Necronomicon

This has bugged me for a while...

Sometimes you just want to listen to a specific story. For the life of me, I can't understand why anthologies like his aren't broken into chapters or at least labeled in the descriptions. This should help with that. The numbers might be off by a second or two, but will get you to the beginning of each story.

00:00:17 Dagon
00:16:55 Herbert West, Reanimator
01:33:13 The Lurking Fear
02:25:06 The Rats in the Walls
03:16:06 The Whisperer in the Darkness
06:18:21 Cool Air
06:43:23 In the Vault
07:06:48 The Call of Cthulhu
08:33:03 The Color Out of Space
09:48:10 The Horror at Red Hook
10:44:15 The Music of Eric Zahn
11:06:38 The Shadow Out of Time
13:44:15 The Dunwich Horror
15:47:02 The Haunter of the Dark
16:46:49 The Outsider
17:05:02 The Shunned House
18:16:39 The Unnameable
18:38:16 The Thing on the Doorstep
19:52:54 Under the Pyramids

3,205 of 3,219 people found this review helpful

Good Collection, Confusing Title

Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?

First things first: I'm reviewing the Audiobook listed above, with the black cover featuring blue tentacles and the title "Necronomicon" in bold white caps. Why do I specify? Because there are evidently several different books out there with the same title. Very confusing to a potential buyer, and the reviews I read before purchasing this audiobook were misleading. Regardless of the publisher's summary, it does not contain all of Lovecraft's "harrowing stories" and it doesn't include all of the Cthulhu mythos stories.

I'm not sorry I bought the book, but it simply wasn't what it was represented to be. Another issue: another reviewer listed the stories included in this volume. Well, they're not the stories in the audiobook I bought. By the way, a Table of Contents would be nice, maybe even a downloadable information sheet. In order to learn what my audiobook had in it, I had to go through all 63 chapters and deduce which stories they were associated with. For example, the second selection in the audiobook, "Herbert West..." takes up six chapters. Also, unless you can recognize a reader's voice, there's no way to tell who is narrating each story.

This volume contains:
DAGON; HERBERT WEST-REANIMATOR; THE LURKING FEAR; THE RATS IN THE WALLS; THE WHISPERER IN DARKNESS; COOL AIR; IN THE VAULT; THE CALL OF CTHULHU; THE COLOUR OUT OF SPACE; THE HORROR AT REDHOOK; THE MUSIC OF ERICH ZANN; THE SHADOW OUT OF TIME; THE DUNWICH HORROR; THE HAUNTER IN THE DARK; THE OUTSIDER; THE SHUNNED HOUSE; THE UNNAMABLE; THE THING ON THE DOORSTEP; UNDER THE PYRAMIDS

Who was your favorite character and why?

I began with my favorite Lovecraft story, "The Shadow Out of Time." I happened to recognize the narrator's voice, Keith Szarabajka, and he was excellent. A lot of Lovecraft's stories are first person narratives, making an audiobook like this one an outstanding way to experience Lovecraft. I'm looking forward to working my way through every story in the volume.

What about the narrators’s performance did you like?

Keith Szarabajka did a commendable job on "The Shadow Out of Time." I'd also like to commend the narrators of "The Call of Cthulhu" and "Herbert West", but I have no idea who they were.

Did Necronomicon inspire you to do anything?

Sleep with a light on.

Any additional comments?

This is a good audiobook with great stories and well-done narration, but it suffers somewhat by a poorly chosen, all too common title, and an evident publisher's disregard for the little things that might have greatly improved the buyer's experience.

677 of 695 people found this review helpful

Unspeakable Fun in H. P.'s SF-Horror Playground

Necronomicon is an audiobook collection of 19 choice stories by H. P. Lovecraft that complement the dream cycle works found in the Dreams of Death and Terror audiobook. The Necronomicon stories have much in common with each other, featuring sensitive, educated, Lovecraft alter-ego narrators forced to deal with his pet terrors (e.g., size, time, aliens, madness) and referencing his Cthulhu mythos (e.g., Cthulhu, Old Ones, Azathoth, and the Necronomicon). Their most common thrust is that "scientific study and reflection had taught us that the known universe of three dimensions embraces the merest fraction of the whole cosmos of substance and energy," and hence that "There are horrors beyond life's edge that we do not suspect, and once in a while man's evil prying calls them just within our range." The horrors come mostly from outside rather than from within. (Really I think that humans perpetrate plenty of horror without needing any outside help.) Lovecraft usually gives his horror a science fictional underpinning, most of his monsters being star spawn from other worlds, universes, or dimensions. The stories depict the hope that the lurking inimical alien powers are only dreams while crushing such comfort via exact dates, specific locations, "real" documents, and the like.

