A Lonely and Curious Country
Matthew Carpenter, ed.
Ulthar Press
Trade Paper, 234 p., $16.95

As Matthew Carpenter points out in his introduction, Lovecraftian fiction has become a mainstay of the fantastic and weird fiction genres, with some of the best-written stories being published on a regular basis.  A Lonely and Curious Country is no exception.  (Mr. Carpenter didn’t say that, I did.)

The seventeen stories here are perfect examples of what’s going on in the admittedly large subfield of Lovecraftian fiction.  They are disturbing, horrifying, Lovecraftian.  In some the Lovecraftian element is quite prominent; in others, you don’t realize you’re in Lovecraft country until you’ve almost finished.  I’m not going to try to give a one or two sentence summary of each one.  Rather I’m going to focus on the ones that stood out to me.  YMMV.  One other thing before I start discussing the stories.  Of the eighteen authors, I had only heard of three of them prior to reading this book (Webb, Price, and McNamee).  There are a lot of good writers out there that I need to keep up with. Continue reading →