Kenneth Hite's "Tour de Lovecraft" Released

Game writer and Lovecraft scholar Kenneth Hite has made available his latest work of Lovecraftian scholarship, Tour de Lovecraft: The Tales via Atomic Overmind Press. The book is a new text of observations, rants, and literary analyses centered on H.P. Lovecraft's tales. Hite explored the fictional geography of Lovecraft's realms in a series of essays published by "Weird Tales" earlier this year, so he's on firm ground for this project. Tour de Lovecraft is also a rare contribution to the small field of Lovecraft scholarship, where new additions are almost always welcome.

The new book gallivants through over fifty major stories by HPL in an attempt at providing new insights from an author who knows his weird fiction. While not as serious as heavyweight experts in the field like S.T. Joshi and Robert M. Price, Hite's essays may be welcomed even more for that reason. The growing "new" generation of Lovecraft readers continue to know the Providence author through "Cutethulhu" type humor and other recommendations on the internet. This means they may well appreciate a less formal overview of Lovecraft's fiction. In any case, Tour de Lovecraft can fill a gap for those who like reading Lovecraft, but don't know where to begin with deeper divinations into his stories. Here's more from the publisher's description:

A wide-ranging and friendly journey through H.P. Lovecraft’s tales of cosmic terror and wonder, the Tour de Lovecraft is the ideal companion to the work of the twentieth century’s greatest American horrorist. Kenneth Hite has spent decades reading and re-reading Lovecraft and his heirs, slipping through their forests of verbiage to discover the solid literary ground beneath. With his game designer’s eye for structure and connection, in this book he reveals the threads and themes that run throughout Lovecraft’s masterpieces. The Tour de Lovecraft alternately ambles and careens through all fifty-one of the Master’s horror tales in chronological order from “The Tomb” to “The Haunter of the Dark,” offering cheerful opinion, incisive literary criticism, playful speculation, and the occasional unhinged rant. It’s a response to Lovecraft, and to his occasionally humorless critics, that offers you Edmund Burke’s Gothic perspective on Cthulhu side-by-side with “The Haunter of the Dark” considered as Grail quest.

Tour de Lovecraft is available on Amazon. Hite recently released a parody of a popular children's book with a Lovecraft twist, Where the Deep Ones Are, as well. For the curious, readers can get their fill of Kenneth Hite's game weaving and other projects at his Livejournal here.

-Grim Blogger