Despite their similarity, the stories make an entertaining and varied set, from outrageous Frankenstein parody and rustic undertaker farce to mental time travel and cross-species baby rearing. Here is an annotated list.

1. Dagon (1917)
The narrator has run out of the morphine he'd been taking to forget "a vast reach of black slime" full of rotting fish things, aquatic hieroglyphics, and Dagon.

2. Herbert West, Reanimator (1922)
"Damnit, it wasn't quite fresh enough!" Despite the redundant summaries that open each chapter, this is an absorbing novella as the narrator recounts his years assisting the boyish, blond, blue-eyed Herbert West, a "Baudelaire of physical experiment" questing to "overcome the thing we call death."

3. The Lurking Fear (1922)
The "connoisseur of horror" narrator heads for a demon haunted Catskill mansion, and, desperate to get to the innermost secret of fear, soon enough witnesses diabolic caricatures of the monkey tribe capering around.

4. The Rats in the Walls (1923)
When the narrator tries to renovate his cursed ancestral priory, he and his nine cats are "Poised on the brink of frightful revelations" involving a "scampering army of obscene vermin" whose appetites resemble what we do to each other.

5. The Whisperer in the Darkness (1930)
Receiving "invitations to strange surgery and stranger voyagings," an instructor of lit at Miskatonic U learns that "Close contact with the utterly bizarre is often more terrifying than inspiring."

6. Cool Air (1926)
When the fastidious narrator rents a room in a boarding house with "a hint of obscure cookery" run by a bearded Spanish landlady, he befriends Munoz, an abnormal doctor, "paying him overcoated calls" in his refrigerated room.

7. In the Vault (1925)
A careless, callous village undertaker cuts corners for the last time: "And so the prisoner toiled in the twilight, heaving the unresponsive remnants of mortality with little ceremony as his miniature Tower of Babel rose course by course."

8. The Call of Cthulhu (1926) (Pinchot)
Blasphemous cults, obscene gulfs of time, inimical lurking aliens, provocative correlations between disparate cultures, slimy Cyclopean cities of a wrong geometry, sensitive men going mad, and a narrator who researches horrifying secrets. N-not to mention anthropologists, theosophists, and philologists; police investigators, decadent sculptors, and "negro fetishists"; degenerate diabolist "eskimaux," voodoo swamp priests--and Cthulhu.

9. The Colour Out of Space (1927)
Revealing why the narrator would prefer not to drink Arkham water: a local legend about a meteor that fell on a farm, releasing a demoniac iridescence from beyond which mutated, maddened, and consumed the flora, fauna, and family.

10. The Horror at Red Hook (1925)
In the Red Hook slum, a sensitive 42-year-old NYC policeman experiences a hellish revelation involving illegal mongoloid aliens, child sacrifice, pre-human devil dances, Lilith, hell's organ, Satan's court (under the streets of NYC!).

11. The Music of Eric Zahn (1921)
The student of metaphysics narrator rents a room in a house wherein he hears unearthly music apparently coming from the room of the reclusive German viol player above him. Why won't Zahn let him look through his shuttered window?

12. The Shadow Out of Time (1934)
In mid-lecture an economics prof at Miskatonic U suffers an attack of "amnesia" like a case of possession by a "secondary mind." Five years later he suddenly returns to himself, fearing that his vivid dreams are memories of being a "captive mind" 150 million years ago.

13. The Dunwich Horror (1928)
After the birth of a goat-faced, fast-growing boy to a twisted albino woman in degenerate Dunwich (where the whippoorwills are demoniac psychopomps), Dr. Armitage, an erudite, 73-year old librarian at Miskatonic U, steps in.

14. The Haunter of the Dark (1935)
A writer/painter of Lovecraftian horror (like "The Feaster from the Stars") enters a shunned Providence church: "Probably they were mere legends evoked by the evil look of the place, but even so, they were like a strange coming to life of one of his own stories."

15. The Outsider (1921) (Pinchot)
This is a strangely affecting story about how it feels to be the consummate "carrion horror" outsider craving light and companionship.

16. The Shunned House (1924)
The narrator and his old uncle have been investigating an eldritch house whose inhabitants have tended to madden and die, when they decide to stand vigil in the foulest and fungiest room in the house, the cellar.

