You can’t escape Lovecraft’s influence if you, like I, read a lot of sci-fi/fantasy/horror. But until now, I had never read any of Lovecraft’s works directly just interpretations of them by authors like Neil Gaiman. I was aware that he is considered problematic due to racist beliefs that even for his time were extreme but I wasn’t sure how much of that bled into his actual work. Well, thanks to my book club I got to find out firsthand. Our assignment this month was to […]
“You can’t choose blindness when it suits you”
At 153 pages, one can get through The Ballad of Black Tom in an afternoon, but the issues that author Victor LaValle raises will stay with you long beyond that. This is a fantasy/horror novella set in 1924 New York City. The main characters are in touch with the mystical realm, but their interests in it will lead to horrors beyond imagination. There will be monsters, and some are of their own making. Though set in the ‘20s, LaValle’s story is a brilliant commentary on […]
Cthulhu is An Equal Opportunity Employer
What could be worse than living in the world where the mythos of Cthulhu is real and the Old Ones are merely a spell book reading away from returning to earth to devour humanity? This is the question asked in this novella, a re-telling of one of Lovecraft’s more infamous and racist stories, “The Horror at Red Hook.” Before I read this novella, I read that story in preparation. Well, more accurately, I skimmed it. I’ve read some Lovecraft and enjoyed it, when it wasn’t […]
You’ll Never Be Able to Look Away Again
The Ballad of Black Tom is a retelling of Lovecraft’s short story, The Horror at Red Hook and like the best retellings it’s not necessary to have read original to appreciate it. Amusingly, though The Horror at Red Hook is one of Lovecraft’s stories that is divested from his Cthulhu mythos The Ballad of Black Tom works that story back into Cthulhu and used the Cthulhu mythos, with its racist beginnings, to explore racism in the US. It’s brilliant. Thomas Tester is a conman, a […]