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The Shadow over Innsmouth

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The Shadow over Innsmouth

By: H. P. Lovecraft
Narrated by: Richard Coyle
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About this listen

The perfect H. P. Lovecraft title to follow on from 2010's At the Mountains of Madness, and the only HPL title not to appear in a periodical! Perfect also because it is split in to 5 distinct chapters...ripe for abridgement into five half-hour episodes!

The Shadow Over Innsmouth tells the first-person story of a young historian, Robert Olmstead, who, while investigating his family genealogy in New England, is intrigued to learn about a hated and mysterious fishing town called Innsmouth. When he visits he finds the place to be run-down and near-deserted, with a cult-like religion and a strange, degenerate population. His investigation soon turns into a race to escape the town and the the evil creatures he sees emerging from the sea.

The Shadow Over Innsmouth was written by H. P. Lovecraft in 1931 and is the only one of his works of fiction not to have initially been published as part of a periodical. It continues HPL's Cthulhu Mythos, featuring townspeople worshipping the elder sea god Dagon and mentioning the mysterious Shoggoth creature of his other works.

Howard Phillips "H. P." Lovecraft (August 20, 1890 - March 15, 1937) was an American author of horror, fantasy and science fiction, especially the subgenre known as weird fiction. As early as the 1940s, Lovecraft had developed a cult following for his Cthulhu Mythos, a series of loosely interconnected fiction featuring a pantheon of humanity-nullifying entities, as well as the Necronomicon, a fictional grimoire of magical rites and forbidden lore. His works were deeply pessimistic and cynical.

Although Lovecraft's audience was limited during his life, his reputation has grown and he is now regarded as one of the most influential horror writers of the 20th Century. Stephen King called him "the 20th century's greatest practitioner of the classic horror tale." This 2011 adaptation comprises five episodes, originally aired on BBC Radio 4 Extra, once again read by the superb Richard Coyle and featuring music by acclaimed composer Jon Nicholls. The series is offered here in exclusive extended edition.

©2011 Ladbroke Productions (Radio) Ltd (P)2011 Spokenworld Audio/Ladbroke Audio Ltd
Classics Entertainment & Performing Arts Scary Entertainment Fiction
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Loved this! Richard Doyle narration is top level, it's easy to listen to and the music and sound effects make the whole experience very immersive! I highly recommend for anyone who is a longtime or new to Lovecraft's tales.

Drove me insane!

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I found the story to be very gripping.
The writing is definitely of a different era, and he has a tendency to give much of the mystery away too early.
But this is one of the original masterpieces of fantasy horror.
It's short, compelling, and the narration is 10/10.
Well worth a listen.

Classic Fantasy Horror

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This production is fantastic. The narration, music and sound effects create an atmospheric and absorbing experience.

Atmospheric

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The performance and the production value of the audiobook are brilliant, but sadly, I can’t recommend it. The audiobook makes the baffling decision to omit entire paragraphs and in some cases whole pages of this already short novel. At one point it actually invented an entire Segway between paragraphs so it could cut out parts of the story. This desire to edit the story is not only disrespectful to the original narrative but means the adaptation actively omits some of the stories best bits. this butchery rendering this excellent production worthless if you’re interested in a faithful listen.

Not the full story

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