Most people who read horror or dark fiction are familiar with the name Lovecraft. This book introduces the reader to the monsters in our world.

This book has an impressive lineup of heavy hitting authors and like most anthologies, there were some fantastic stories and there were a few duds. For me, the Neil Gaiman story was best and the poetry stories were duds; just not my thing. Overall, a very worthy collection of stories to have and read.

A really wonderful collection of stories that build off of Lovecraft's strengths (cosmic horror, weird artists, dreamlands) while shaving off his less palatable qualities (racism, xenophobia, homophobia) and most eschewing his most well-known style: purple prose. There really isn't a bad story in the book, which is true of pretty much all of Ellen Datlow's anthologies, and I'm hard-pressed to pick favorites.

Book was reviewed on my blog a very long time ago. I have migrated blog since then and it is somewhere in archives or completely lost in the ether. (Sad times)