Bookstooge's Reviews On the Road: King in Yellow

Showing posts with label King in Yellow. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 16, 2024

Y (The King in Yellow Anthology #12) 2.5Stars

Title: Y
Series: The King in Yellow Anthology #12
Author: Simon Brake (ed)
Rating: 2.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Cosmic Horror Anthology
Pages: 120
Words: 41K

This was the last King in Yellow collection I could track down. While I know there are more individual short stories, the effort needed to find them and then track down where they reside is more work than I am interested. So I was hoping to go out with a bit of a bang with this collection. Sadly, I didn’t get that.

Nothing was really bad in this collection. But nothing stood out, nothing popped, nothing made me shiver. Reading a King in Yellow story should be like watching a train carrying hundreds of people derail, in real time. Horrifying, terrible but so compelling that you can’t look away even though you want to, even though you know you should.

Of course, things got off to a rough start because the editor, one Simon Brake, talked about how the King in Yellow wouldn’t have survived without being folded into the Cthulhu Mythos. That’s a lot of bunk, total bs and the kind of statement I wouldn’t even be bothered to wipe my bottom with. Even if there is a kernel of truth in it, sigh.

Then the stories sailed along. Nice and smooth. Predictable, with a small amount of tension, but nothing to make the hair on my arms stand up. I was expecting John Wick and I got He-Man the cartoon instead.

This concludes my KiY readings. Anything else will be accidental and I suspect will simply be part of Cthulhu anthologies.

★★✬☆☆

Table of Contents

Click to Open

Prologue –

In Service to a Distant Throne – John Linwood Grant

Vignette I – April 1919

The Blind King of Bythesea Manor – Glynn Owen

Vignette II – November 1932

The Cult and the Canary – Orrin Grey

Vignette III – August 1971

Have You Found The Yellow Sign? – Alison Cybe

Vignette IV – June 1983

The Painter – Helen Gould

Vignette V – September 1996

The Fairy King of Yellow – Tom Pleasant

Vignette VI – April 2017

Haxan – Adam Gauntlett

Epilogue

The King in Yellow & Other Stories (Book 1)
In the Court of the Yellow King (Book 2)
The King in Yellow Tales (Book 3)
A Season in Carcosa (Book 4)
New Tales of the Yellow Sign (Book 5)
The Hastur Cycle (Book 6)
Cassilda’s Song (Book 7)
The Yellow Sign (Book 8)
Rehearsals for Oblivion: Act One (Book 9)
Dedication of the High Priestess (Short Story 10)
The Chromatic Court (Book 11)

Wednesday, November 29, 2023

The Chromatic Court (The King in Yellow Anthology #11) 1Star

Title: The Chromatic Court
Series: The King in Yellow Anthology #11
Author: Peter Rawlik (ed)
Rating: 1 of 5 Stars
Genre: Cosmic Horror Anthology
Pages: 284
Words: 107K

This collection of short stories starts off with some modern sexual perversions and insanities masquerading as personal choices, so while that type of thing usually ends in an immediate DNF, I decided to finish the collection.

Sadly, this was as much a Cthulhu collection as it was a King in Yellow collection. I even hesitated to put this into the King in Yellow side of things, but I did and decided to just call this book a complete loss.

What a way to end the month, sigh.

★☆☆☆☆

From the Publisher and Table of Contents:

The Color of Things © Peter Rawlik

When Lavender is in Bloom © Christine Morgan

Love and Treachery © Joseph S. Pulver Sr.

The Grey Queen © Paul StJohn Mackintosh

The Man in Purple Tatters © Rick Lai

The Green Muse © Jon Black

The Songs of Burning Men © John Linwood Grant

Curse of the White Inferno © Glynn Owen Barrass

The Blues of the Endless Sky © Simon Bucher-Jones

Tatterdemalion in Grey © Micah S. Harris

The Frieze of Helmsly Ainsworth © David Bernard

The Matron in the Wood © Logan Noble

The Duke of Rust © Matt Laughlin

Have you ever been haunted by a work of art?

You may not be merely captured by the craft, but by something that lies in the work’s depths. Something admiring you as you admire it.

Do you know the King in Yellow? The Sepia Prince? The Duke of Rust? Have you heard their whispers coming to you from dried up parchment and faded photographs? Maybe another member of the King’s court has lit upon your life, casting shadows and doubts. Do you worship them, fear them, revere them, or simply seek to understand them? These hallowed nobles who hold court around the King.

