The book is organized by cities. Arkham, Miskatonic University, Dunwich, Innsmouth, and Kingsport. Then by different locations within each of those.

The book is written to mimic travel guides. It is ‘written’ by a member of the Arkham Historical Society. Which lends it to be a little cheeky in its style. The information it gives is informative and detailed. It’s perfect for any fan of the books or board game.

My only criticism would be for something stating itself as an illustrated guide the artwork takes a backseat. We have collages on pages that have different pamphlets, photos and ticket stubs the paper memorabilia a historical society might collect. Other pages have artwork of landscapes and buildings with the copy over it. Then they have smaller pieces of artwork along the edges.

I’d love to see pictures of each location in detail with blueprints, some of the monsters in detail and even mock ups of the different heroes and objects that play a role in the franchise.

This was a super fun tour through the Miskatonic Valley. Both new and old fans of the Arkham Horror universe will love this guide along with fans of both the games and the book series. The pictures and artifacts really gave life to a lot of the locations across Arkham and the surrounding towns.






Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC!

Welcome to Arkahm: An Illustrated Guide for Visitors, is an excellent coffee table book, and tabletop RPG resource! Beautifully formatted throughout, it is full of color pictures, ephemera, and just an all around wonderful presentation of the locations throughout Arkham, Dunwich, Innsmouth, and Kingsport, that we all know and love.

Thank you to Aconyte Books and NetGalley for an Advanced Reader Copy in exchange for an honest review.

Despite the fact that Lovecraft is more than a little problematic I do enjoy the mythos he created and love how it has evolved past the man himself. Arkham Horror both via the Fighting Fantasy Games and Acontye’s prose novels is probably one of my favourites and this Guide is perfect for fans of either, both or even just fans of Lovecraftian horrors. Complied like a tour guide and scrap book with stunning illustrations, informative pieces and lore that melds Lovecraft with the expanded Arkham Horror universe. It is must for fans who would not be disappointed in the presentation.
I can only imagine how beautiful this will be in hard copy. A definite must for the coffee table or book shelf.

This is good fun for any Lovecraft admirer. You don't need to be a fan of the Arkham Horror tabletop games as such, but some familiarity with Lovecraft's work will definitely enhance your enjoyment of the book. There is a lot more text than I expected, and the level of care and attention to detail in the descriptions gives the book a good deal of heft. This descriptive narrative nicely balances and enhances the artwork, which is rich and suitably dark and moody. That said, the book has a generally light touch, and mostly serves as an engaging introduction and welcome to the world of Lovecraft.

I always praise everything that Arkham Horror puts out and this is no different. If you play Arkham Horror this is additional material that gives you more information to the Mythos and lore. I relate this to the old school guide books that we used to get for video games that gave us more information for the story.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC copy of this ebook. It is most appreciated. Receipt of it has not impacted my opinion or review.

As an unabashed devotee of things Lovecraft Mythos and Fantasy Flight Games’ (FFG’s) interpretation of said worlds, I was very excited to see this book existed. I’m familiar with both the various games FFG has released into the wild (Arkham Horror board game and LCG, Eldritch Horror, Elder Sign, et al) and the lore it’s all based on, so this love letter to them was amazing.

Let’s start with the lore: The book is rich with Lovecraft-established areas such as Arkham itself, Kingsport, Dunwich, and my personal favorite: Innsmouth. Sections are devoted to each, fleshing them out with locations, characters, and minutiae. Famed HPL characters are name-dropped where appropriate, including the Whateleys, Armitage, and many others. Much of what is detailed in the book – no surprise given FFG’s involvement – revolves around the lore they’ve generated with their game world set there, with a majority of the characters, locales, and sites being exhaustively detailed.

The art and design of the book is stellar. Assembled like a scrapbook with photos, newspaper clippings, notes, and more, every square inch of the page is covered with details, so the reader is invited to look beyond the text and into the margins for deeper dives into the world. Each of the major locales (i.e. Arkham, Innsmouth, etc) is opened with a gorgeous panoramic 2-page painting of the site, moving on from there into gorgeous illustrations in the following pages of the many sites to be found therein. Though their looks to be a lot of art I hadn’t seen before, there were art assets reused from a lot of existing FFG game properties, so players will see a fair amount of pieces strewn about that they have seen in the past, but they’ve been repurposed to great results to make the scrapbook/notebook feel just right.

All-in-all, this ebook was a joy to run through. It felt comfortable going from each page to the next, seeing great visuals of locations both familiar and new, and characters the same, yet each page held new information (to me) stashed away in the margins, that completed the aesthetic. If you’re a gamer or Mythos fan, this book has a ton to offer you. A.P. Klosky and David Annandale have done an outstanding job of delivering something that any Mythos fan would, nay, should have in their collection.

This book is highly recommended.

This is the perfect companion for any Arkham Horror fan. The extended lore and history of the locations mentioned throughout the game really add a depth to the mythos that I think will add an extra element to the game. Highly recommend.

My thanks to both NetGalley and the publisher Aconyte Books for an advance copy of this new game reference to the many towns of Massachusetts that feature in the Arkham Horror Tabletop game, with places to dine, hotels to recline, and the Elder Gods remain divine.

