The Shadow Over Innsmouth introduces the coastal town of Innsmouth and the amphibious Deep Ones to Lovecraft’s mythos. It’s a well put together story, all about a traveler that decided to take a detour he was warned against and ends up in a town with something of a dark secret.

Overall, the plot is relatively straight forward and even the twist at the end was sort of expected (given the narrators genealogical bent). It’s still interesting to read though and there are some really tense moments and shiver inducing descriptions of the Deep Ones.

Unfortunately, the middle section of the book wherein Zadok Allen (the town drunk) gives a nice info dump about the history of the town and actually describes the Deep Ones for the first time is written in a drunken accented style that’s difficult to read at best. I cannot actually think of a time where actually writing dialog in such a style served to enhance a story, particularly with how thick it was in this case. I found myself skipping over words and even whole sentences.

Overall, a middling story out of Lovecraft’s I’ve read thus far. Still pretty good.