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Originally Posted by Simlasa
I think you're gonna have to justify that comment somehow...
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Do I? Really?
Personal taste is the main reason. I just didn't like any of them and I re-read his collected works twice just in case I'd read them on a bad day. Nope, they were rubbish.
He writes in a dull fashion. All his stories are the same. You can't visualise what he is talking about and have no empathy at all with the characters. As horror stories, they are not scary, which defeats the object. If you compare with someone like EA Poe, Lovecraft's novels come off a very poor second best and Poe isn't fantastic either, but he's a lot better than Lovecraft.
The idea of seeing something that breaks your mind because it is so different was fine in the 1920s when new theories such as Relativity, Quantum Theory and the Expansion of the Universe were changing how people thought about the world and shattered what people thought about how things worked. But, nowadays with films and TV Shows, we see aliens left, right and centre, we have graphic horror films that leave nothing to the imagination and we have been desensitised to a lot of things. So, seeing some half-fish creature isn't going to break my mind and send me to the loony bin.
But, I know that a lot of people like his stuff. There's a game designed around it as well, I think, that is/was fairly popular.
This thread is about people's opinions. I believe, not an absolute measure of how bad books are. So, my opinion stands.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Simlasa
I think most of Lovecraft's stuff stands as a fairly decent 'homage' to Dunsany... which I much prefer to all the Tolkienesque Eurofantasy that litters the shelves.
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An homage to Dunsany? Sorry, I didn't study Comparitive Literature at University and I'm not a book critic. What do I care about homages? I've never read anything by Lord Dunsany, mainly because I haven't heard of him before. I'd have preferred something original rather than an homage.