BLACK WINGS VII Edited by ST Joshi

The seventh installment in the successful Black Wings series, devoted to supernatural horror related to the universe created by HP Lovecraft and including sixteen new tales and a poem, demonstrates once again that the Lovecraftian heritage is alive and well and defies the obvious risk of reproducing over and over the same clichés.

Among the featured stories, on average of good quality, some have particularly impressed me.

Here they are.

“ Herr Lasst Sich Nicht Lesen” by Stephen Woodworth is an intriguing piece of cosmic horror wherecthe secrets from the beginning of the universe are revealedcin an ancient manuscript.

“ The Pit of G’ narrh” by Donald R Burleson is a short, yet deeply unsettling piece of  Lovecraftian horror revolving around an inhuman, hungry creature sitting at the bottom of a pit.

In the well crafted “The Lime Kiln” by Geoffrey Letter cosmic horrors are hidden inside a forest where the remains of a long gone past still survive, while in the vividly told “ And the Devil Hath Power” by John Shirley humans are just the powerless tools in a greater design.

Nancy Kilpatrick contributes the engrossing, gripping “ Deception Island” set in the chilly atmosphere of Antarctica.

Beware of the Old Ones…

Review by Mario Guslandi

Black Wings VII Edited by S.T. Joshi

CATEGORY  Lovecraft Inspired Horror
PUBLICATION DATE  April 2023
COVER ART  Jason Van Hollander
PAGES  336

EDITION
Trade Paperback— ISBN 978-1-978-1-78636-988-8 [£14.99]

This seventh volume of S. T. Joshi’s acclaimed Black Wings series features an international cast of contributors who use the work of H. P. Lovecraft as a springboard for powerful and thought-provoking tales that probe the terrors and uncertainties of life in the twenty-first century.

Lovecraft was a devotee of science, but he recognised that science’s role in human life is ambiguous. In this volume, Katherine Kerestman, Steve Rasnic Tem, and Donald Tyson probe the sense of human insignificance that science brings in its wake. Lovecraft knew that realism of setting fostered his signature contribution of cosmicism. Stories by Donald R. Burleson, Nancy Kilpatrick, Geoffrey Reiter, and Aditya Dwarkesh take us from the frozen realm of Antarctica to the sweltering heat of Calcutta; from ancient New England to the remote stretches of Pennsylvania. Tales by David Hambling and Mark Howard Jones tease out weirdness even in the familiar locales of Great Britain.

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