Take a photo of a barcode or cover
prolixity 's review for:
The King in Yellow
by Robert W. Chambers
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 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”
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 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”