17. The Unnameable (1923) (Pinchot)
Randolph Carter, an author of Lovecraftian horror, and his friend Joel Manton, a teacher confident that science can classify everything, are knocked out by the "the ultimate abomination… the unnameable."

18. The Thing on the Doorstep (1933) (Pinchot)
"It is true that I have sent six bullets through the head of my best friend, and yet I hope to shew by this statement that I am not his murderer." It's all down to a good-looking woman with the protuberant eyes of her dead wizard father: she-devil, he, or it?

19. Under the Pyramids (1924)
"Hippopotami should not have human hands and carry torches," opines Lovecraft-Houdini while recounting his escape from "the black soul of necropolitan Egypt," composite mummies in cyclopean subterranean temples.

There are two disappointing features of the audiobook. First, the stories are arranged neither chronologically nor thematically. Second, there is no list of which readers read which stories. Apart from the inspired Bronson Pinchot, who caresses his four tales with macabre import, relishing lines like "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn," I have no idea who reads what. And I would like to know that, if only to avoid one reader among the many good ones who botches Lovecraft's rhythm and pacing with unwanted pauses and says "horror" with one syllable: e.g., "in quest of greater whores."

Fans of Lovecraft and aficionados of horror should give this collection a listen, not only because Lovecraft is such an influential figure in 20th-century horror and sf, but also because his stories, despite their pulp origins and unpleasant racism, classism, and sexism evoke half-chortle half-shiver fascination and offer great writing:

"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents."

"Bodies were always nuisances."

"We were now burrowing bodily through the midst of the picture, and I seemed to find in its necromancy a thing I had innately known or inherited, and for which I had always been vainly searching."

"Smash that record!"

187 of 194 people found this review helpful

Masterful!

I'm not one to write reviews, but after listening to Lovecraft's Necronomicon, I'm motivated. To start with, this is my first read by H.P. Lovecraft. I have known of his writings for many years, but just have never picked up a book, I did well in starting with this collection of stories.

The performances were well done and did not distract from the stories. The stories are amazing, Lovecraft builds the stories with firm foundations and builds and builds leading the reader in anticipation until you are sitting on the edge of your chair. It is so refreshing in this world of "fast"-"express" everything, to read something that takes the time to use the quality of words that fully describe the scene that Lovecraft is painting and is sorely lacking in a great deal of today's storytelling.

Bottom line, if you like this genre of story, if you've even slightly thought of reading Lovecraft, then I recommend this book to start with.

69 of 74 people found this review helpful

Some great, some good, some interesting

Others have offered a list of what's included (Maliboo's list is incomplete), but here I'll add a list of which chapters correspond to which stories......I found that information very helpful in allowing me to choose shorter or longer stories to listen to.

Dagon (Ch. 1)
Herbert West: Re-Animator (Ch. 2 - 7)
The Lurking Fear (Ch. 8)
The Rats in the Walls (Ch. 9)
The Whisperer in Darkness (Ch. 10 - 17)
Cool Air (Ch. 18)
In the Vault (Ch. 19)
The Call of Cthluhu (Ch. 20 - 22)
The Color Out of Space (Ch. 23)
The Horror at Red Hook (Ch. 24 - 30)
The Music of Eric Zahn (Ch. 31)
The Shadow Out of Time (Ch 32 - 39)
The Dunwich Horror (Ch. 40 - 49)
The Haunter of the Dark (Ch. 50)
The Outsider (Ch. 51)
The Shunned House (Ch. 52 - 56)
The Unnamable (Ch. 57)
The Thing on the Doorstep (Ch. 58 - 62)
Under the Pyramids (Ch. 63)


I am not a huge Lovecraft fan, but I thought some short stories would allow me small tastes of his different subjects and themes, without getting too much and getting turned off by the sparse writing and thin characters. It was a good mix. The narrators varied in quality from fair to very good, as did the stories. I consider this a good mix for those unsure of how much they will like Lovecraft, because they, like I can enjoy small bits over months without feeling like they're losing the thread of a longer book.

56 of 60 people found this review helpful

Audiobook Contents

Dagon
Herbert West: Re-Animator
The Lurking Fear
The Rats in the Walls
The Whisperer in Darkness
Cool Air
In the Vault
The Call of Cthluhu
The Colour Out of Space
The Horror at Red Hook
The Haunter of the Dark
The Outsider
The Shunned House
The Unnamable
The Thing on the Doorstep
Under the Pyramids

403 of 455 people found this review helpful

a slog but worth the time

Solid, if varied, narration. I found Lovecraft's style listless rather than haunting. However, I still feel that Lovecraft was a hole in my reading and I'm glad I made time for Necronomicron.

