The King in Yellow

by

Paperback, 242 pages

English language

ISBN:
978-1-5390-5344-6
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3 stars (6 reviews)

The King in Yellow is a book of short stories by the American writer Robert W. Chambers, first published by F. Tennyson Neely in 1895. The book is named after a play with the same title which recurs as a motif through some of the stories. The first half of the book features highly esteemed horror stories, and the book has been described by critics such as E. F. Bleiler, S. T. Joshi and T. E. D. Klein as a classic in the field of the supernatural. There are ten stories, the first four of which ("The Repairer of Reputations", "The Mask", "In the Court of the Dragon", and "The Yellow Sign") mention The King in Yellow, a forbidden play which induces despair or madness in those who read it. "The Yellow Sign" inspired a film of the same name released in 2001. The British first edition was published by …

5 editions

reviewed The King in Yellow by Robert William Chambers

A really random collection of stories

3 stars

This is a really random collection of stories. I read this on the Serial Reader app, so I didn't really know much about it when I went into it. As I progressed, I had this idea that it was going to be a collection of stories that in some way all had The King in Yellow in them, but that wasn't the case. The stories also aren't all the same genre.

My two favorite stories out of the bunch are the one about the guy in the church who sees the same guy twice and the story about the guy who gets lost in the moors, Phillip. The final story wasn't too bad either, except it ended without any sort of resolution regarding Hastings. It could have been a good story but it just wasn't finished.

reviewed The King in Yellow by Robert William Chambers

Review of 'The King in Yellow' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

People descending into madness. The otherworldly King in Yellow. The pallid mask. Carcosa, where the black stars hang in the sky.

Anyone with the slightest interest in Lovecraftian literature will feel at home when reading the first three or so short stories in this book. They do indeed contain that same essence of "cosmic terror" that Lovecraft since refined and perfected - and who knows; maybe the name of R.W. Chambers would be the blackest star shining, had he but decided to continue on that horrfic path towards Carcosa. But history (and probably he himself) chose otherwise.

The majority of stories in this collection are romantic and witty. Had they been movies, they would have bene classified as romantic comedies. Don't get me wrong, though. They are nice reads too. Just not what one expects after having been subjected to the threat that is "The King in Yellow".

Chambers descriptions …

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