NOTE: While this book contains a number of Lovecraft's stories, I only read At the Mountains of Madness, so this review only covers that book.

In the 1930s, a large and well-equipped scientific expedition sets out for Antarctica to collect rock samples, fossils, and whatever else they can dig up. However, some of the expedition dig up more than they bargained for, uncovering fossils and actual samples of a bizarre five-sided plant/animal thing. Then silence descends, and when the rest of the expedition find their camp, it's all been completely destroyed and everyone killed.

As a friend of mine said, it's the standard Lovecraft plot: discover ancient evil, then either die or go mad from the horror.

Or maybe from the incredibly long, detailed, and boring scientific descriptions of the creatures discovered.

Once I got through all the descriptions, it did have some nice ideas. I particularly liked that the mythology was all previously set up: a "mad Arab", Abdul Alhazred, had previously written the Necronomicon which is repeatedly referred to during the descriptions of the creatures found; and there are also references to various ancient legends of Asia and art. And now I know what a Shoggoth is, which is important when you hang around with some of my friends.

But I can't say I'm inspired enough to continue reading any of these books. I shall have to continue to look politely puzzled when my friends bring up R'yleh, Azathoth, Dagon and the rest. ( )

I liked the dreamy Randolph Carter stories the best, but the titular tale in this collection pulled back the curtain on the mythos a wee too much for my taste. ( )

This volume contains Lovecraft's two novellas, "At the Mountains of Madness" and "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward". For those who love the pulp fiction genre, this represents Lovecraft at the top of his game, with sustained storytelling. For those who dislike the genre, probably pretty tiresome. ( )

I checked this out from the library to get a taste of Lovecraft. It's an okay collection, spoiled mainly by the final four Randolph Carter stories--to be fair, the last story, Through the Gates of the Golden Key, isn't bad, but The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath is so dreadfully dull that I took a pause in the middle of it to read another book for a month.

The first four stories, however, are great. And of those, the first two, At the Mountains of Madness and The Case of Charles Dexter Ward are outstanding. In fact, the jacket text called the latter "Lovecraft's most precisely-wrought work of horror" and I would have to agree. This collection is worth picking up for those two alone. ( )

Lovecraft is one of my favorite authors. This collection does contain what I consider to be two of his best works, At The Mountains of Madness and the Case of Charles Dexter Ward. It also contains one of his least original works and one of the most irritating, The Dream-Quest for Unknown Kadath. ( )