A review by joannaautumn
The King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers

3.0

"I belong to those children of an older and simpler generation, who do not love to seek for psychological subtleties in art; and I have ever refused to find in music anything more than melody and harmony, but I felt that in the labyrinth of sounds now issuing from that instrument there was something being Hunted. Up and down the pedals chased him, while the manuals blared approval. Poor devil! whoever he was, there seemed small hope of escape!"

This book has such a clear distinction between the first 5 stories and the last five that it’s insane. Pun intended.

Do you like gothic horror? How about unreliable narrators? Art? Sculptures? Haunted plays? Paris? Ghost stories? A character’s fall into insanity? Love stories? The feeling of unease after finishing a story?

This collection has it all. A perfect example of the gothic short story is the opening one “The Repairer of Reputations” followed by a more romantic story “The mask”. As I said the first half of this book is amazing, while the Parisian stories aren’t as good of a quality as them, hence 3/5 – all In all, I liked it very much, will be looking into Chambers more.
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Some stories blew my mind(The first five) and some were underwhelming. Review to come.