Take a photo of a barcode or cover
skeeffe 's review for:
The King in Yellow
by Robert W. Chambers
Lovecraft has been so imitated that a new reader must find his work blasé. Every second movie, book or video game is chock full of tentacles, Necronomicons and unknowable elder beings. His work is good, don't get me wrong, but it feels familiar, not weird, which is a shame because he is the Granddaddy of Weird. In this collection's best stories, I found the strangeness I missed in Lovecraft.
The first story of this collection, The Repairer of Reputations was everything I wanted Lovecraft to be. It features a disconcerting vision of a near-distant 1920s (not an alternate history as some have assumed, the story was authored in 1895). A supposedly perfect American Empire builds monolithic infrastructure, or "Government Lethal Chambers", to support mass-suicide. A twisted, little man is masterminding the overthrow of the United States of America, yet he cannot stop his monstrous cat from mauling him. The narrator declares he is sane far more than any sane person should. Chambers use of an unreliable narrator in this story is hugely experimental, as was his dystopic setting. It is creepy and obtuse and feels starkly unique. Other good stories in the collection include The Mask and The Yellow Sign both of which continue the mythos established in The Repairer of Reputations . The Yellow Sign , which features a graveyard watchmen with a face like a "coffin-grub", is particularly good. The Mask , however, is a tad soppy. The protagonist has a yawn-inducing infatuation with his mate's wife, who Chambers wrote as having the personality of wet cardboard. In general he does not write women well, but it was especially noticeable in this story.
In the second half of this collection the content takes a drastic shift from the unique and ground-breaking to the generically Gothic. Chambers must have misidentified a mushroom while foraging. Maybe under it's influence he wrote the stories that inspired the Weird Horror of subsequent generations. Afterwards, he must have sobered up and returned to his stuffy, Victorian self. Some of the more traditional tales in The King in Yellow are good. The Demoiselle D'ys is sweet enough, whilst the The Street of the First Shell is an engaging battle story. The rest, however, quite literally sent me to sleep. They're not even interesting enough for me to critique. Just skip them.
This collection includes some genuine brilliance. If I was rating Chamber's best stories individually, they would receive four or five stars. But I am not, so two stars it is.
The first story of this collection, The Repairer of Reputations was everything I wanted Lovecraft to be. It features a disconcerting vision of a near-distant 1920s (not an alternate history as some have assumed, the story was authored in 1895). A supposedly perfect American Empire builds monolithic infrastructure, or "Government Lethal Chambers", to support mass-suicide. A twisted, little man is masterminding the overthrow of the United States of America, yet he cannot stop his monstrous cat from mauling him. The narrator declares he is sane far more than any sane person should. Chambers use of an unreliable narrator in this story is hugely experimental, as was his dystopic setting. It is creepy and obtuse and feels starkly unique. Other good stories in the collection include The Mask and The Yellow Sign both of which continue the mythos established in The Repairer of Reputations . The Yellow Sign , which features a graveyard watchmen with a face like a "coffin-grub", is particularly good. The Mask , however, is a tad soppy. The protagonist has a yawn-inducing infatuation with his mate's wife, who Chambers wrote as having the personality of wet cardboard. In general he does not write women well, but it was especially noticeable in this story.
In the second half of this collection the content takes a drastic shift from the unique and ground-breaking to the generically Gothic. Chambers must have misidentified a mushroom while foraging. Maybe under it's influence he wrote the stories that inspired the Weird Horror of subsequent generations. Afterwards, he must have sobered up and returned to his stuffy, Victorian self. Some of the more traditional tales in The King in Yellow are good. The Demoiselle D'ys is sweet enough, whilst the The Street of the First Shell is an engaging battle story. The rest, however, quite literally sent me to sleep. They're not even interesting enough for me to critique. Just skip them.
This collection includes some genuine brilliance. If I was rating Chamber's best stories individually, they would receive four or five stars. But I am not, so two stars it is.