Wordsworth Editions The King in Yellow

I'd heard this influenced the first series of True Detective. That's why I bought the book. If you're doing the same, swerve it.Fans of H P Lovecraft will find something to love but general or literary readers will likely be disappointed. My initial excitement faded and I got bored. Most of the stories have an unconvincing 'whiplash' ending and the overarching theme is weak. It doesn't develop the mystery of The King in Yellow: the fictional book at the seat of the collection. It just repeats the book's side effects on the stories' protagonists. I found this trying.Chambers is skilled at showing his characters' declining mental states, and he can paint a vivid scene, but he's not great on plot or pace. I wanted to fall in love with this book. I didn't. Maybe you will. It's all a matter of taste.

The first four stories are quite fun. Each links to the existence of a play called "The King in Yellow" and suggests something horrible is happening, but never really defining, clearly, what. This is effective, and was later nabbed by Lovecraft.The rest of the stories are, largely, bizarre romances. Not intrinsically bizarre, but bizarre when you consider they're packed together with horror stories.As such, the collection is like starting out watching The Ring and finding it abruptly spliced with footage from Love Story.

The book itself has reasonably sturdy paperback covers and is a handy size. The stories are typical of the genre: a little overwritten, heavy on atmosphere, sometimes predictable and sometimes not. The more experimental ones are really interesting. It's a good buy because there's something for everyone; and if you like HP Lovecraft, the family resemblance is definitely there.

I've always liked short horror/ghost stories and often one from this book (The Yellow Sign) appears in anthologies of such genres, so I was pleased to find this collection available. Having read this book - which a series of vaguely linked short stories, I can see why this particular one is always chosen, this others being rather weak at times and not written in a style which I find appealing.

An interesting collection of short stories. The first few are of the most interest to Lovecraftian types.