The King In Yellow by Robert W. Chambers

Author : Robert W. Chambers
Title : The King In Yellow
Published : 1895
Publisher : Wordsworth
Pages : 192
Genre : Short Stories / Weird Fiction

     With its strange, imaginative blend of horror, science fiction, romance, and lyrical prose, Robert W. Chambers' The King in Yellow is a classic masterpiece of weird fiction. This series of vaguely connected stories are linked by the presence of a monstrous and suppressed book which brings fright, madness and spectral tragedy to all those who read it. An air of futility and doom pervade these pages like a sweet insidious poison. Dare you read it? This collection has been called the most important book in American supernatural fiction between Poe and the moderns. H. P. Lovecraft, creator of the famed Cthulu mythos, whose own fiction was greatly influenced by this book stated that The King in Yellow 'achieves notable heights of cosmic fear'.

   I first heard of The King In Yellow way back in twenty fourteen, It was while I was watching the first season of True Detectives. Here the yellow king came up more than once while it delved into its own strange and disturbing myths and legends. I had decided to look into it a bit more to see where it came from, only to discover that it had its roots in this book. Now granted it has taken me a good long while to finally get my hands on a copy. But my local book store delved when I was looking for something else and they had this pride of place in their horror section. So what the hell maybe it was time to give it a go. It's a short book and they were selling it cheap.

     The King In Yellow is superbly written, the author managed to craft tiny worlds within each story that locked me into the worlds he was trying to create. Unlike Lovecraft who not only have I read before but used this book as inspiration for his own, these stories never felt to me like it was just repeating the same old sepal time and time again. The author works he characters hard to get over his message and I can't help but feel the pains the author went to in the construction of his plots. It is only really the first few stories that mention the yellow king and his works. But even though these you can feel the dark otherworld creeping off the page and into my own. Now I suppose we have to bear in mind when this book was written, the things that brought terror to the reader back then are by no means the same things that would scare the modern reader. But push your mind into the past and these stories truly come alive. It is however interesting to see that some times certain fears still prevail. In one story all be it in a more than a little satirical way he talks of the fears of average Americans of waves of immigrants coming into there country and destroying their world, More than a little relevant methinks. 

     While each of the stories in it's self is different, certain themes weave there way throughout all of the books. He knows what he wants to get across and he has done this in a most effective way. While this book is not a straight out collection of horror stories it does have that feel to it. I find it interesting how horror is one of those genres that seems to come and go in waves. In recent years it seems to be making a definite come back although many would argue and quite rightly that the likes of Steven King never went away. What I like is that this book shows us a great deal about the social and political climate of the times they were written in. It shows what drives a country at certain points in its history. And while The King In Yellow is definitely drenched in the other world of strange beats and horrors meant to send the reader a little doolally, when looking at from the perspective of it's writing you can see these themes coming to light.

     So upon finishing the book it gave me a little more clarity on some of its use from True Detectives, But I think it did more than that. This was a book that captured my imagination, took me in a brief portion of a genre and time that I had, had little time to explore. In part, this is down to only having read Poe and Lovecraft. Each of which was feeding of the last in a hope to twist the genre to there own whim. For me at least Chambers did a far better job looking to Poe than Lovecraft ever did looking to Chambers. There is a most beautiful flow to the way in which Chambers stories come off the page. And while I said this may not give you the chills that the King would when reading his book it's good to see these writers ancestors. And in the case of Chambers, it feels like he has been pushed aside to be forgotten which I feel would be a shame as this is a big piece of the puzzle when it comes to the weird, twisted and dark side of horror.