dillarhonda 's review for:

The King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers

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If there was a play so awful, so powerful that it turned whoever read it mad, would you dare to pick it up? The King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers collects four eerie tales of people who have had the misfortune to chance upon the titular play. Chambers shrewdly never divulges the plot of the play or what exactly is so awesomely terrible within its pages. Though this may have been enough to inspire horror in 1895 when the book was first published, many of Chambers’ plots fall short of true terror for a modern reader. Though there is plenty of death (accidental and homicidal), madness, and fear on the part of the characters, only the first story, “The Repairer of Reputations” has any urgency. Though this was an important development in the history of supernatural writing and helped create modern horror, it lacks the punch of contemporary works.⠀