I’m gonna be so for real with y’all, idk if I would have picked this up had I known it was a reprint from 1994. Which I also only realized after riffling through the Contributor’s Notes at the back of the book and finding that the authors here are, as far as I could tell, almost exclusively white cis men. I suppose that given the preponderance of that demographic in the appreciation of HP Lovecraft — and the fact that a push for reinterpreting his works from a minority lens didn’t really happen till the 2010s — this shouldn’t be so surprising, or even inexcusable.

But what really strikes me after reading this book is how good the original novella The Shadow Over Innsmouth actually is. Sure, Mr Lovecraft might have hated minorities with a superciliousness that positively glowers through his prose — with a healthy soupcon, granted, of self-loathing — but there’s no denying that the story itself is engaging, inventive and utterly fresh even almost a century on. The novella feels both original and complete in a way that irrevocably establishes his status as a master of the horror genre. He may have been an unpleasant person, but there’s no denying that the man could write.

The rest of the sixteen stories in this volume are directly inspired by that original tale. In my opinion, the ones that attempt to insert themselves into the narrative voice of their inspiration are the least successful. But the stories that approach the setting with verve rather than attempting (and too often failing) to ape Mr Lovecraft’s curious balance of dry analysis and gooey horror make for genuinely interesting reading.

One of these standouts is Jack Yeovil’s terrific Los Angeles noir pastiche The Big Fish. When a 1940s private investigator is hired to look into the disappearance of a Hollywood bigwig by his potentially jilted love interest, all hell breaks loose — or nearly enough to count. Unsurprisingly, Hollywood is a perfect breeding ground for Innsmouth-derived cultists looking to spread their influence. And, lol, while I was researching this review, I discovered that “Jack Yeovil” is actually a pen name of Kim Newman, whose irreverent A Quarter To Three is another highlight of this collection. Both stories tackle the solemn themes of TSoI with humor and wit as a deft counterbalance that keeps the heavy material lively.

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