The Accursed Partnership of H P Lovecraft and Zaelia Reed Bishop
How much do we hate the H P Lovecraft/Zaelia Reed Bishop collaborations? A lot. And there's not one, not two, but THREE of them!
THE CURSE OF YIG
Probably the least objectionable of the bunch, even though it introduced Yig, Lord of Snakes, or whatever he's supposed to be. What exactly does this guy bring to the Mythos' table other than one more weird name? No matter how many times "Yig" is repeated by the narrator (and it's repeated quite a lot), he doesn't come close to sounding as interesting as Cthulhu, Nyarlathotep, Yog Sothoth, or Azathoth. Also, snakes are just so unoriginal when compared to deep sea horrors and eldritch monstrosities from another dimension. Yawn. The Curse of Yig tells the story of a couple who travelled to Oklahoma and pissed off Yig when the wife killed a nest of snakes. Naturally, their daddy isn't happy about it and, you guessed it, curses her. The wife ends up killing the husband after she takes him for Yig himself, goes mad, and later gives birth to several human/serpent hybrids. It's actually good and only became annoying in retrospect, after The Mound kept pushing this Yig thing.
THE MOUND
God, The Mound, the very long, never-ending The Mound, how we hate thee! We've seen this praised for its world-building, but frankly, the eldritch history on display is crap when compared with At the Mountains of Madness, The Whisperer in Darkness, The Shadow Out of Time, or even The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath. Oho, look, a secret underground morally bankrupt alien civilization! How about we spend an absurd number of paragraphs describing this boringly unoriginal society? And don't forget Yig, the Father of All Serpents. Hmm, how about no?
The Mound is the story of an ethnologist who, while investigating an old legend and ghost apparitions on, you guessed it, a mound, finds out about the existence of an underground alien civilization. He, and we, learn about their society through a scroll written by a Spanish traveler centuries ago. Bishop's idea was of a simple ghost story, but Lovecraft expanded it and connected it to the Mythos. We're sure that she was about as thrilled with this development as we were after we had the misfortune of reading it. Look, sometimes, when reading older stories, we must keep in mind that if anything sounds familiar is because of all the derivative works of all those who came after and took inspiration from that original concept. However, even taking that into account, the K'n-yan feel like Lovecraft was just following already existing tropes. Living Tsath doesn't hold a candle to dead R'lyeh. This is one of the few times H P actually described anything instead of merely suggesting it, and it sucks. Also, stop trying to make Yig happen!
MEDUSA'S COIL
On one hand this is considerably shorter than The Mound, but on the other, it features black people. Lovecraft and Bishop really should've limited themselves to Native Americans. Sure, the results weren't exactly PC, but at least they were better than this. In Medusa's Coil, the son of a wealthy plantation owner marries a strange, beautiful woman who turns out to be not only part eldritch abomination, but also has African ancestry. Guess which one the narrator considers to be worse. Long story short, everyone ends up dead and the place is burned to the ground.
It's unclear who included the African bit. As seen in The Shadow Over Innsmouth and The Dunwich Horror, having alien blood is enough for Lovecraft. The aliens or human/alien hybrids also tend to be given evil characteristics in addition to their nonhuman heritage, like a taste for human sacrifices, or the goal of summoning powerful alien deities. There's a big difference in how he wrote about Wilbur Whateley and Asenath Waites, even though they were both half human. One is an active villain, the other a victim, who's afforded some sympathy by Arthur Derby. Even the nonwhite characters are shown participating in evil rites and worshipping Cthulhu. Marceline doesn't really do anything other than exist and possibly being infatuated with the painter. Lovecraft was against interracial couples, but the idea of a part African woman seducing her way into a respectable, wealthy family resulting in their destruction also fits Bishop, who herself married a southern farmer and was primarily a romance writer. Regardless of who came up with what, the story is really bad. Like we said, Marceline does nothing. All the death happens after she's killed. The supposed villain of the story feels more like a wronged victim. All it would take to make her a threat would be to present the marriage as part of some villainous scheme to help Cthulhu. But there's nothing. We don't even understand why she agreed to the marriage in the first place. If we remove the eldritch abomination bit, Marceline becomes nothing but a deceitful possible gold digger. No wonder Cthulhu didn't bother showing up.
VERDICT
Thank Nyarlathotep that Bishop refused to pay Lovecraft what she owed him for his work or we might've been subjected to more of this crap!