z","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/theunspeakableoath.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/theunspeakableoath.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/theunspeakableoath.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theunspeakableoath.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theunspeakableoath.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=557"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/theunspeakableoath.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":560,"href":"http:\/\/theunspeakableoath.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557\/revisions\/560"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theunspeakableoath.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/theunspeakableoath.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theunspeakableoath.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theunspeakableoath.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}