Robert W. ChambersThe King in Yellow

I had heard many references to The King in Yellow and mistakenly assumed Robert W Chambers to simply be an earlier HP Lovecraft. This collection encompasses so much more. It is very well written and not just a horror collection. I especially like the way many of the stories are tied together.The audiobook was very well narrated also which helped immensely with pronunciation of the many French words and phrases liberally sprinkled throughout. As I alternated back and forth between the ebook and the audiobook, or more often read the ebook while listening to the audiobook, I was pleased to see the narration matched perfectly.I thoroughly enjoyed this whole book.

As Amazon seems to list the same reviews with all of the various publishings and printings of this book, I have included pictures of the copy I received from Pushkin Press. The cover was sliced, as other reviewers have noted, though the cut did not extend to the hard cover itself, only the dust jacket. The text inside is easy to read and there is no issue with the margins. This copy does not contain the dedication to his brother that was included in the original, nor does it contain all nine short stories or the poetry.It contains only the first four short stories, all loosely connected by the presence of a book called “The King in Yellow”. It is a book both beautiful and terrible to behold, and its effect on the reader is not to be desired. Those who read it have their perspectives shifted, to say the least, oftentimes for the worse, but I daresay I was not affected in such a way. It did not cause me to believe anything strange or to take as evidence for my sane beliefs any coincidental happenstance that by random chance or probability might naturally occur.It is not, however, lost on me that the recent eclipse would appear so close to Robert Chambers’ description of the radiant vision of the yellow sign. Or that the aurora borealis should be visible this far south at this time as I read this, like the shredded silken scraps - the fantastic colors - of the great billowing cloak of the King in Yellow. Or that the 17 and 13 year cycles of the cicadas should in this moment align like the dark stars of Carcosa and sing together their song of His coming, chanting the ebb and flow of the aeons like the waves that break on the shores of the lake of Hali where the twin suns set. None of these things, though, are out of the ordinary, and the meaning of the alignment of them all at this time, I leave to you to decipher - a task which I will venture to suggest may be made easier with an evening’s read of this harmless book.

I read this book because I saw an article that mentioned it as a source material for the HBO series True Detective. And yes there are parts that might have been pulled from this book, but they aren't the only source for the show. I found this book pretty interesting from a historical perspective because it was very influential to many horror authors who came afterwards, very specifically HP Lovecraft. Now I've always loved HP Lovecraft and i could see where he might have found inspiration in The King in Yellow. The book is a collection of 10 short stories broken into three subjects, The Weird Tales, A Ghost Story, and The Artistes. The first two section are pretty cool, not over the top King/Lovecraft cool, but the kind of stories that can stick in your mind. The basic premise being that the people who read the book "The King in Yellow" (which is a play according to the stories) go crazy. The King starts ok in the first act, but then the second tears off the wrapper of the craziness and seeps into the readers brain like a cancer that consumes them with delusions that tear apart their view of reality. But then we get to the Artistes stories which were ok from the perspective of historically seeing what Paris was like at the time this book was written in 1895, but other than that they really don't go anywhere and strike me more as filler than a continuation of the wonderment that started off the first half of the book. All in all the first part is worth checking out, but the back half leaves a lot to be desired.

Ótimo material, acabamento do livro excelente.

My first time reading this book confused me at first, as I took the stories at face value, but the more I thought about them and the more I researched them, the more I grew to respect them, a psychologically challenging poetry, The King in Yellow is not as it seems.

Me encantó!

There are reviews of several different editions of this book here, so to be clear, I bought the Pushkin Press hardback edition (see photos). It only contains the first four stories from Chambers’ original book, but these are the four connected weird tales that people generally think of when hearing the name “The King in Yellow”. I don’t mind having a slimmed down book which leaves out the thematically unrelated stories. This edition feels well made, with nicely-sized text.

Great hard cover. Came very fast.