Each noble holds an artform in their wavelength. For their color to shine, that art must practiced. There are no older or younger members of the court. Each has existed since before time was a concept they entertained. All of culture has evolved to suit their needs.

Art is in the eye of the beholder, and color is only an abstract concept. The Chromatic Court is very real, you reading this has assured that…

Tuesday, September 12, 2023

Dedication of the High Priestess (The King in Yellow Anthology #10) 2Stars

Title: Dedication of the High Priestess
Series: The King in Yellow Anthology #10
Author: Ephraim Unger
Rating: 2 of 5 Stars
Genre: Cosmic Horror / Short Story
Pages: 33
Words: 10K

This was a short story that the author was kind enough to give me a free copy of. It would have fit into a KIY anthology just fine but since that probably won’t be happening anytime soon, I figured I’d take a stab at a standalone short story. While I enjoyed this in expanding the King in Yellow lore, there were a couple of things that dragged this down to the two star level for me.

The biggest issue was that the main character was 12 years old and has visions of being embraced by the King in Yellow. While cosmic horror should be disturbing, I felt like this crossed into territory that I wasn’t comfortable with. At all.

The second issue was a more technical issue. The story was written in the first person perspective and there was a lot of “he did, she wore, they said”. While some of that is inherent to that perspective, there are ways to mitigate sounding like a sports announcer at a tennis match.

I really wanted to like this more and give it a higher rating. But it is what it is. I do give props for that cover though. Ohhhhh, that is some good art right there.

★★☆☆☆

From Bookstooge.blog

A 12 year old ballerina is drawn into the world of the King in Yellow and becomes his high priestess. She brings him into our world and ushers in a new age of cosmic horror.

Sunday, July 09, 2023

Rehearsals for Oblivion: Act One (The King in Yellow Anthology #9) 3Stars

Title: Rehearsals for Oblivion: Act One
Series: The King in Yellow Anthology #9
Editor: Peter Worthy
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: Cosmic Horror
Pages: 252
Words: 99K

This was much more melancholic than cosmic horror’y. It reminded me of the later stories in Chamber’s original King in Yellow than of the first ones. Everything was just kind of sad. Part of that I know is because of the inclusion of several poems.

Several of the stories were about the degradation of the human spirit. One in particular was about a drug addict who would screw anything on two feet. The King in Yellow uses him as a prophet, but everything that made him proper malleable material for the King was because of his own choices. The King simply reaped the benefit of the man’s own self-destructive choices. Several of the stories went that route and I thought it devalued the power and the horror that the King in Yellow is supposed to have and be. One might see it as a little thing, but if you are going to write The King in Yellow, you need to write him correctly. Man, look at me, turning into some kind of KiY purist, sigh.

Now, some of the stories were downright awesome. One was a Sherlock Holmes and Watson pastiche where Holmes and Watson face down a Protege of Moriarty’s. Said Protege wants to bring the King in Yellow to our plane of existence to rule so that he can resurrect Moriarty and the three of them (Protege, Moriarty and the King in Yellow) can rule the world. I don’t think the Protege really understood that once he had brought the KiY into our world, well, he would have brooked no challengers to his power. Holmes does a little razzle dazzle bippity boo and defeats the Protege and thus keeps the world safe.

Another story that I thought did the mythology great service was “Yellow is the Color of Tomorrow”. It takes place in the alternate universe of the United States where Winthrop and Thorndyke had been President, the Indian and Negro states had formed their own union and the suicide booths were in regular operation. The story follows a man who buys a used collection of books as a way to push off the ennui of living in such a society. He ends up reading the King in Yellow, goes completely mad, kills the old bookseller and the story ends with him realizing what he’s done and heading off to the suicide booth so he doesn’t go to jail. It captured the feel perfectly from Chamber’s original story.

The final story in the anthology, “The Purple Emperor” tries to open up a greater cosmology. In it the narrator is a devotee of the Purple Emperor, some higher order being that is in charge of multiple dimensions, one of which contains the King in Yellow. The whole story revolves around the King in Yellow trying to spread his influence through psychics so that when the time is right, he can challenge the Emperor and take his place. I like the idea of a wider cosmology, as it brings more story options to the table. My only fear would be that the KiY would get lost in it all and become just a bit player instead of the main force of the mythology.

Overall, I thought the various authors did a great job of either taking a tiny piece of the original stories and spinning a wider web from them or simply extrapolating from the original and running wild with a logical conclusion from that extrapolation.

