Rapture of the Deep and Other Lovecraftian Tales
Cody Goodfellow
Hippocampus Press
March, 2016
Reviewed by David Goudsward
Cody Goodfellow is one of those writers who actually understands that the craftsmanship of Lovecraftian horror story involves more than mentioning a tentacled terror, but one of the great problems facing readers today is that due to proliferation of horror collections alleging to be Lovecraftian is that it becomes increasingly hard to separate the wheat from the chaff. It has become fiscally impossible to buy everything and readers risk missing some of the truly great contributions to the genre, such as the provocative tales of Cody Goodfellow.
Hippocampus Press has alleviated this problem with Rapture of the Deep, collecting ten of Goodfellow’s best short stories and novellas of the last decade plus two original novelettes, “Swinging” and “Archons.” Goodfellow knows his source material and takes Lovecraft’s concepts and runs with them in unexpected directions. Among the stories, occasionally whimsical but always true to their roots in Providence, are period pieces such as “The Anatomy Lesson” where Victorian medical students discover Pickman’s models are not limited to Boston, and “To Skin a Corpse” with gangsters trying to find hidden loot by repeatedly reanimating the diminishing remains of their former partner. But Goodfellow is equally at ease in the modern day as evidenced by “In the Shadow of Swords” with American soldiers battling Taliban fighters only to discover that the evil men do is next to nothing in comparison to ancient evils.
Cody Goodfellow has developed a reputation as one of the top writers of neo-Lovecraftian fiction. It is a well-deserved reputation. This book is all the proof you need.
