H. P. Lovecraft's Book of the Supernatural by Stephen Jones

Lovecraft and the energizing mysteries of The X Files, you should really enjoy The Lovecraft Squad: Dreaming, created by Stephen Jones. Looking for a good book? If you enjoy the dark strangeness of H. I do wish I knew who had written which parts, because there are some of the pieces that were stronger than others and it’s always nice to build up a library of authors whose work you enjoy. I have a real fondness for 1950’s-70’s pulp literature, especially YA for boys, and there was a ‘look’ about the covers that let you know immediately what was inside. I also have to say that the cover art (as depicted here) by Douglas Klauba is spot-on perfect and really, this was one of the things that first caught my eye about this book. Once I caught on how to read this, I really enjoyed it. Lovecraft with The X Files – that’s how I see this – is kind of brilliant. From the assassination of President Kennedy to the Watergate break-in to landing on the moon we follow squad members – who often know how the events are supposed to turn out. The Lovecraft Squad fight off all kinds of supernatural creatures through some really significant events throughout history.

But when I read this as a series of connected short stories, it made much more sense. There is no author listed for each chapter or each story, so it looks like a novel, but I was really confused when we never came back to the events of a chapter. We start out with “The Story So Far…” and then a prologue (“The Black Ship”) and then to “One | The Dreams in the White House” and then to “Two | Weird Shadows Over Innsbruck” etc. There are a number of authors listed on the title page, but there is no table of contents page. The book is a collection of short stories – although if I have one major complaint about the book, this is never really made clear. There is an organization set up to combat these cultists: The Lovecraft Squad – fighting agents of Cthulhu since everywhen!

The premise: There are cultist out there (such as Olde Fellowes and the Esoteric Order of Dagon) who are trying to disrupt Order and they do it by going through dimensions of space and time. How did I not know about this series until book three?!

H. P. Lovecraft's Book of the Supernatural by Stephen Jones