Winter Tide

I am one of those people who were really into Lovecraft until they discovered he was a huge racist and homophobe, among other things; the contemporary reclamation of Lovecraft’s iconic mythology is delicious, and this book is a wonderfully eerie, weird entry into the new canon.

This book checks a lot of my personal boxes, like secretive government experiments, shady, half-revealed lore, and lyrical writing. I’m a huge fan of stories where you know just enough about what’s going on to keep up, and the characters are so sympathetic that you’ll follow the mystery for their sake alone. 

I have always been a fan of Lovecraft, but the unfathomable remoteness of his fearsome creations left me dissatisfied. Ruthanna Emrys flips the Lovecraftian script on its head and tells tales within Lovecraft’s universe from the perspective of the characters that Lovecraft vilified. In a world that celebrates diverse perspectives far more than in Lovecraft’s day, Winter Tide gives readers a chance to appreciate the richness and creativity of Lovecraft’s world through the eyes of its marginalized characters.

I was honoured to panel with Emrys at a con a few years ago, where it was clear that she was a cosmic horror expert and had done reams more reading on its context, legacy, influences, and analysis than the rest of us. What she writes with all that scholarship, though, is deeply human, affecting, and emotional. In focusing on the persecuted people of Innsmouth, this book becomes a study of family and connection, and answers in a very different way the traditional cosmic horror questions of 'What is a monster?' and 'How do we decide what should be called… show more.