Review: Where’s My Shoggoth? / Author: Ian Thomas / Publisher: Archaia / Art: Adam Bolton / Release Date: Out Now

When I was growing up, the really cool and creepy things were hard to get your hands on. Children weren’t supposed to go near genuinely scary ideas, and so we had to make do with low quality Halloween costumes, vampire teeth, and if we were very lucky, the occasional horror comic. It was years before I even heard of some of the more classic horror stories, and many people thought it was all genuinely nasty rather than spooky fun.

These days of course, you can go online and find all the spooky fun you want. Parents can happily ease their children into the idea of scary stories, and show them how to have fun with the dark and weird. Sometimes, this can be a little kitsch (such as Cthullhu baby costumes), but when done well, it can be a great experience for everyone. A fantastic example of this is Where’s My Shoggoth, a children’s book aimed at all ages.

This glow-in-the-dark stocking filler draws its inspiration from the works of HP Lovecraft, and treats that elderly (and difficult to get into) work with a joy-filled heart and a tongue rammed firmly into its cheek. This is a beautiful book, each page lavishly illustrated by Adam Bolton. The story is about a child looking for its shoggoth, a horrible monster from Lovecraft’s classic story At the Mountains of Madness, and is short, funny, clever and apes the style of many a children’s book. Ian Thomas has a real wit and really captures the things that people love about monsters and HP Lovecraft. The tale really flows, and is the sort of thing you can happily read out aloud.

This a firmly recommended gift for anyone in life who has a taste for the bizarre, or if you fancy a pretty looking and personality filled book to show off to your friends