Lovecraft does not waste a single word. Every expression, every phrase, is masterfully selected to evoke a sense of the macabre. Like a masterful surgeon, Lovecraft’s meticulous prose is methodical and scrupulous. Such expertise is carried across the body of his writing, though The Call of Cthulhu is undoubtedly the best example. This story captures so much of Lovecraft’s twisted imagination; it is the pinnacle of his writing, the best of his form. The brilliance of it resides in the way it can be mysterious, ethereal and untouchable yet so real and physically haunting. Cthulhu is an ancient entity, shrouded and forgotten, yet he is very real in the minds of those he touches and those that worship him. Hidden away, buried, in a dark underground city deep under the ocean, Cthulhu is older than the sun and the stars. Like nothing that has ever walked the earth, he is part man, part dragon and part octopus; he is a being of unimaginable cosmic proportions: beholding his form is enough to drive the sanest man into the lowest pits of hysteria and despair. Although he is near impossible to find, even for the most devout and deranged of his followers, he has the power to find you: he has the power to invade your dreams and unhinge your thoughts forevermore. Cthulhu is one of my favourite creations within fiction, period. I find the scope of such an entity magnificent and the open-endedness of this story spectacular. Will Cthulhu ever rise? Could anything stop him mastering the earth? Will he finally call his followers to his side? "This was that cult, and the prisoners said it had always existed and always would exist, hidden in distant wastes and dark places all over the world until the time came when the great priest Cthulhu, from his dark house in the might city of R’lyeh under the waters, should rise and bring the earth again beneath his sway. Some day he would call, when the stars were ready, and the secret cult would always be ready to liberate him."