Book: The Devourer Below
Year: 2021
Pages: 320
Part of Series: Arkham Horror Novels
Reading Time: 3/10/2021 to 6/10/2021 (4 days)
Rating: 5 Stars
Stories Within -
Running the Night whiskey - Evan Dicken
Shadows dawning - Georgina Kamsika
The Hounds Below - Josh Reynolds
Labyrinth - Thomas Parrot
All My Friends Are Monsters - Davide Mana
The Darkling Woods - Cath Lauria
Professor Warren’s Investiture - David Annandale
Sins in the Blood - Thomas Parrot
This was the first anthology in Arkham Horror series published by Aconyte
On contrary of most people here I didn't receive this book for free. I have to purchase them so my review will be , as always true... well to myself at least.
What can I say? This is a collection of short stories most of them interconnected by two things - one some characters do jump around from one tale to another and the monster of the week is Umôrdhoth and all stories are connected to him our his cultists.
To be quite honest there isn't a single story I should say it's brilliant. To be quite honest they all seem bland with except of Thomas Parrot duology (there are two linked stories). The last story joins most characters from other stories and finish (some kind of finish - status quo must be maintain as you are writing in a share universe).
Well, all of these stories had some characters that we can play as investigators and others as carts. They all have somekind of background and the writers, I believe, are free to conjure the rest and give adventures BUT maintainingthe status quo. So, an investigator cannot be killed or become crazy and so. When you make a character like that your main character as a reader you know nothing bad will happen and thus the tale looses a bit of magic. The same happens with the main villain (villains). If you kill them the game ends and Call of Cthulhu never ends.
So, what did I think of the stories...
Some were more revenge, others more investigation kind of stories, one was back in time story , one was a more in a perspective a of a cultist . The last tale is the best one of the bunch.
First of all, these authors know that this tales are set in 1920's? Yeah? Gay Rights were not a priority ye know? But at least two of our characters were gay (lesbian). Why had you the need to add lesbian characters in tales they have no meaning whatsoever?
Besides the lesbians in two stories, no other characters (I would say non-gay) mentioned their loved ones OR even their sexuality. But Lesbians? The authors had to say several times about them. You know what this means correct? Pandering. It's like now they can go on twitter and say - hey my story had a lesbian couple. Next one will have a POC and I will feel all the boxes and you shouldn't cancel me, right?
That's it.
That part was un-necessary, unrealistic (yeah people didn't care about gay people back in 1920's. If these authors thinking they are the fringe because they are advocating the rights of LGBT - I mean LGBT is everywhere nowadays, everyone defends their rights and revindication. You are not the fringe by writing stories of gays and lesbians - you are the norm. You are the estabelishment.
But overall they are just okish stories. Nothing to praise a lot but reading about the characters you usually play it was good.
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