Thanks to the kindness and patience of lokilokust , I was finally able to read the set of novelettes Delirium Books released in tribute to H.P. Lovecraft. Dark Homage: Lovecraft is a collection of six small format hardcovers, each containing a story by a contemporary author influenced by the Old Man of Providence. Like a number of Delirium releases, the set was produced in an absurdly small print run of 100 copies, which really does no favors to fans of these writers or of Lovecraft, nor does it do much for the authors themselves. I'm not sure what the set originally retailed for, but it currently goes for $300 and up at the few online retailers that carry it.

The stories themselves range in length from fifty to one hundred ten pages and vary widely in quality. Had they been issued together in a trade paperback anthology, I would have been disappointed to pay $20 for the whole collection. Luckily I was spared having to shell out actual money to read them.

Stephen Mark Rainey's Epiphany: A Flying Tigers Story kicks off the series and is one of the strongest works in the group. Rainey uses dense exposition delivered by an erudite first-person narrator to build his atmosphere, in true Lovecraftian fashion. But he doesn't rely on archaic phrasing, cheap verbal pastiche, or mythos name-dropping to deliver an homage, which is refreshing. The ending of the story doesn't quite live up to the fine tension Rainey develops, but it's still an effective tale.

The same can't be said for Charlee Jacob's The Seventh Victim, which reads like a knock-off of the films Seven and Identity with a sprinkling of Lovecraftian furniture to make it fit the series' label. It was entirely predictable and had basically nothing to do with Lovecraft's mode or philosophy. Jacob is usually a more stylistically interesting writer than this as well, but everything about the story is flat.

The less said about Brian Lumley's The Man Who Killed Kew Gardens, the better. Plants! Taking over the earth! Rivalled only by...unnecessary punctuation! Evil!? Yes!

Jeffrey Thomas's The Arms of the Sun is the fastest paced of the six novelettes, and like Rainey's story it manages to capture a certain Lovecraftian concept without the usual pastiche trappings. There's a Night of the Living Dead/Invasion of the Body Snatchers sensibility to the narrative, which drops the reader in media res of an apocalyptic event and focuses on an isolated couple's struggle to survive. Thomas also manages to cap his story with a devastating ending.

Matt Cardin is one of those rare horror authors who is also a true scholar and intellectual. His studies in philosophy and religion inform his fiction, which is heavily influenced by both Lovecraft and Ligotti, and his work is usually the highlight of whatever venue it graces. His novella The God of Foulness is longest book in the Dark Homage set, and it captures an aspect of Lovecraft's philosophy while forging new ground in an expansion of the mythos. Cardin keeps one foot in the body-grotesque of contemporary horror and the other in the cosmic implications of HPL's creations.

While John Pelan is an excellent editor and a generally solid writer (not to mention a long-time Lovecraft fan), his An Outsider doesn't manage to maintain the momentum of the previous two books in the series. Instead, Pelan closes the set with a repetitive story that begs to be half its length and that doesn't quite capture the cosmic sense that it strives for. The ending in particular is a disappointment, descending as it does into well-worn territory of protagonist-reversal that other authors have executed with more skill.

In general the collection was a disappointment, despite some very good stories. It's unfortunate that Thomas's story doesn't appear in his new collection of Lovecraft-inspired stories, Unholy Dimensions, as I'd just point people there if it did. Hell, I'll still point people there. I've got my fingers crossed that Cardin will issue another collection, this time with The God of Foulness as its anchor. His Divinations of the Deep is a must-read for any fan of Lovecraftian fiction.