Old school collection of horror tales. The stories are woven together. A world of impostors, conspiracies. Things are not as they seem. Not my kind of story. ( )

The Three Impostors by Arthur Machen

Machen is a titan of the weird fiction genre, and this is one of his less famous works. It's an episodic story, the result of serialization, with the framing work of two friends in London with differing views on mystery and spirituality getting wrapped up in a strange web of lies and stories involving magic, lurkers in the wild, and other staples of the old weird.

This is a perfectly diverting book, full of creepiness and period frumpery that was perfectly worth the time reading it. And since it's free on Project Gutenberg, anyone with the slightest urge can give it a try. ( )

This was an entertaining read. A series of interconnected stories which are told during the main story. Really a collection of short stories. Some were quite good. I can’t say I disliked any single story, there were a few less good than others. Nice quick entertaining read. ( )

I really wanted to like this. I read around 120 pages out of the 194 but just couldn't bring myself to waste any more time on it. My wife and I were reading it together and we kept falling asleep and when we went to start up the next night we could never remember what was going on so we would back up a couple pages to try to pick up the trail again. I do think the format's interesting but the stories don't really seemed linked enough to make the reader care about the characters.

Definitely some moments of wit to be found and it made me smile more than once, but not enough "horror" or "supernatural" to keep me interested. ( )

Of all Arthur Machen's work,this,for me is the very best. The construction is unusual to say the least,because encased in the body of the novel are several stand-alone classic horror stories,of which two are quite famous. These are 'The Novel of the Black Seal' and ' The Novel of the White Powder'. These often appear in anthologies of Ghost & Horror stories,but to get the full atmosphere of terror you really should try to read the full text of 'The Three Imposters'. ( )