Lovecraft H P Classic Authors Books : The Dark Worlds Of H. P. Lovecraft, Volume 1

The Dark Worlds Of H. P. Lovecraft, Volume 1

£19.98


Down in Dunwich where the old gods lie! - The Dark Worlds Of H P Lovecraft Volume 1 features The Dunwich Horror and The Call Of Cthulhu being read by American Wayne june. Running Time is approximately 3.5 hours.The Dunwich Horror is the longest story at 2:02:39 with The Call Of Cthulhu running at 1:27:41 June s voice is very deep and at it s best captures the imagination. Although at times he seems to over-emphasise certain intonations. Both stories have decent pacing and pauses but the Dunwich Horror stands out as the better read story for me. Despite being one of my favourites, The Call of Cthulhu seems a bit flat and monotone in places hence 4 stars instead of five overall. A major plus is that the stories are completely unabridged and retain their atmosphere of suspense because of being in full. A slight niggle, if you purchase the 3CD set as I did, there maybe say 18 tracks on disc 1 all separate. So after converting from WAV (CD format) to MP3 format, I then had to obtain software to join all the parts together. Otherwise I would have had breaks where tracks begin and end. In addition to this, the stories are split across CDs. Rather than having one story per CD, The Call Of Cthulhu begins at tracks 12-16 on CD2 onwards. So listening on CD is going to be slightly fiddly having to change CDs. I would recommend joining the files together for a better listening experience. I would have liked a few sound effects and/or music thrown in to add to the atmosphere but there are none present in this volume. Mr June does have a very expressive voice and does a very good job bringing these classics to life. To fans of Lovecraft who do not already possess this I would say give it a shot for sure. Especially as the stories are read well and unabridged. Plus how often does one encounter Lovecraft s work in audiobook format? To anyone who has not encountered Lovecraft s work before be mindful of these points:The subject matter is classified as strange fiction and is about ancient evil gods and races of elder beings , so the stories are not straight forward mainstream type horror. The stories are not blood and guts affairs, the horror is very subtle creating an instinctive sense of dis-ease and rely upon having a strong imagination. Instead most of Lovecraft s work focuses upon a cosmic sense of horror in depicting a universe that is fundamentally uncaring at best, and at worst hostile to humankind. Most frequently there are no happy endings to Lovecraft stories, madness and death are the usual botton lines. Stories usually endly badly! H.P Lovecraft (1890-1937) possessed an awe inspiring command of the English language, some of his sentences are long and quite complex....These stories are now classified as modern literature, so they are now and again dense in language and utilise grammatical structures that are somewhat antiquated. (Though for me this adds to the suspense and general atmosphere)The bottom line: Lovecraft fans will most likely go for these stories big time. Those with an active imagination looking for something subtle, suspensful and unconventional in the horror genre may well be taken with these stories.To anyone who likes this volume, I cannot recommend highly enough obtaining Dark Adventure Radio Theatre s At The Mountains Of Madness. If not available via Amazon can be purchaed from City In The Sea or The H P Lovecraft Historical Society.Update: I would strongly recommend obtaining the Audiorealms releases (The Dark Worlds Of H.P Lovecraft Series) from Amazon only. In my experience Amazon has a strong commitment to customer service, whereas I have ordered Volume 5 of this collection direct from the Audiorealms website, have not received it after 3 months of waiting, and they will not answer any number of emails.




The Dark Worlds Of H. P. Lovecraft, Volume 1