There is nothing like this anywhere else. Theres was some good stories, some weird ones, and then there were the truly fantastic ones.

I've been working on reading through these short stories and novellas for the past 9 months, taking my time with them and making sure I didn't rush through them too quickly. I also didn't want to get burned out on them. There are a total of 63 works in this complete collection, presented in the order in which they were written (not necessarily the same as the order of publication). There are no collaborations here, just the total body of work that HP Lovecraft produced on his own.

As with any collection of so many stories, their quality ran the gamut from merely OK to masterpiece. It was very interesting to read them in order; I could see how he developed as a writer and I could also better understand how the Cthulho mythos evolved and expanded. There is, of course, no doubt about the great impact this author has had on horror fiction specifically, and the larger speculative fiction genres in general. That alone would grant this collection 5 stars. I granted 4 stars due to my overall enjoyment of the collection. The vast majority of the author's work reflects his preferred narrative style and I think only one or two stories here contain any substantial dialogue. For me that cut down on the enjoyability factor quite a bit but I do recognize the era in which these were written.

My favorites include: The Tomb, The Statement of Randolph Carter, The Rats in the Walls, The Call of Cthulu, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, The Dunwich Horror, At the Mountains of Madness, The Shadow Over Innsmouth, and The Shadow Out of Time.

A note on the e-book itself: first of all...it's free! It's also put together very well, with a linked-in table of contents which allows you to jump directly to any story. And at the end of each story there is another link back to the TOC. That certainly makes it easy to navigate. The formatting is spot-on and, unlike many e-books I read, I didn't find a single misspelled word. I also appreciated the TOC listing the date each story was written, to assist in understanding what was going on in the author's life at that time. In fact before I read each story, I looked up the Wikipedia entry for it so as to absorb what sort of demons Lovecraft was fighting at the time, what likely influenced the story, and where and when it was ultimately published. It's also fun to see all the popular references in today's culture that reflect characters, places, etc. from Lovecraft's works.

A long but worthwhile journey.

I make a point of reading/listening to the audiobooks of Lovecraft every year, sometimes more than a few times. The origins of so many modern horror tropes can be found in them. There is a sly sense of humour in a number of the stories that is fun to discover.

(The xenophobic nonsense and language that is so embedded in the works can be quite unsettling and offensive, but the stories are a product of a less enlightened and accepting era and of a man whose upbringing wasn't exactly normal either. )