★★★☆☆

Table of Contents:

The Curse of the King

Richard L Tierney

The Dream-Leech

Willliam Laughlin

Ambrose

John Scott Tynes

In Memoriam

Roger Johnson and Robert M. Price

Cordelia’s Song From The King In Yellow

Vincent Starret

Chartreuse

Michael Minnis

Cat With The Hand Of A Child

Mark McLaughlin

Lilloth

Susan McAdam

Reflections in Carcosa

Mark Francis

Broadalbin

John Scott Tynes

The Adventure Of The Yellow Sign

G. Warlock Vance

Tattered Souls

Ann K Schwader

What Sad Drum

Steve Lines

The Machine In Yellow

Carlos Orsi Martinho

The Peace That Will Not Come

Peter A. Worthy

Yellow Is The Color Of Tomorrow

Ron Shiflet

The Purple Emperor

Will Murray

A Line Of Questions

Joseph S. Pulver, Sr.

Monday, May 29, 2023

The Yellow Sign (The King in Yellow Anthology #8) ★★★★✬

Title: The Yellow Sign
Series: The King in Yellow Anthology #8
Editor: James Hodge
Rating: 4.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Cosmic Horror
Pages: 199
Words: 72K

From the Publisher & Bookstooge.blog

FBI Agent Erica Blaine has suffered more than most. After narrowly escaping being at the center of a cult sacrifice she’d been tasked with infiltrating, Erica has spent the last few months hitting the bottle, trying to avoid dealing with the trauma of what she experienced and those she couldn’t save. Her ruined hands, always gloved, are an unavoidable reminder of her pain and anguish.

As is the voice that won’t allow her a moment of peace.

But when her old Army buddy goes missing under suspicious circumstances, Erica is pulled back into the Lovecraftian world of cult infiltration. The Yellow College welcomes her with open arms, but as her sanity crumbles beneath the weight of hallucinations, old traumas, and lost memories, how can she expect to save her friend when she can barely tell what’s real and what isn’t?

Have you seen the shores of Carcosa?

The Yellow College believes that Erica is the chosen vessel for the King in Yellow to manifest himself in. This will usher in a new age as the King reigns openly. What they don’t know is that the King has his own plans, for them, for Erica and for the world.

In the end, the college sacrifices itself in a feeding frenzy of madness and despair and Erica becomes a synthesis of herself and the King in Yellow, a new being called Nihilo. Who will bring death, destruction and madness everywhere she walks.

This starts out slow. But being familiar with how the mythology of the King in Yellow always works itself out, I was expecting that. I could see how that would be off putting to those who are either familiar with King in Yellow mythology or have not read much beyond the original 4 stories by Chambers. I would NOT recommend this as a starting place for people to read more of the King in Yellow.

This was published in ‘22 and I think I’ve made the right choice at placing it as #8 in this “series” about the King in Yellow. It is also a full novel. Most of what has been written before has been short stories. Those are easier to pull off and can rely on The Idea. A novel takes a lot more work and has other limitations that a short story doesn’t. Like characterization and plot.

I felt like Hodge did an admirable job of writing up a full length novel around the concept of the King in Yellow. With an FBI agent as the main character investigating cult like behavior, I wasn’t sure if he was going to try for the “happy ending” or the real deal King in Yellow type ending. Thankfully, he chose to go with a real King in Yellow ending and that pushed this from a 3.5star rating up to it’s 4.5star rating. I was very pleased with just how gruesomely this ended, with the promise of continuing madness (not that there is more story to tell, but that the character of Nihilo will continue on the Earth).

There are two things that kept this from getting a 5star rating from me. First and foremost, was the just plain gratuitous use of the word “fuck”. I felt like it was thrown around like a teenage girl uses “like yeah, duh”. It didn’t really convey anything except Erica’s dissatisfaction with a situation and that was already shown in other ways, so it just felt gratuitous. If you took them out, nothing would have changed. The second, which is more of a niggle than anything, was that Hodge’s interpretation of the King is more Cthulhu’ic than pure King in Yellow. When Erica meets the King, he is described in terms that are more fitting to an eldritch tentacled horror than the King of Madness as Chamber’s described him. I like my King in Yellow to be completely separate from the Cthulhu mythos, even while I realize that particular boat has sailed. Like I said, a mere niggle.

I believe this was Hodge’s debut work and as such I am planning to keep an eye out for anything else he writes. I couldn’t find a website for him, but I also didn’t look that hard. I’m not a fan of authors as people, just authors as authors.

