The King in Yellow

The four central Jauniste stories seem relatively simple upon finishing, but on second look (third...) each reveals cross-references to other(s); knowing nods to offstage characters or events; more side characters than are recalled upon finishing the first time. In short: misleadingly simple. A surprising level of detail can be uncovered on re-reads, from facts & names "hidden in plain sight", to plot tangents, suggestive character memories, or confessions.

The title figure is similarly enigmatic. Playtext or personage, the King in Yellow never receives extended description or clear definition, yet what little is revealed seems to exert a gravitational pull. That pull is to be observed first operating on characters, which kindles show more curiosity and then allows a metatextual force to begin working on the reader.

What of those twin suns and many moons? How could they rise in front of the towers of Carcosa? Are the Phantom of Truth and the Pallid Mask one and the same? Do the stars truly shine black? So many questions, so little in the way of answers.

That such oblique storytelling could be so compelling is perhaps counterintuitive. Yet I keep reading.

//

My Pushkin Press edition includes only the central four "King in Yellow" stories, inexplicably omitting the six "Other Stories" included in most editions, as well as the indispensable epigraph, "Cassilda's Song". At minimum two omitted stories make reference to the Yellow Mythos, however glancingly:

● THE DEMOISELLE D'YS: Jeanne D'ys is a cryptic pun, and one of her falconers is named Hastur
● THE PROPHETS' PARADISE mentions a Phantom, a white mask, a song & seeking "her" show less

nice Lovecraftian atmospheric writing with the first few short stories. dark and somewhat twisted if a bit claustrophobic in style and prose. but the later stories evolved into 19th century romance and i found it hard to follow or keep my mind on what was going on. the writing was not bad, it was just dated and was not holding my attention since it was full of brash young soldiers and bold women who would not settle for mediocrity… at least, that’s the kind of rubbish my mind recalls.

once again, i’m wondering if i’ve missed something. perhaps the brilliance of the much longer last story was hidden in its mundanity much like the fellow who shows Somerset Maugham’s protagonist in the Razor’s Edge that washing dishes IS a show more religious act.

maybe i’ll try again another day. show less

This book is chiefly known for its opening quartet of stories of eldritch horrors and macabre dystopias. Some works contain only those four, which may well satisfy the majority of readers who (like myself) are drawn to it due to the thread it weaves through the works of others, most famously H.P. Lovecraft. However that does the author a disservice. Chambers collected these stories together and intended them to be read as a complete work.

Doing that, you appreciate the arc he takes from the futurist dystopia of The Repairer of Reputations, with its claustrophobic feeling of paranoia, through the subsequent alchemical and supernatural tales, onto the fifth story, a folkloric fairytale, a short set of Gibran-like (though simultaneously show more unlike) prose poems, and so gradually into the historical world of everyday reality, with its wars and romance, comedy and pathos. An expert writer who deserves recognition for more than horror. show less

A bit conflicted on this title. Another reviewer called the collection "uneven" and that says it pretty well.

Of the four actual "King in Yellow" stories, I thought two were pretty good, one wasn't bad, and one was not great. There is also a three page "story" filled with repetition that forced me to skim half the lines because holy crap irritating.
The other five stories are all romances, to one degree or another. Frankly, I think Lovecraft and the editor of my edition are both idiots when they claim Chambers a failure by taking the "easy route" of writing romances after not achieving the same sort of success in supernatural/horror after this work. Personally I found the romances to be better written than most of the rest in here. I am show more a huge horror fan; I do not read romances. But it was his romances that engaged me more and kept me intrigued. Therefore I would say he made the wise choice to do what he had the better talent for.

All in all, I'm glad to see what provided a big chunk of Lovecraft's inspiration, but I would hesitate to recommend this to a casual reader. show less

This starts off promisingly enough, but eventually it’s as though Chambers completely runs out of ideas for cosmic horror and just thinks, “Well, I guess I’ll just write vague microfiction¹... or maybe a war story?² Oh god, I still have so many pages to fill... uh... what about romance!³”

So, needless to say, shit goes off the rails pretty quickly. Chambers loses sight entirely of the central thread he’d been following; several stories in the second half of the collection feature no disturbing elements or references to The King in Yellow at all, which is a shame, because I love the idea of this eldritch book being a sort of mind virus that infects the subconscious of any who read it.

Skip this one. If you’d like a taste of show more the best Chambers has to offer, the only two stories worth reading are “The Mask” and “The Yellow Sign.”

____________________

¹ “The Prophets’ Paradise”

² “The Street of the First Shell”

³ “The Street of Our Lady of the Fields” and “Rue Barée” show less

A lot of people have talked about this book. And I mean a LOT of them. One of my favorite YouTube channels "Tale Foundry," even has fan art of the King in Yellow that they sell at the start of every video, and the discussion of the book itself is one of their most-viewed videos. Everyone who enjoys weird fiction or cosmic horror, just Lovecraft in general, has said that if you want to understand the genre, "The King In Yellow" is a good place to start to understand its origins.

After having read it? I can say yea... I get it. I've read later works in the genre, and even some Lovecraft, and I enjoyed those stories a lot. There's something that's just weirdly interesting about old pulpy stories from the 20s and 30s about cosmic entities, show more old gods, and things in the dark that drive one mad. While these short stories aren't exactly "terrifying" in a modern context, they are great in that they're just fun to read.

A little bit of clarification here: I really only read the first six shorts (five shorts if you count the sixth as just a collection of poems) and skimmed the last four. The reason for this is that I'm only interested in the horror parts of the novel, and the last half, after the poems, are primarily romance stories of which I'm not interested.

