Review by Booklist Review
With two eccentric editorial decisions, horror-fiction historian Joshi makes this sampling of the Welshman who inspired H. P. Lovecraft to create the Cthulhu Mythos invaluable. He excludes Machen's most famous piece, The Great God Pan, and includes the seldom-reprinted A Fragment of Life, which, though certainly weird or uncanny, resolves not in dread but in a mystical, parochial (not nationalistic) patriotism. It's not the only nonhorrific selection; three WWI inspirational tales in Machen's later, quasi-journalistic manner also appear (one, The Bowmen, birthed the legend that angels assisted the British at the Battle of Mons). Fragment shares in the luscious descriptive style of Machen's early stories exploiting the proto-Lovecraftian notion that a malevolent, prehuman people (the little people, or fairies of Celtic legend, Machen ventures) survive in rural isolation. That style wraps the reader in a shimmering, velvety blanket of sense-impressions. Nowadays, Lucius Shepard and Laird Barron approach it, but it's really nonpareil, and you don't have to be a horror fan to fall under its spell.--Olson, Ray Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
