read At the Mountains of Madness, as well as some shorts, since I have the free ebook version of Lovecraft's complete works

Mountains of Madness is pretty impressive, I think I went into it with the preconception that his prose is a little too antiquated to be compelling, but really I shouldn't have

yes, there are lots of extensive descriptions, but you can sense that he imagined all of this clearly and vividly, and it's quite beautiful

this is more a work of science fiction than horror, and probably the precedent for a lot of ideas in both genres

I appreciate the use of scientific terminology without trying to explain it or tone it down, it's not something I often see now

and because it is a story of science fiction, and of a fictional history, it inspires more curiosity than dread for the majority of the story

if the narrator's intent was to discourage exploration of the area, I'm sure any scientist (and the author himself, perhaps) would realize he did not achieve his objective

as for the horror parts, they are kept judiciously brief and toward the end

not showing is more effective than showing, and while this idea may be overused now, maybe it was fresher when this was written

the one thing that is overused is the narrator's own commentary on how terrible something is and how he really doesn't want to talk about it, it didn't quite succeed in building atmosphere

and as always all this shit started because a biologist had to do things their way \o/

anyway I'll probably pick around in the collection some more

I already sense my sentences in prose getting longer from this influence I hope it doesn't take