★★★★✬

Thursday, April 13, 2023

Cassilda’s Song (The King in Yellow Anthology #7) ★★★★☆

Title: Cassilda’s Song
Series: The King in Yellow Anthology #7
Editor: Joseph Pulver
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre: Cosmic Horror
Pages: 241
Words: 92K

Table of Contents:

Introduction by Joseph S. Pulver, Sr.

Black Stars on Canvas, a Reproduction in Acrylic by Damien Angelica Walters

She Will Be Raised a Queen by E. Catherine Tobler

Yella by Nicole Cushing

Yellow Bird by Lynda E. Rucker

Exposure by Helen Marshall

Just Beyond Her Dreaming by Mercedes M. Yardley

In the Quad of Project 327 by Chesya Burke

Stones, Maybe by Ursula Pflug

Les Fleurs du Mal by Allyson Bird

While The Black Stars Burn by Lucy A. Snyder

Old Tsah-Hov by Anya Martin

The Neurastheniac by Selena Chambers

Dancing the Mask by Ann K. Schwader

Family by Maura McHugh

Pro Patria! by Nadia Bulkin

Her Beginning is Her End is Her Beginning by E. Catherine Tobler and Damien Angelica Walters

Grave-Worms by Molly Tanzer

Strange is the Night by S.P. Miskowski

This was a collection centered around the character of Cassilda, the former queen of Carcosa that the Yellow King subjugate/co-opted/seduced depending on which story you decide to hold to. In some of these stories she is fighting against the King in Yellow, other times the story is about her influence in our world and in some instances it’s just a feminist story wrapped in the liturgical wrappings of the King in Yellow.

I actually started to read this back in January, but with everything that was going on medically at the time, stories that dealt with despair and madness and hopelessness were way more than I could handle at that time. But now that we appear to be on the other side, I could dive into this cesspool with nary a shudder or twinge of disgust.

Two stories stood out to me. Not that they were the most enjoyable ones, but I felt like they encapsulated the best and worst of the King in Yellow mythology.

In the Quad of Project 327 was about a group of school kids who find the play The King in Yellow and one girl reads it. Unlike everyone else who has ever read it, it doesn’t drive her crazy but gives her psychic powers and she in turn gives these powers to the other kids. They use the power to make their Quad (apartment building area) a better place and to make their white male teacher hate Columbus and be a “nicer” guy. This exemplified the worst in my opinion. The author wrapped up her white male hatred and used some of the literary terms used in the King in Yellow stories. But she either didn’t understand or chose to ignore that the play has to drive people mad, or it isn’t The King in Yellow. As such, this didn’t have that hopeless, the walls are closing in, claustrophobic feel that a genuine KiY story should have. There is no hope, there is no betterment, there is no strength in a King in Yellow story. And if you choose to go outside of those bounds, then your story isn’t a KiY story. It wasn’t necessarily a bad story, but it was missing that downward punch that was needed.

Old Tsah-Hov was a story about a dog that ends up being owned by a woman named Cassilda, in Jerusalem. She adopts him as a stray and gets married and has a kid and then a war breaks out and her husband breaks under the strain and tries to hit her. The dog intervenes, only the son tries to stop him and the dog ends up biting the son by accident instead of the father. So he’s taken away to be put down. Once he’s put down, he awakens in Carcosa, where a mob is waiting for him, with hands filled with stones. To kill him. Again. Now THAT is how you tell a KiY story. The dog is loyal to Cassilda, loves the little boy and is doing his best to protect and serve. And his reward? To be killed again by the King in Yellow. The pure perversity of the entire situation, the twistedness of it, is exactly how a KiY story should be written.

Black Stars on Canvas, a Reproduction in Acrylic, the lead story, is a great KiY primer. If you can read that story and like it, The King in Yellow is for you. If you read it and don’t like it, or aren’t interested, I sincerely doubt you’ll like much else in the King in Yellow mythology. I’ve never been tempted to write a book, or even a short story, but if I ever did, it would be something to do with the King in Yellow.

The main reason I didn’t give this a 4 ½ rating was because one of the stories was poetry. Poetry is an essential element in the play The King in Yellow, but I don’t like poetry and I don’t have to.

I’ve included a large version of the cover below as it is hard to see in the little one I include with most reviews.

★★★★☆

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/r83hy39y0tpavxv/cassildassongbig.jpg

Friday, February 03, 2023

The Hastur Cycle (The King in Yellow Anthology #6) ★★★✬☆

Title: The Hastur Cycle
Series: The King in Yellow Anthology #6
Editor: Robert Price
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Cosmic Horror
Pages: 329
Words: 139K

Price appears to be a HP Lovecraft and Cthulhu buff and one of those bores who will kill a party quick as spit by telling you the historical importance of the works of HPL and why it matters. HPL did enfold some of the King in Yellow mythology into his works and thus, Price splits this book into stories directly about the King in Yellow and the rest are about Cthulhu with some of the KIY mythology names tacked on.

