H.P. Lovecraft: The Complete Omnibus Collection, Volume I: 1917-1926

By: H. P. Lovecraft, Finn J.D. John

Narrated by: Finn J.D. John

This is volume one of a two-volume omnibus set comprising the complete fictional works of Howard Phillips Lovecraft. Every story written for publication under his own name is included in this set, from 1917 through 1935. (Poems, ghostwritten material, and stories written in collaboration with other writers are not included.)

A full ebook copy of this book in interactive PDF format is included and can be downloaded by clicking the "PDF" link in your Audible library (it's in the "Title" column). This PDF includes the audiobook chapter numbers, to make navigation easier.

Highlights of this volume include:

• "Dagon"
• "The Doom That Came to Sarnath"
• "The Music of Erich Zann"
• "Herbert West, Reanimator"
• "The Hound"
• "The Lurking Fear"
• "The Rats in the Walls"
• The Shunned House
• "The Horror at Red Hook"
• "In the Vault"
• "The Call of Cthulhu"
• "The Strange High House in the Mist"
• The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.

©2016 Finn J.D. John (P)2016 Finn J.D. John

The only way to experience Lovecraft.

Finn J.D. John does Lovecraft justice. He reads the works as I imagine Lovecraft heard them in his own head. His cadence and emphases allow a listener to easily follow the flowing and complex sentences that other readers have not been able to achieve. In fairness, I have not heard any other audio versions of Lovecraft and I refer to readers of other works altogether.

The narrator is awful!

I am only a third of a way through this book and if it wasn't for the fact I want to hear these stories (in one volume and at a good price) I would return it. I am going to try to finish it; though, I may still return this and the next volume in the end. I know the narrator is doing what he thinks is a fabulous performance, but I just do not think it reflects the voice of the stories very well. Maybe not so soft and monotonous without personality. Maybe if he performed it like he did in Wrath of the Fallen, by Kristopher Jerome, it would definitely have given the stories more depth. At this point, I would be hesitant to listen to anymore stories narrated by John.

Listen to the snippet before you buy it. It may be worth paying more money to buy several different books, than to buy this volume and the next to save money and to have all the stories consolidated in two places. You may not save money doing it that way, but you will save your sanity.

Enjoyable for the most part but...

The story concepts are quite good in most cases. Lovecraft does well with narrative description but does a figurative face plant on dialogue, in my opinion. But to be fair, I knew that coming into this. Still, these are worth listening to.

The biggest room for improvement is one the part of the reader. This would have benefited significantly from a professional reader. Finn's reading is professionally satisfactory but is fairly monotone for my taste. All the stories started blending together with this low up and down voice range and too steady cadence. Worth listening to once but I'm quite sure I won't come back to it for a second visit.

Surprisingly good...

Reading all the negative reviews regarding Finn J. D. John performance I hesitated with purchase. I gave a listen to sample and decided to give this collection a try. I must say that I really enjoyed J. D. Johns narration! Highly recommended! Looking forward to second volume :-)

Interesting stuff but...

English isn't my first or even second language, so i guess that has at least some effect on my opinion.

The stories are short stories and many of them are interesting, sure, but they all end suddenly.
After listening to the stories I've had to read a plot summary for many of them on Wikipedia afterwards
because the story was suddenly over and either I missed some important part of it, or it didn't have such a part.

Also, the stories are "weird", which is to be expected,and that makes it easy to miss the important parts i mentioned.
However, i really liked the "less weird" stories which had a plot that was easier to follow