Cats or reheated cutlet
Unfortunately, I cannot write too many good words about the reviewed item. And it’s not about the translation, edition or content in general. Everything is fine and even better, but at the same time it’s not. The problem is not how the book was published, but why it was even published. After all, you can find two Lovecraft omnibuses from Vesper and two from Zysku on the market, and they contain all the stories that, incidentally, also belong to this collection. Here, indeed, we get the better bits of that literary dish, but these bites are very much taken out of context. In Lovecraft, many stories overlap, be it through the character of Randolph Carter, Arkham University or the mythology of the Great Ancients. Spending the Silver Key, for example, without, for example, the Randolph Carter Incidentsit misses the point. But it is of little importance anyway. The problem with this collection, as well as the earlier one, is that Vesper has a tendency to take it apart and sell its omnibuses separately. He did so with Poe, and now he does with Lovecraft. I understand that such editions are more handy and maybe sell better, but I don’t understand why publishing these big, several hundred-page knigs. You could put out a series of such little collections and, after the problem, or complete more unpublished texts and put them out as an item full of new content. In this case, of all the stories, only the title Cats of Ulthar are “new”, but they still appear in the anthologies of Zysku. They differ only in translation. Also, paying the full price for one new story is a bit wrong for the readers. I do not approve of this.
Cats , the master edition
A few bitter words have been written, but now let’s move on to the pluses of this item. There are quite a lot of them and they are mainly responsible for the final note. First of all, all the stories are translated by Maciej Płaza, and he was able to convey the spirit of Lovecraftian prose like no one else. Added to this are the amazing paintings by Krzysztof Wroński. They are extremely subjective and in the spirit of the mythology of the Great Ancients. One should also appreciate the presence of the afterword, which sheds a bit more light on the meanders of the work of the Providence loner. And finally, the very shape of the book should be praised. The Vesper does not stick around and every item I have come across was issued on great quality paper and with an appropriately styled cover. This is also the case here. The icing on the cake is the presence of a bookmark prepared especially for the book. One would like more publishers to do something like this. Hats off.
Summing up, despite the nonsense of publishing the entire collection for just one story and demanding the full price for it, I must say that the volume itself is a masterpiece. For people who are put off by huge books, just right. For fans, the item is actually negligible, as the stories are also in other volumes. Nevertheless, I give the highest note, as both the content and the release deserve it.
