Mistress of the Moons Book

(Full review 1/19/17)

1978 Jove mass-market with cover art from the always excellent Rowena Morrill.

This version of the book doesn't feature all the stories listed on this page (which is for the Arkham House editions). It includes: "In the Vault," Pickman's Model," "The Rats in the Walls," "The Music of Erich Zann," "The Haunter of the Dark," "The Dunwich Horror," and "The Thing on the Doorstep," most of which are top-tier Lovecraft, imo, ones I hadn't read in 20 years or so until now. It also features an informative intro from 1963 by Arkham House co-founder August Derleth (or "Der Leth" as he's mistakenly called on the cover).

I thought some of the tales would lose a little of that sense of awe (or "frisson," as weird fiction authority ST Joshi would say) I felt as a teen, but I was wrong. "Pickman's Model" was as effective (and horrifying) as ever, but "The Thing on the Doorstep," which closes the collection, especially creeped me out this time around, as it involves one of my biggest fears: the loss of one's own mind/loss of control. My appreciation for "Erich Zann" grew greatly as well, and is now one of my all-time favorite Lovecraft stories. It's not especially "scary," but it is straight-up weird -- very proto-Ligottian in a way, with its (now typical) strange, hidden "Ligotti-esque" town-- and is pretty much unlike anything else he's written, to my knowledge.

The only stories that didn't really hold up as well for me were "In the Vault" (short, decent-but-standard graveyard horror) and the title story, which seemed much too long, written in that dry, overly clinical style that ole' HP sometimes used, and which I really have to be in the right mood for. Still, this a must-own for collectors of vintage Lovecraft paperbacks, and even the two tales that didn't really float my boat as much aren't bad by any means.

4.5 Stars.