The Shadow Over Innsmouth is a short novel about a weird hybrid race of humans and creatures resembling a cross between a fish and a frog, which lives in the seaside village of Innsmouth, so says the synopsis. In reality, it reads like a journal or a travelogue, and honestly, the writing style kept me with it as much as anything, as it was very matter-of-fact about what the writer went through. I’ve had this on my to-read list for a very long time, having been a goth teenager with a penchant for reading excessive amounts of books, and the books I skipped over in my goth-dom would probably have gotten me kicked out for cardinal sins - I never got around to Lovecraft or Gaiman’s Sandman comics, for instance -- so I’m glad I’ve finally gotten to both this year. I think I missed the comics train, unfortunately, but this was very readable and very creepy.
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The plot of this story: Interracial relationships create frog-fish people because Lovecraft is racist, paranoid, and scared of everything around him.

The drinking game for this book is how many times do they say the word "queer". With the word to mean odd, but even if we hear the word queer and go "oh, that means odd", there are so many times when it is said over and over and back to back, that I wonder why he emphasized with this word. He has some people say the exact same line using the word over and over as well.

That said, when he's not dropping his little moments of racism and talking about how people are different because of their melanin, he's nailed some of the elements that I like about his writing in this one. It still gets dampened because if you're listening to an audiobook or even reading it you start to read the word queer over and over and over. But there's a strength to his words and the way he chooses those certain right ones to describe things. Lovecraft's word usage evokes visual images as well as a mood.

Thus when his mood he evokes is a very negative one, you can really feel everything wrong with his story. How outdated it is, how it hasn't aged well. Those little things really stand out when he makes an emotion appear that isn't a good one that carries along with his book.

At one point the main character stops and talks to somebody, for no reason at all that person begins to give the entire history from the start to present day. This takes up a huge portion of the story and feels like telling and not showing.

The story keeps getting distracted as it goes on, there's obviously a creature, or creatures. But the more the book goes on to talk about them the more it strays into just talking about little things such as how racist the people are, and what they think is happening not showing what's actually happening.

One of my greatest struggles with H.P. Lovecraft is I wish that he had actually expanded on his stuff properly. It often feels like there is a creature that is never spoken about and always talked around. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to take away from this besides the townsfolk think there's a creature. It's not until near the end that you really start hearing about it, sure it's described here and there but it's not a focal point. The focal point is obviously Innsmouth but not the creature that lives there.

A terrible error in writing.

Once more it's an intriguing story but falls flat on delivery.

2.5 stars. ( )

Not easily put down. Great imagery. A classic! ( )

Well you can't do any better than Lovecraft read by the inimitable Mike Bennett. He's almost a better voice actor than he is an original writer. Every eldritch purple syllable just oozes from the page as we take our ichthyous narrator down memory lane in Ol' Innsmouth. You'll want to turn the lights out, turn the volume up and make sure the lid to the aquarium is screwed down tight as you wander with Mike down the dilapidated streets of one of Massachusetts oldest sea towns. ( )

Lovecrafts racism is very clearly on display here, and any review needs to highlight how obvious and off-putting this part of his writing is. Beyond that, there are some positives and negatives. The extended dialogue with Zadok is slightly frustrating to read, partly because of the accented writing, partly because it’s a bit of a clunky exposition dump. The description of the Innsmouth residents is brilliant for the most part - the ‘bulgy eyes’ and ‘arms that dragged against the floor’ are really visually provoking. The escape from the Inn is probably the most atmospheric part of the book, and the most gripping. The escape from the town is also, but doesn’t quite reach this height again. The central idea of the book is brilliant, and it is obvious how it has influenced horror writing since. However, some of the flaws of Lovecraft's writing let down the premise. ( )