[CVY]≫ Descargar Gratis The Three Impostors and Other Stories Vol 1 of the Best Weird Tales of Arthur Machen Call of Cthulhu Fiction v 1 Arthur Machen S T Joshi 9781568821320 Books

The Three Impostors and Other Stories Vol 1 of the Best Weird Tales of Arthur Machen Call of Cthulhu Fiction v 1 Arthur Machen S T Joshi 9781568821320 Books

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The Three Impostors and Other Stories Vol 1 of the Best Weird Tales of Arthur Machen Call of Cthulhu Fiction v 1 Arthur Machen S T Joshi 9781568821320 Books

I just finished writing a review for "The White People," in which I recommended that people buy this book instead. So now I need to write a review of this book--and here it is.

Another review isn't really necessary, though, because there are already several here that eloquently describe the pleasures of this volume. From the weird horrors of "The Great God Pan" to the prehistoric flints of "The Shining Pyramid" to the puzzling imposters of the title, this is the kind of book you can re-read many, many times and discover something new each time.

And if you've already read "The Novel of the Black Seal" before in anthologies, you will love to able to read it here in context, although I warn you, you'll never feel the same about "Miss Lally" again!

As another reviewer put it, I'm only sorry I can't give this book more than 5 stars.


Tags : The Three Impostors and Other Stories: Vol. 1 of the Best Weird Tales of Arthur Machen (Call of Cthulhu Fiction) (v. 1) [Arthur Machen, S. T. Joshi] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Some of the finest horror stories ever written. Arthur Machen had a profound impact upon H.P. Lovecraft and the group of stories that would later become known as the Cthulhu Mythos. This first volume of Chaosium's Arthur Machen collection begins with the chilling "The Three Impostors" in its complete form,Arthur Machen, S. T. Joshi,The Three Impostors and Other Stories: Vol. 1 of the Best Weird Tales of Arthur Machen (Call of Cthulhu Fiction) (v. 1),Chaosium Inc.,1568821328,Fantasy fiction,Horror fiction,Horror General,Classic fiction (pre c 1945),Fiction,Fiction - Horror,Fiction Horror,Horror,Horror & ghost stories,Horror - General

The Three Impostors and Other Stories Vol 1 of the Best Weird Tales of Arthur Machen Call of Cthulhu Fiction v 1 Arthur Machen S T Joshi 9781568821320 Books Reviews

good
After having bathed in the glorious waters of M. R. James and Algernon Blackwood, I was keen to experience more supernatural horror with a distinctly British flavour. Thus I was eagerly anticipating the consumption of James and Blackwood’s rough contemporary and fellow in the genre, the Welsh and perpetually impoverished Arthur Machen. Many of Machen’s novels are out of print, or at least out of print from reliable publishing houses, which is much the same thing. Imagine my joy, then, when I discovered a three-volume selection of Machen’s tales edited by the venerable S. T. Joshi! However, I must admit that judging from this volume alone, Machen is my least favourite of the three; his waters, to continue the metaphor, are not uniformly luminous.

“The Great God Pan,” a novella that runs about fifty pages in this edition, has received considerable praise from Those Who Know. Perhaps its extreme tendency toward euphemism, extreme even for the period, diminished its chilling power for me; I think my cool reception of the tale was in part caused by impossibly high expectations. I was not as horrified as might be hoped by the transformation of Helen Vaughan, and was further impeded from the intensity of the mood by Machen’s pronounced predilection for rambling. I award this story three stars, although without any foreknowledge of the story it probably rates four.

“The Inmost Light” and “The Shining Pyramid” are essentially supernatural detective stories. One concerns the extraction of a soul and the dread consequences of such an act, whereas the other deals with the real existence of a subhuman race of Little People underneath the remoter areas of the countryside. The investigative protagonist, a jesting literary type by the name of Dyson, is over-jaunty and talks at length (sometimes for entire pages without interruption), but the tales are well-paced and appropriately eerie. Four stars apiece.

