Into the Black

Tales of Lovecraftian Terror

By: William Meikle

Narrated by: Mike Cuellar

In this collection, you'll find some Mi-Go, Yog-Sototh, Shoggoths, King Arthur, British soldiers, some Deep Ones, scientists of various competencies, Roman centurions, the Antoinine Wall, a fair bit of singing, and some green blobby stuff.

Twelve Lovecraftian tales, all previous published in anthologies.

©2019 William Meikle (P)2023 William Meikle

Diverse Lovecraftian short stories

Another wonderful set of Lovecraftian horror short stories by William Meikle, all having appeared in print before but some appearing in audio book form for the first time here. Meikle varies things up by including stories set in Victorian England, modern America, ancient Rome, a post-climate change near future, and an alternate history where Camelot never fell. This keeps the stories from feeling all the same.

Nnnnnn

Great stories, but the narration sounds like a listening to a community theater during dress rehearsal

Excellent Historical-Mythos story telling

"Into the Black" is rollicking adventure with historical heroes battling eldritch horrors.

I am an enormous fan of H. P. Lovecraft. So it follows I've collected and read/listened to many mythos books as well - all I can get my hands on.

That being said, I was happily surprised at the quality writing of William Meikle.
This may well be my favorite Mythos collection.
It far surpasses the "vague threat" mythos-collections where it's all about mood and creeping-insanity, and you never actually encounter a creature.

It's also not reduced to teenagers fighting Cthulhu with writing aimed at a 7th grade reading skill set.

It's also not a slap in your face with relentlessly brutally depressing endings. Sure this isn't the "Happy Puppy" collection, but evil doesn't always win and we are given just enough light to fight on, for country and king.

At first I was a little unsure of Mike Cuellar's reading. However, his direct narration solidifies up and he never wavers from presenting the text clearly. I was afraid he sounded slightly new to this work, but he kept up a quality read through out, and by the end I couldn't remember exactly what about his reading made me nervous in the first place.

Perhaps I'm paranoid about being burned by Audible.com's lack of quality control, and the overly large amount of awful narrators too often ruining good books - especially in their "Weird Fiction" collections.

INTO THE BLACK is well researched, smartly written, and nicely read, mythos tales.
This is a real gem of an audio-book.

Worth a credit for sure!

This collection did not disappoint, an enjoyable listen until the end. Some stories are much better than others, but I did not find a story that I thought was 'bad'.

As for the narration, the narrator himself was not bad, but the sound quality could have been much better.

Overall though, it's a great collection and highly recommended for fans of Lovecraftian fiction.

The Beginning Was Good

I started out enjoying these tales of Lovecraftian Terror; however, as the stories continued I started to find that the continuous repetition of some of the same phrases got to be repetitive and therefore the end result was somewhat disappointing. On the whole the stories are entertaining, just not as diverse as I was expecting. Mike Cuellar does a good job in his narration. I was given a free copy of the audiobook and I have voluntarily left this review.