Even though I live in Connecticut I consider myself a metropolitan person, something that I have hung onto for years. Being so close to the New York border, I have spent more time in New York than in the rest of my state, and even less further north. Years ago my friends and I started hitting the convention circuit, ranging further and further out for music, horror, comics, whatever throughout the New England area. Driving some of those backroads, even with out Nutmeg State plates got us some looks. Lots of woods, lots of small towns, lots of dying towns. Promises of antiques and collectibles leadin up roads to barns with no one around. It was spooky. Lovecraftian. One could see people driven mad by rats in the walls, or seeing weird things at night, in the shadows, even outside places like Boston, or Providence. Someone once said the barrier between things is always very thin, and sometimes, some ways it tears open just a bit, was speaking a lot of sense. This feeling of something not normal is perfectly encapsulated in this Arkham Horror Game Book, Welcome to Arkham: An Illustrated Guide for Visitors by written by A. P. Klosky and David Annandale, edited by Matt Keefe, with numerous illustrators.

Based on the mythology created by H.P. Lovecraft and many of his contemporaries the book is a guidebook written by the Arkham Historical Society, about the towns that lie in the Miskatonic River Valley. The largest is Arkham, a town on the move, at least in the 1920's when the game and book are placed. Hot jazz, cute flappers, dark robed creatures, and strange moans fill the air as the town deals with Prohibition, war fatigue, gangsters, cultists, and strange ritualistic rites. The book offers a page each on hotels, dining areas, best places to equip a party, learn some information, and what tunnels to try and avoid. The famed Miskatonic University has its own section, discussing the history of these famed higher institution, some weird happenings, and the building of the new observatory, paid for by a grant from unknown benefactors. The outlying towns are covered, places to venture if one is curious, or as the locals would say dang nosy. Each entry is illustrated, with all sorts of information tucked around like telegrams, reports, pictures, even letters, one set which tells a story about a young woman looking for her missing uncle, and the strange misty figure only she sees.

One of the best game books I have ever read. This would be a good read for players who know nothing about the game, but by the end would love to know more. Each entry has a history, some Easter eggs from past writings, Lovecraft, others Arkham Horror novels, which I love, and hints and ideas for adventures to come for the players. One can use these as facts, or again, as something to base a whole adventure or campaign on. Each entry is extremely well written, and told in such a way that one believes that this is a tourist brochure, and yet the person writing this is from Arkham and knows a lot more than they should be writing, but will share anyway. Places to equip are listed from food, ammo, to books. Trains, boats, ferries, even buses for getting around. And a whole mess of creepy to throw your characters in and watch their souls get devoured. I read this more like a novel, than a gamebook, and enjoyed all the time I spent with it. Honestly one of the best game books, ever, never a dull moment, and never a ohh I guess they needed to fill the page count.

I omitted the illustrations which would be a crime. Very good art, spooky, slick like a Lonely Planet Guide to the Eeriest Spots in New England. Just a beautiful book, and one that should be bought in physical form. I really can't wait to get a copy and see all that I missed in the e-book. The perfect guide to an imperfect place, and really something anyone who enjoys this game will love. Even nonplayers, but those familiar with Lovecraft will get a lot out of this.

Welcome to Arkham contains a comprehensive guide to Arkham and its neighboring areas of Miskatonic University, Dunwich, Innsmouth and Kingsport, as envisioned in the works of H.P. Lovecraft. While I haven't played any of the Arkham Horror games, I don't know how much comes directly from that, but much of what's included is definitely recognizable from Lovecraft's fiction. The book is presented as a descriptive guidebook to that region of New England, loosely intertwined with the story of the nephew of Reginald Peabody, the author of the book, tracing his uncle's steps via the book in hopes of discovering what caused his mysterious death. Highlighting buildings, sections and personalities of the (in)famous locations, the guide is replete with exhaustive descriptions, impressive graphics and supplements, such as newspaper clippings and ticket stubs, as well as post cards and notes from the nephew's journey. The only drawback was that in reading an ARC of the book, I had to do so on the NetGalley app on my phone, rendering some of the supplemental material unreadable, as this is definitely intended to be viewed in book form to get the most of the imagery. Otherwise, any fan of Lovecraft should find this interesting and enjoyable.

Truth be told I don’t know anything about the Arkham Horror series that this book is apparently set on but I do love Lovecraftian/cosmic horror so when I saw this up for download on Netgalley I jumped at the chance to read it. I love cosmic horror stories and I thought having the chance to read more about the locations and backstories of some of the things I’ve read was too neat to pass up.

There is more than one story going on in this book. The first is the basic travel guide that is the bulk of the book. It talks about various cities included in the Lovecraft universe at various degrees of length (including Arkham, Dunwich, and Innsmouth) and the various landmarks and attractions in each city. I really enjoyed reading about these but I can see how it would be a little bit of a dry read for people not familiar with Arkham Horror/Lovecraft. Various Easter eggs are sprinkled through this that call back to stories based on AH/Lovecraft with a variety of difficulty to pick up on. Overall I greatly liked this part of the book.

A second story is the tale of a woman’s search for her missing uncle. Various notes are written to the side of the travel guide and inserts are made that build up the story. I really liked this overall. It really played out like a true Lovecraft story. My only two complaints are that at times the cursive that some of the notes are written in are hard to read and some of the pictures of articles are very hard to read/not enough of this part of the story was included in the book. You don’t get very many notes from this story and I felt that it processed too quickly. I would have loved to have spent more time with this.

This is an illustrated art book also and the art going along with each city/location is just breathtaking. The cityscapes are well done and some of the images in darker themed sections are terrifying. The artist involved in this did a beautiful job with this.

I think this is an amazing book and I highly recommend it. I think Arkham Horror fans and fans of Lovecraft/cosmic horror can each get something out of this.

I've recently been obsessed with the idea of worldbuilding through board games, and no one does it better than Fantasy Flight! This was such a good addition to the Arkham Horror Files.

There’s not a ton to say because if you’re interested in this, you probably already know what it is. But it’s stunning! I am adding this to my Christmas list for next year because I absolutely want a physical copy to go alongside my game collection.