I have to imagine your library fines on those books now are staggering ;-)
What are you reading in 2026?
- Thread starter Alzrius
- Start date
At this point, "borrowed" isn't exactly the word, is it?
Voadam
Legend
I just finished S. Petersen's Field Guide to Lovecraftian Horrors. My son got me the hardcover for Christmas. 128 pages of monster and Great Old One descriptions with lush art. Statless and in character. Two page spread plus a big piece of art for each entry, 53 entities covered, plus a size comparison chart at the end and a three page bibiliography, one column of real books like Call of Cthulhu ones and two and a half of in world stuff from Arkham Press, Miskatonic University, Harvard, University of Michigan Press, Innsmouth Society, etc. across a vast swathe of publishing time (most 20th century but certainly not all) and including mostly reasonable sounding names but also things like stuff from Randall Carter and even James Moriarty.
Back in college I was intrigued by the two guides to Lovecraftian Horrors and Guide to the Dreamlands but did not pick them up then, this looks like a compilation of the two. I love this kind of stuff.
I really like about 90% of this, a few things grate on me though. It says it is comprehensive, but while it has Azathoth and Yog Sothoth and Tsathoggua it does not include Hastur or Dagon (except in the end two-page size comparison chart) and Cthulhu himself is only referenced as a Star Spawn of Cthulhu and not in his own entry. We get Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath, but not Shub herself. I was hoping to see Tcho Tchos that I have seen referenced but not directly read a story on but they are not here.
The art is overall fantastic and evocative, but a few don't hit for me. The cover is evocative and a great mythos horror,
But then I found out this is supposed to represent Cthulhu himself in the star spawn entry and that is not what I expect for Cthulhu from Chaosium.
Also for the elder things they get the described five legs, but then gave up on described five wings and gave them hands the description does not mention and seem out of place on the otherwise very alien things who created shoggoths.
The little editorial errors and typos stood out to me as well, they have a neat section on distinguishing each entry from the closest similar things but then in a deep one reference the distinguishing cross reference contradicts the main entry on whether they have tails or not. The Fungi from Yugoth never uses the word Mi-Go, but that is how they are referenced in the end size chart.
The entries are short on description, a couple light paragraphs and done, I tend to like a bit more but these were decent and fun. They include citations to the scholarly made up works in the bibliography. Each also has unexplained singular rune symbols and runic phrases (spelled out names?) No explanations, but I could see using these for summoning circle formulae type stuff in a game.
Overall very fun for me, I saw things I have read about in Lovecraft stories and some I do not remember reading any stories on.
Back in college I was intrigued by the two guides to Lovecraftian Horrors and Guide to the Dreamlands but did not pick them up then, this looks like a compilation of the two. I love this kind of stuff.
I really like about 90% of this, a few things grate on me though. It says it is comprehensive, but while it has Azathoth and Yog Sothoth and Tsathoggua it does not include Hastur or Dagon (except in the end two-page size comparison chart) and Cthulhu himself is only referenced as a Star Spawn of Cthulhu and not in his own entry. We get Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath, but not Shub herself. I was hoping to see Tcho Tchos that I have seen referenced but not directly read a story on but they are not here.
The art is overall fantastic and evocative, but a few don't hit for me. The cover is evocative and a great mythos horror,
But then I found out this is supposed to represent Cthulhu himself in the star spawn entry and that is not what I expect for Cthulhu from Chaosium.
Also for the elder things they get the described five legs, but then gave up on described five wings and gave them hands the description does not mention and seem out of place on the otherwise very alien things who created shoggoths.
The little editorial errors and typos stood out to me as well, they have a neat section on distinguishing each entry from the closest similar things but then in a deep one reference the distinguishing cross reference contradicts the main entry on whether they have tails or not. The Fungi from Yugoth never uses the word Mi-Go, but that is how they are referenced in the end size chart.
The entries are short on description, a couple light paragraphs and done, I tend to like a bit more but these were decent and fun. They include citations to the scholarly made up works in the bibliography. Each also has unexplained singular rune symbols and runic phrases (spelled out names?) No explanations, but I could see using these for summoning circle formulae type stuff in a game.
Overall very fun for me, I saw things I have read about in Lovecraft stories and some I do not remember reading any stories on.
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