The Three Impostors makes up the bulk of the paper in this collection, and is an episodic novel composed of a series of embedded tales linked together by a light narrative thread. The eponymous three impostors are two women and a man who relate their tales to either Dyson, encountered in the previous two short stories, or his compatriot Phillips, a hard-headed ‘man of science’ who eventually succumbs to the intriguing atmosphere generated by the three accomplices, who are pursuing a mysterious “young man with spectacles,” as he is described. The reliability of the tales is eventually called into question by Dyson and Phillips, who happen to be waging a war of ideas on the nature of reality versus fiction. While the strangeness of some of the impostors’ stories and the absurd coincidences of the outer narrative hold one’s interest, the most compelling sections of The Three Impostors are to be found at the very beginning and the very end. Four stars overall.

This three-volume series is published by Chaosium Books, a special interest press that publishes material relevant to lovers of Lovecraft and the Cthulhu mythos. I am increasingly finding that special interest presses produce the highest quality experience for the reader! The introduction by S. T. Joshi is as excellent as one might expect from the great man, although it sometimes references works not included either in the particular volume in question or in any of the three volumes in particular, and often reads Machen through the lens of Lovecraft. The cover, although having no relation whatsoever to the interior contents, is highly suitable and atmospheric, and the typesetting and rear cover design is apt. I heartily recommend the house of Chaosium for any and all titles it may carry, although of course the range available will be highly specialized.

Although I did not fall instantly in love with Machen as I was expecting to, I certainly found much to appreciate in his writing. I recommend this book to devotees of supernatural and weird fiction; appreciators of fin-de-siècle literature and fine prose would also enjoy ‘Machen about’ with this collection.
Having read and loved many of H.P. Lovecraft's stories, I wanted to peruse the works of some of his influences, of which Arthur Machen is one. As an introduction to the works of Machen, _The Three Impostors and other stories_ did not disappoint. This anthology was collected by S.T. Joshi who has worked on several Lovecraftian-influenced story anthologies for Chaosium. He also penned the introduction which contains an excellent summary of Machen's life and an in-depth analysis of the following stories. This book contains the complete text of "The Three Impostors", a series of stories within stories with an over-reaching theme. These embedded stories, or "novels" as named by Machen, within the sections of "The Three Impostors" are self-contained and complete; I've read one of them collected by itself within another horror story anthology.

"The Three Impostors" follow the stories "The Great God Pan", "The Inmost Light" and "The Shining Pyramid". Machen evokes the atmosphere of Victorian London remarkably well along with a chilling, gas-lit feeling of powerful eldritch forces just beyond our ken creeping through into our dimension through the well-meaning but ill-advisable efforts of scientists exploring the limits of knowledge and perception. Reflective of Victorian sensibilities of his time, Machen uses subtle allusions rather than overtly describing the horrifying habits of the evilly inclined characters with much greater effect than if he went into coarse detail (not that he avoided outraged criticism from his Victorian readership this way!). Fans of Victorian literature and of H.P. Lovecraft will treasure this anthology of Machen's work, and will likely enjoy the following volumes published by Chaosium under the editorship of S.T. Joshi. Those with more modern inclinations might find Machen's styles somewhat dry and verbose, but if you keep an open mind, you'll find there's a lot to get out of the unsettlingly disturbing stories of Arthur Machen.
I just finished writing a review for "The White People," in which I recommended that people buy this book instead. So now I need to write a review of this book--and here it is.

Another review isn't really necessary, though, because there are already several here that eloquently describe the pleasures of this volume. From the weird horrors of "The Great God Pan" to the prehistoric flints of "The Shining Pyramid" to the puzzling imposters of the title, this is the kind of book you can re-read many, many times and discover something new each time.

And if you've already read "The Novel of the Black Seal" before in anthologies, you will love to able to read it here in context, although I warn you, you'll never feel the same about "Miss Lally" again!

As another reviewer put it, I'm only sorry I can't give this book more than 5 stars.