List price: $10.00 (that's 20% off!)
It is good because it is quite scary and when they go crazy they go crazy. The ending ! marvelous i haven't seen a better book yet wich has a better ending than this book.I also think that it would be quite fun being deserted on an island but when you read this book you won't want to be left on an island ever.
Captivating reading for the mystery buff.
My big gripe is how much it costs. It's ridiculously overpriced. I don't know what the publishers were thinking (maybe "there's a sucker born every minute"), but that's far too much for what you get. Sure, it has an index, and sure, there are vintage illustrations by Roy Krenkel and J. Allen St. John (no Frazetta). But it's "trade" size and a paperback, for crying out loud. If I'd seen it in a store (I ordered it through the mail) I'd expect it to be priced [lower]. And a casual perusal turned up a few errors. Most were just typos, but in one case at least there was a bigger error. The city of Castrum Mare in Tarzan and the Lost Empire is given here as "Castra" Mare, and this is repeated several times throughout the book. Don't buy this book unless (1) you're rich, or (2) you're an ERB fanatic that can't live without it. Or, of course, if the price comes down. It's definitely worth borrowing, naturally.
Four stars for content, two for the price.
List price: $18.95 (that's 30% off!)
Of the three stories I read recently in this volume, Morella is the least successful, a rehash of Leonora (a dead wife is reincarnated in her daughter), but there a brilliance in Poe's dramatising of an idea that is admirable.
The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar is truly disgusting and horrifying. A hynotist experiments on a dying man to see if he can prolong life after death. The cool analytic style lead contemporaries to confuse it with a medical testcase (it was published in a scientific journal), but what is most memorable is the anguish of the dead man who cannot rest.
Best of all though is the immortal Black Cat. Violent and unconsionable, the brutalities in this story are among the most grotesque in literature, both to animals and to people. Poe's style is at his most poetically sustained as he describes the most vile barbarities with his character's objectionable self-pity. What is most sublime, though, is the note of black comedy that is laced throughout, which would be foregrounded in Roger Corman's hilarious version in Tales Of Terror.
Van Leer's introduction is informative enough, but there is a note of begrudgery and a refusal to take Poe altogether seriously, that is aggravating.
This is somewhat compensated for by Michael York's exellent rendering of "The Raven" and David Warner's various readings which wonderfully capture Poe's mood and spirit.
Overall, still worth the price. I don't regret having purchased it and I'm still enjoying it a month later. If only "Annabel Lee" had been assigned to Mr. York or Mr. Warner!