Two Cthulhu Tales
(2025)(A book in the Trojan Donkey Chapbooks series)
A collection of stories by Rhys Hughes
The god of shrieking and immemorial lunacy returns, once to Portugal and once to Patagonia, and eldritch mayhem is the result.
"Tower finished speaking. The thing was fully awake. Harris squinted. An octopus? No, not quite. It had many of the characteristics of an octopus, the tentacles and beak in particular, but there was something essentially alien about it, a glint in its eyes that was an afterimage of daylight that had not come from the sun but a distant star. And it seemed perfectly at ease on land. It raised itself on the tips of its tentacles, as no octopus ever could, and opened its beak to reveal not just one tongue but a tangle of them. Then it screamed in joy. Harris was physically knocked back by the vibrations. Tower gestured to an accomplice. ‘Activate the lever!’
"Rhys Hughes seems almost the sum of our planet’s literature. He toys with convention. He makes the metaphysical political, the personal incredible and the comic hints at subtle pain. Few living fictioneers approach this chef’s sardonic confections, certainly not in English.’ — MICHAEL MOORCOCK
"If I said he was a Welsh writer who writes as though he has gone to school with the best writing from all over the world, I wonder if my compliment would just sound provincial. Hughes’ style, with all that means, is among the most beautiful I’ve encountered in several years.’ — SAMUEL R. DELANY
"It’s a crime that Rhys Hughes is not as widely known as Italo Calvino and other writers of that stature. Brilliantly written and conceived, Hughes’ fiction has few parallels anywhere in the world. In some alternate universe with a better sense of justice, his work triumphantly parades across all bestseller lists.’ — JEFF VANDERMEER
Genre: Horror
"Tower finished speaking. The thing was fully awake. Harris squinted. An octopus? No, not quite. It had many of the characteristics of an octopus, the tentacles and beak in particular, but there was something essentially alien about it, a glint in its eyes that was an afterimage of daylight that had not come from the sun but a distant star. And it seemed perfectly at ease on land. It raised itself on the tips of its tentacles, as no octopus ever could, and opened its beak to reveal not just one tongue but a tangle of them. Then it screamed in joy. Harris was physically knocked back by the vibrations. Tower gestured to an accomplice. ‘Activate the lever!’
"Rhys Hughes seems almost the sum of our planet’s literature. He toys with convention. He makes the metaphysical political, the personal incredible and the comic hints at subtle pain. Few living fictioneers approach this chef’s sardonic confections, certainly not in English.’ — MICHAEL MOORCOCK
"If I said he was a Welsh writer who writes as though he has gone to school with the best writing from all over the world, I wonder if my compliment would just sound provincial. Hughes’ style, with all that means, is among the most beautiful I’ve encountered in several years.’ — SAMUEL R. DELANY
"It’s a crime that Rhys Hughes is not as widely known as Italo Calvino and other writers of that stature. Brilliantly written and conceived, Hughes’ fiction has few parallels anywhere in the world. In some alternate universe with a better sense of justice, his work triumphantly parades across all bestseller lists.’ — JEFF VANDERMEER
Genre: Horror
Used availability for Rhys Hughes's Two Cthulhu Tales