20 of 22 people found this review helpful

Excellent Essential Lovecraft

Here is the complete list of stories in this audiobook:

Dagon
Herbert West, Reanimator
The Lurking Fear
The Rats in the Walls
The Whisperer in the Darkness
Cool Air
In the Vault
The Call of Cthulhu
The Color Out of Space
The Horror at Red Hook
The Music of Eric Zahn
The Shadow Out of Time
The Dunwich Horror
The Haunter of the Dark
The Outsider
The Shunned House
The Unnameable
The Thing on the Doorstep
Under the Pyramids

The five star rating for this book is not because I think every story (or even most of them) were 5 stars, or because Lovecraft was a great writer (though I do think he was a better writer than he's often given credit for). It's because these stories are essential reading. Like him or hate him, Lovecraft casts a long, dark shadow over all of American fantasy and horror, and in fact, the stories are mostly pretty good, in a very dated way. Yes, Lovecraft wrote purple. Yes, his characterization is usually pretty thin. And yes, he was a horrible racist and it shows in his writing. But no one who touched this genre after him has been untouched by it, and if you have ever been awed or frightened or scared by a tale of eldritch horrors, unfathomable beings from beyond time and space, bubbling squamous obscenities so horrible that the very sight of them will erode your sanity, or vast, alien, cosmic gods inimical to humans and regarding us the way we regard germs... well, that's all Lovecraftian influence.

You also have Lovecraft to thank for a raft of awesome boardgames and RPGs, from the classic Call of Cthulhu to Eldritch Horror and Cthulhu Wars.

While Lovecraft's stories are typically labeled fantasy (hence his likeness being the trophy for the World Fantasy Award), he was really a science fiction writer, or perhaps science fantasy. His Elder Gods and the inhuman things that served them were not "gods" in the sense of being truly divine, but rather vast cosmic powers who exist on a scale beyond human comprehension. The "magic" sometimes found in his stories, even spells read from books like the Necronomicon, are likewise means of bending reality in ways Man Was Not Meant to Know, but ultimately his creatures are aliens, not demons, and his supernatural horror stems from science perverted beyond recognition, not from arcane witchcraft. Whenever something in the way of a more "traditional" monster appears in a Lovecraft story, like a mere ghost or vampire or werewolf, it's probably something much, much worse.

This collection contains most of Lovecraft's better known stories, focusing largely on his Cthulhu mythos cycle, so there is lots of squamous horror here. All the familiar names are here: Cthulhu, Hastur, Shub-Niggurath, Nyarlathotep, Yog-Sothoth, Dagon, etc. Monsters of all shapes and sizes, and degenerate inbred New England townsfolk who usually have nasty things in their barns, wells, attics, and woods.

If you want a Lovecraft primer, this is a good start. I'd read all these stories before, but many of them I had not read for years, so I enjoyed going through the classics again even if they don't bring me quite the same feeling of existential horror they did when I was a teenager.

It's a fine collection of creepy and fantasy stories, and great inspiration before playing a game of Arkham Horror or Call of Cthulhu.

77 of 88 people found this review helpful

A Very Mixed Bag

Having never read any of Lovecrafts works but always intending to, I used my first Audible credit for Necromicon.
The first issue was with the way the app breaks down the chapters simply by numbering them 1 to 63. If this was a single book that wouldn't be a concern but as a compendium of stories you have no way to easily locate a favorite. Some chapters are full stories yet some chapters include several sub chapters. Could have been done better IMO.
The various narrators were not credited to the particular stories they read so I have no way to know who my favorites were, I thought it would have been worth noting .
As for Mr Lovecrafts works... Some hits and misses to be sure. Great premises and incredibly imaginative and groundbreaking stuff on one hand and yet repetitive and tediously wordy on the other. Is it blasphemy to say it wasn't up to my expectations? Maybe but there it is.

26 of 30 people found this review helpful

Do you like adjectives? You're gonna get adjectives.

Goddamn. 21 hours is a long haul. Especially when everything and everyone Some of the stories are absolutely captivating and most of the book is a solid experience. But I would lie if I didn't say a few stories were though to get through.

19 of 23 people found this review helpful