No eldritch horrors! Yay! Insanity in the bloodline! Yay...? First, a disclaimer. The N-word is used in this book, a product of its time and the author's values at the time of writing. This is the uncensored version and thus drops the N-word as casually as we say 'black' or 'African American.' Just a heads up. The Rats in the Walls is more 'terrestrial' than Lovecraft's famous works, featuring the descendant of a prodigal ancestor who killed his De La Poer family off and fleed, the protagonist returning after his own son's death to restore the burnt family manor. Themes include madness intertwined with the Pandora's Box of knowledge we regret opening, echoes of tainted ancestry dovetailing with Lovecraft's fear of miscegenation (interbreeding across races) also touched upon in "Arthur Jermyn." Overall notable in being more 'grounded', Lovecraft being Lovecraft but with racism (which he was in his earlier writing years, he eased up later if memory serves)