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Message: <blockquote data-quote="babomb" data-source="post: 5016325" data-attributes="member: 1316">I'd say Lovecraft is "recommended reading". I don't think any particular book is considered "required reading" for D&D.But he does care! If you worship him, you get to be devoured FIRST!I like Lovecraft, but I have to (mostly) agree with this. I would say that he is not a terrible author, but he is a pretty bad writer, though I may be drawing a distinction where none exists. I feel much the same way about Lovecraft as I do about Charles Dickens: he has great ideas, but the way he tells the stories is often lacking. Lovecraft's prose is at times awkward and turgid. He is rather good at building suspense, but this often leads to an anti-climax; some of his descriptions of monsters are frankly more silly than scary.I don't think there is a way to measure writing on a purely objective basis. However, I can tell you, having written a research paper on Lovecraft that involved reading as much literary criticism on him as I could find, that the consensus seems to be that if Lovecraft is great, it is in spite of his prose, rather than because of it. Even the Lovecraft apologists generally spoke of his stories as highly flawed masterpieces.</blockquote>