Joseph S. Pulver (1955–2020)

Here's an intriguing premise for an anthology. This collection of jauniste tales is written by a wide assortment of contemporary authors, but they are all women, whom editor Joe Pulver calls "the Sisters of the Yellow Sign." Cassilda, Queen of Carcosa, is thus referenced in the book title and becomes or overshadows a central character in many of the stories.

The quality of the work here is consistently high. In addition to displacing perspective from Chambers' precedent masculinity, the show more writers often vault away from his whiteness (as in "Yellow Bird," "In the Quad of Project 327," and "Pro Patria!") and even his human species (i.e. the canine protagonist of "Old Tsah-Hov"). These are all standout contributions, and so is Selena Chambers' quasi-scholarly and meta-literary "The Neurastheniac."

In keeping with the general trends of work inspired by The King in Yellow of Robert W. Chambers, there is no narrative continuity that joins these pieces together, just themes, motives, and mechanisms. Corruption, towers, masks, artistry, compulsion, dual suns, black stars, multiple moons, the indecipherable sign, the dreadful play, the ruined city, and the fathomless king are all brought forth in passage after passage. show less

This book is one of a tiny number (probably in the single digits) to focus on the elaboration of the jauniste weird, a literary tradition with its seminal irruption in The King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers. Far more enjoyable than the sort of pastiches and retreads that are common to the Lovecraftian "mythos," these stories take motives and inspiration from the source material, but they are invariably discrete and original approaches to madness and terror. The dread play itself mutates show more into opera, film, radio, children's television, tribal folklore, and other media. The metafictional qualities of the original Chambers stories (and the cousin-kisses they received from later Yog-Sothothery) have led many contributors to bring in other literary allusions ranging from Antonin Artaud to C.S. Lewis.

Materially, the book is no great shakes. The cover art is attractive enough, but the paper and binding are print-on-demand quality, and it could have used much more thorough proofing to attend to the ubiquitous typos. It almost avoids the nonsense "Yellow Sign" that originated in game graphics, but the damned thing still appears in the midst of the letter o in "Carcosa" on the spine! The book's greatest unmet desideratum is some information on the contributors, most of whom were new to me.

Stand-out pieces included the hallucinatory Victorian American period piece "MS Found in a Chicago Hotel Room" by Daniel Mills, the erudite surrealist "Theater and Its Double" by Edward Morris, and the psychotic crescendo of "Whose Hearts Are Pure Gold" by Kristin Prevallet. The sardonic present-day story by Cody Goodfellow, "Wishing Well," reminded me a great deal of the work of Chuck Palahniuk, and was certainly one of the volume's best.

All of these stories are suitably eerie and perverse. Perhaps as many as a third of them culminate with the incoherent collapse of the narrating perspective, which doesn't seem excessive given the importance of madness and destruction to the Carcosan mytheme. There's no special value to reading all of these stories in a continuous effort. I took one significant pause in the course of reading them, and the experience might have benefited from a couple more hiatuses. I strongly recommend the collection to those who are "into this sort of thing." show less

A collection of tributes to Robert W. Chambers "King in Yellow" stories. If you haven't read those, rectify that promptly and then come back to this review!

In a multi-author collection it's practically a given one likes some contributions more and some less, but in this case the range was fairly small; nothing struck me as a complete dud, and neither did anything strike me as outstanding. Most succeed in capturing something of the spirit of the original tales, and references to Chambers' show more characters and to the fictional play The King in Yellow are of course legio. A non-Chambersian reference I was pleased to note was the passing mention of Vergama, a deity from Clark Ashton Smith's "The Last Hieroglyph", in John Langan's "Sweetums". Few of the stories copy Chambers' 1890s settings; almost all follow the originals in hinting at far more than they explain. Sometimes this results in frustrating vagueness; more often in a dreamlike or nightmarish tone where reality and rationality have a weak hold at best.

Perhaps the best are Daniel Mills' "MS Found in a Chicago Hotel Room", Kristin Prevallet's "Whose Hearts Are Pure Gold", and Allyson Bird's "The Beat Hotel". The one I liked the least is probably Anna Tambour's "King Wolf". show less

A collection of tales surrounding the King in Yellow, Hastur, and Carcosa. Little in the way on entropy or decay is mentioned, which I thought was a slightly glaring omission. There seemed to be a lot of description and involvement of the theatrical aspect and in particular the King in Yellow. As with all anthologies, there's a feeling of getting a music album. Some of its good, some very good and some just awful. Overall, worth looking at, but not one that I think I'd be keeping.