They were still good stories and I enjoyed them, but I wanted All the King in Yellow, All the time and I didn’t get that. So I waffled between giving this 3 or 4 stars and ended up coming down in the middle because my disappointment was perfectly balanced with my overall enjoyment.

This definitely felt puffed. Price includes a full story from both Chambers (who wrote The King in Yellow) and Lovecraft (who wrote Cthulhu) and while I appreciated that as it helped tie down the other stories by reminding us of why they were included. Saying a “random” name once in your story appeared to be enough to be included, so knowing how that “random” name actually tied into the mythology was good. But it didn’t take away from the fact that Price was including copyright/royalty free stories to pad the page and word count. Instead, I wanted all new stories and I didn’t get that.

Overall, between the “feels like padding” stories and the fact that this wasn’t strictly a KIY collection, I had to ding it. As a cosmic horror collection, I think it’s pretty good though. So there’s your mixed message for the day 🙂

★★★✬☆

Monday, October 10, 2022

New Tales of the Yellow Sign (The King in Yellow Anthology #5) ★★✬☆☆

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission
Title: New Tales of the Yellow Sign
Series: The King in Yellow Anthology #5
Editor: Robin Laws
Rating: 2.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Cosmic Horror
Pages: 143
Words: 51K

★★✬☆☆

Wednesday, August 24, 2022

A Season in Carcosa (The King in Yellow Anthology #4) ★★★★✬

Title: A Season in Carcosa
Series: The King in Yellow Anthology #4
Editor: Joseph Pulver
Rating: 4.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Cosmic Horror
Pages: 268
Words: 100K

Synopsis:

Table of Contents

This Yellow Madness (introduction) by Joseph S. Pulver, Sr.

My Voice is Dead by Joel Lane

Beyond The Banks of the River Seine by Simon Strantzas

Movie Night at Phil’s by Don Webb

MS Found in a Chicago Hotel Room by Daniel Mills

it sees me when I’m not looking by Gary McMahon

Finale, Act Two by Ann K. Schwader

Yellow Bird Strings by Cate Gardner

The Theatre & Its Double by Edward Morris

The Hymn of the Hyades by Richard Gavin

Slick Black Bones and Soft Black Stars by Gemma Files

Not Enough Hope by Joseph S. Pulver, Sr

Whose Hearts are Pure Gold by Kristin Prevallet

April Dawn by Richard A. Lupoff

King Wolf by Anna Tambour

The White-Face At Dawn by Michael Kelly

Wishing Well by Cody Goodfellow

Sweetums by John Langan

The King Is Yellow by Pearce Hansen

D T by Laird Barron

Salvation In Yellow by Robin Spriggs

The Beat Hotel by Allyson Bird

My Thoughts:

My goodness, these anthologies are going up and down for me like a teetertotter! When they are good, they are REALLY GOOD and when it’s bad, it’s so bad I can’t finish them. Thankfully, this was on the upper part of the seesaw.

I went into this a bit worried since Pulver was the editor and I absolutely hated the previous book which was edited and written by him. Thankfully, he only contributed a small part of this. I did realize that I don’t like his writing, period though. There were 1 or 2 poems, which did nothing for me. But Pulver’s story was the only real let down. Not surprising but it’s what kept this from a full 5star.

But most of the other stories were flipping fantastic if you dig cosmic horror. From slides into madness and horror to the unveiling of horrific powers, these ran the gamut from shiver your backbone to a chill of deliciousness running down your spine to the completely inexplicably weird.

I really can’t say that any of these were “better” than the others, but the 2 I do remember are Yellow Bird Strings and Wishing Well. YBS was about a former puppeteer who by the end of the story has become the puppet himself. It was hard to tell if he was going mad or if it was all real. Exactly the right tone for a King in Yellow Story. WW on the other hand, had real IT (by Stephen King) vibes with 2 storylines about kids and them now as adults. A twisted tv show created by a cult of the KIY was the focus and the ending where the main character who appears to be a loser the whole time is revealed to be the son of the King in Yellow, or something like that. It was deliciously spine tingling.

Another absolute winner of a read and I’m pretty happy. These books are definitely not for everyone, in fact I’d say that the majority of readers wouldn’t go for The King in Yellow, but they fit me like a glove, so I’m going to revel in them while I can.