The Lurking Fear

By H. P. Lovecraft

An unnamed narrator, investigating strange deaths on a remote mountaintop, discovers an unspeakable horror.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sheba Blake Publishing
• Release date: Mar 21, 2014
• ISBN: 9781304832436

H. P. Lovecraft

Renowned as one of the great horror-writers of all time, H.P. Lovecraft was born in 1890 and lived most of his life in Providence, Rhode Island. Among his many classic horror stories, many of which were published in book form only after his death in 1937, are ‘At the Mountains of Madness and Other Novels of Terror’ (1964), ‘Dagon and Other Macabre Tales’ (1965), and ‘The Horror in the Museum and Other Revisions’ (1970).

Reviews for The Lurking Fear

[androphiles · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is not the 12-story collection originally published by Ballantine/Del Rey in 1971, reprinted in several editions, with different covers, and which seems to be the subject of most, if not all, of the other reviews under this title.This is the 1947 11-story collection published by Avon Books, their catalog #136, later re-released with the title Cry Horror! The stories in this book are: The Lurking Fear, The Colour Out of Space, The Nameless City, Pickman's Model, Arthur Jermyn, The Unnameable, The Call of Cthulhu, The Moon-Bog, Cool Air, The Hound, The Shunned House. The two books have only 5 stories in common, including the title.

[aneris-3 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

3.5

The Lurking Fear consists of four chapters: “The Shadow on the Chimney”, “A Passer in the Storm”, “What the Red Glare Meant” and “The Horror in the Eyes”.

After a slow start where we are introduced to an unnamed narrator and his obsession with Tempest Mountain and an unexplained massacre that happened there, The Lurking Fear turns into a great horror story with quite a few hair-rising moments (whose arm or leg did the narrator feel when he explored the Martens mansion at night or the moment he touches one of his companions and he doesn't reply).

Not much was left to imagination though. The explanation probably worked better for people who read this when it came out the first time, but after a lot of films/stories with similar topic, it isn't as surprising as it should be. Not Lovecraft's fault, of course.

[starcat-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Contains Shadow Over Innsmouth, which is a classic. 3.5 stars on oc, as it contains a lot of shorter, less well known, though still interesting, stories.

[tikitu1reviews · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This collection has enough classic Lovecraft to see both why he's so influential, and why everyone is a little embarassed about how influential he is. He's honestly not a particularly good writer, but it's good fun and the atmosphere he's trying for is a worthy target. It's just that he seems to believe that telling you to be frightened and awed at the unknowable grandeur of the universe will make you... well, frightened and awed at the unknowable grandeur of the universe. But you should be, because you know, he was certainly frightened and awed at the unknowable grandeur of the universe. You can tell, because he tells you so. Repeatedly.The style is wonderfully parody-prone -- I highly recommend Neil Gaimans "Shoggoth's Old Peculiar". Original Lovecraft is enjoyable, but it completely fails to produce serious emotions, so you might as well have a giggle instead.