However, I didn't knock stars off for that. A lot of guides on weird fiction and cosmic horror have said that those stories are optional if you're interested in Robert Chambers' writing style, so I knew when I picked up the book that those stories were extras for what I wanted. While I did read them quickly, they weren't badly written. So if you're a fan of both horror and romance (though not together), you'll enjoy them. I just won't be reviewing or including them in this review.

With that said, let me get into the stories and what I thought about them:

Repairer of Reputations: Possibly my favorite of the bunch, even if it's the first. We have an unreliable narrator who read "The King In Yellow and who, through that, believes that he's the heir to an imperial American dynasty. Personally, what I thought was fascinating was that this technically was a sci-fi story too, as it takes place in an alternate 1920's America where things that obviously didn't happen, had in fact, happened. What I also like is how it's just weird and slightly creepy at the start, till the hammer drops near the end, and we see the true horror of how far the main character had succumbed to madness. 5/5 stars.

The Mask: I didn't really think this one was horrifying, but I DID like it. Essentially, the story is about artists and how one of them discovers an elixir that instantly changes living flesh to marble stone. It's a story about love and beauty, and while there are horror elements in it, it ends up having a happy ending. Not my favorite, but there's something bittersweet about it. 3/5 stars.

"In the Court of the Dragon": Admittedly, this one was a hard read for me because the middle section was just the main character talking about how he was escaping the overbearing, hateful stare of a church organist who was chasing him down, looking to claim his soul. While the middle section of the story was heavily bogged down with what appeared to be a walk through Paris, it was the ending that I really liked. Despite all of that, I still rate it 4/5 stars.

"The Yellow Sign" : My second favorite of the collected works. In this, an artist and his favorite model discuss how both of them have dreams of the artist's death, as well as a creepy nightwatchman who drove the hearse with the artist's coffin. When the model confesses her love to the artist, the dynamic of their relationship changes despite the looming nightmares becoming more vivid, and when the artist receives "The Yellow Sign," and they both pick up a copy of "The King in Yellow" to read, death finally comes for them both. 5/5 stars.

"The Prophets' Paradise": Was alright. Mainly a series of free-verse poems that made little to no sense. Trying to figure out what they could apply to was half the fun. 4/5 stars.

Overall, I don't have any real negatives to say in regard to the novel. I read them all fairly quickly. Robert Chambers' writing style is paced relatively well (even if he does occasionally use large walls of text), and the stories are sweet and to the point. While I struggled with the third story and didn't really feel the second story fit in with the idea of the King or of Carcosa, my time with them was well spent. show less

Robert Chambers probably would not be remembered today without H. P. Lovecraft.

The sole title his is now recognized for is The King in Yellow. Like most literary works, it was drifting into the dark and cold zone of cultural oblivion. Then he was caught in the gravity well of that coalescing star of weird fiction, H. P. Lovecraft. And, once illuminated by Lovecraft’s in his Supernatural Horror in Literature, this work became sort of a bright satellite beckoning Lovecraft fans to explore it.

But Chambers’ book is one of those moons with only one face of any interest.

To be sure, there is the appearance, in several connected stories, of the sinister effects and reputation of the titular volume and its enigmatic references to the Pallid show more Mask and Carcosa and Hastur and the lake of Hali. And the notion of such a book definitely inspired Lovecraft to create his more famous book of blasphemy, the Necronomicon.

But that’s only half the book, five weird stories. This group of stories is just connected enough to justify reading in order.

“The Repairer of Reputations” first seems to be an unexpected piece of science fiction, the future world of 1920 as imagined in 1895 with attendant projections of Progressive-era politics, turn of the century American imperialism, and contemporary anti-Semitism. Taken on those terms alone, it’s interesting, but we also get a plot about a mysterious Mr. Wilde who has allegedly built up, via social coercion and blackmail, a vast network of political control. Such a powerful network, in fact, that the artist protagonist of the story dreams of using it to usurp his cousin’s place as heir to the Imperial Dynasty of America. Or maybe not. Not everything is as it seems and some of the clues to that are in later stories.

“The Mask”’s plot – hinging on an artist who has discovered a way of petrifying living matter while preserving its most delicate structures – has little interest and kind of a sappy ending. However, the bits expanding Chambers’ mythology and the mystery of the King in Yellow make it worth reading.

“In the Court of the Dragon” is another slight story. After reading The King in Yellow, its hero encounters a menacing organist at a church service and begins to see the threatening man everywhere. As with “The Mask”, the real interest is the tantalizing bits we get about “the towers of Carcosa”.

“The Yellow Sign” is justifiably the most anthologized of the stories here and the high point of the book. Like most of the stories in the book, it involves an artist. Outside his studio, he sees a young man who reminds him of a “coffin-worm”. His favorite model, for whom he has great affection, tells him of a dream she had with the same man driving a hearse with the artist as its dead cargo. Chambers not only packs plenty of weirdness in, gives us the largest description of the contents of The King in Yellow of any story here, but also gives us an ending which I suspect influenced Lovecraft’s work.

“The Demoiselle D’Ys” eschews the usual Paris or New York City settings of the other stories, but it’s a standard and predictable time-slip romance.

And that’s it for the book’s interest as weird fiction. We then get a bunch of enigmatic vignettes and poems and then a batch of uninteresting and forgettable romantic stories of American artists in Paris. To be fair, though, there is one interesting part in “The Street of the First Shell” set, it seems, during the siege of Paris in the Franco-Prussian War of 1871. There is an extended passage in part three when the hero joins a French army attempting a breakout. It is an eerie account with a supernatural quality in its descriptions of the fog-shrouded battle, the confusion, and vivid bits of description.

So, for those who are interested in Carcosa and the related bits of Chambers’ mythology (actually some of it comes from Ambrose Bierce), the first half of this book is a must read. For those just looking for good quality weird fiction, just read “The Repairer of Reputations” and “The Yellow Sign”. show less