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Awix (3310 KP) rated The King in Yellow in Books

Aug 12, 2019 (Updated Aug 12, 2019)

The King in Yellow

Robert W. Chambers | 1895 | Fiction & Poetry, Horror, Romance

7.0

(1 Ratings)

Book Rating

Much-mentioned but seemingly little-read collection of short stories by Robert Chambers. The anthology owes most of its fame to the fact that HP Lovecraft was sufficiently impressed by some of the stories to retroactively incorporate them into his own mythology, something Lovecraft's disciples built upon with more energy than finesse.

The best of these stories do have a sense of subliminal encroaching madness and unease, as symbolised by the mysterious play mentioned in the title and its associated motifs, which is very impressively created. However, much of the remainder is a set of essentially interchangeable tales of rich young Americans studying art in Paris and swooning over beautiful young mademoiselles; they are quite heavy going and possibly not worth the effort of reading. The opening few fantasy stories are very good, on the whole; the rest not so much.

Kudos

Deborah (162 KP) rated Teddy Bears Tupperware and Sweet Fanny Adams in Books

Dec 21, 2018

Could have been really interesting, but it didn't work. It was too superficial and there were too many errors - some of them fairly elementary. If an author is trying to tell you that Elizabeth I was the niece of Mary I and that Jonathan Swift wrote Robinson Crusoe (although weirdly, later in the book the author is correctly identified as Daniel Defoe - not sure if it makes things better or worse!) then you can't put much faith in what else has been written. In other cases we are given stories to then be told that the use of the word/phrase precedes the aforementioned anecdote by however many years!

I think an approach on theme (mythology, science & maths etc) might have worked than just an alphabetical listing too, but the dip-in type of book can be quite popular in some quarters.