Minicthulhu, that's something people differ about. Lovecraft read some of Williams's novels:
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sacnoths.blogspot.com]
Lovecraft didn't live long enough to read Williams's major late novels
Descent into Hell and
All Hallows' Eve.
Williams, especially in those later two books, is in the tradition of the British literary ghost story-horror story, as discussed by Glen Cavaliero in his book on Williams and in his study
The Supernatural in English Literature. If you are an admirer of Onions's "The Beckoning Fair One," I'd say
Descent into Hell could be a good Williams novel to try first. The succubus there is exceptionally convincing, in my opinion. Someone could write a comparison-contrast of Onions's author-protagonist and the historian in the Williams novel who evokes the succubus when his attentions to her human counterpart are not satisfactory. This Dantean novel, however, is fairly demanding. If you admire Lovecraft's romance of sorcery
Case of Charles Dexter Ward, you might try
All Hallows' Eve, which is also concerned with the activities of an ambitious black magician who is known to the public as a healer. Williams evokes the whole world of the recently dead in a way that is a bit akin to some of the better
Twilight Zone teleplays.
If you want just a fast-moving thriller with explicit black magic elements, you could try the earlier novel, titled
War in Heaven, I'm not sure why. I enjoy it, but Williams is trying a little too hard to be entertaining at times, perhaps imitating John Buchan. But for me the horror element can be intense: I'm thinking of the part of the story in which a young woman is "accidentally" cut by an avuncular black magician who then "treats" her with an ointment that opens her to harmful spiritual forces, such that this intelligent and modest woman strips herself and falls into a sort of frenzied dance, to the horror of her husband and the magician's secret satisfaction. He is after her little boy for the purposes of a sacrifice to Satan. The novel concerns the Holy Graal. Williams had been initiated into an occult society by the friend of Arthur Machen, A. E. Waite. Williams knew quite a bit about the historical background of some things drawn upon by some horror writers, being author of a history,
Witchcraft.
You can read Williams's one short story, a weird tale, here:
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ebooks.adelaide.edu.au]
Minicthulhu, did you want to comment on when you first read....?
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 4 Dec 19 | 03:23PM by Dale Nelson.