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Summary: American Decadence and Weirdness from the Yellow Nineties
Review: Chambers is often billed as a fantasy/horror genre writer for readers of supernatural fiction. He is indeed a good weaver of eerie, wierd tales, and he knows very well how to create the unsettling ambience of a very bad dream that haunts you for days afterwards. He also fits in, however, with the fin-de-siecle (1890s) literature of the United States and Britain. His contemporaries are writers like Kate Chopin, Harold Frederic, Stephen Crane, Frank Norris, Oscar Wilde. He seems interested in the ideas of decadence and art for art's sake; ideas that formed an important part of the cultural milieu of that time. Although it is structurally different from Wilde's novella, the story collection _The King In Yellow_ reminds me of _The Picture of Dorian Gray_ in at least one respect: the title refers to a mysterious book, the reading of which corrupts and ruins the reader. Sort of like the "yellow book" referred to in _Dorian Gray_ (the "yellow book" being J.K. Huysmans' _Against Nature_.) The novella "Maker of Moons," which is included in this collection, is really one of the most bizarre stories I have ever read. I still don't quite know what to make of it. Is it a sort of fragment of something more ambitious that Chambers never saw through to its end? Set in upstate New York during the yellow nineties (that's more than 100 years ago for you youngsters), it involves a few hunters/adventurers in the Catskills who come across some sort of ancient "thing" (we never know exactly what this thing is) that seems to live in a lake deep in the woods. Some really strange (but wonderfully delineated) sequences ensue, involving a ghostly woman who appears at intervals and an invasion of blind, hairy yellow crab-sized spider-like creatures who don't bite anybody but still give you the willies. The volume is 20 bucks, but it's worth it if you are really interested in that turn-of-the-century literary phenomenon of the "weird" tale (writers like Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, M.R. James, Ambrose Bierce, H.P. Lovecraft). It is the most comprehensive collection of Chambers' wierd (and it is truly WEIRD) fiction available. Chambers also wrote a lot of historical romances which haven't aged as well as these stories.
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Summary: Few pearls in too many pages
Review: Editor S.T. Joshi warns all the readers that Chambers can reach sometimes the nadir of literature and that he tried to not include the worst thing in this collection.
Nevertheless the disappointment is high as soon as you end the book and realize that only the first 88 pages are worth reading (that is the King in Yellow)on a total of 643.
In the remaining 555 pages ideas are scarce, character are monodimensional and there's a disturbing sense of racism.
I'll advise Cthulhu and Weird tales fan to get a book with only the Repairman of Reputation (which is indeed a marvelous story) unless they are truly collectors.
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Summary: A work of Genius.
Review: From the genius of 'The Repairer of Reputations', thescientific adventures of 'Into the Unknown' and the Holmseque 'TheFinder of Lost Persons', Robert Chambers shows why he was one of thepre-eminent mystery/horror writers of his era. Ghosts, mysteries,potty professors, it's all here. It's hard to believe such good stuffwas being written over a century ago...
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Summary: More Than You May Want To Know
Review: I eagerly bought this book based on the King in Yellow tales by Chambers I had read years before. Yipes! Chambers wrote a ton of really dreadful stuff--silly, immature nonsense. Despite editor Joshi's disclaimers in the introduction that Chambers wasted a lot of his talent pandering to popularity, I don't think his comments adequately criticized the awfulness of much of this massive volume. Chambers undoubtedly could create real chills, but how the author of the King in Yellow short stories could descend into such pap is beyond me--what a disappointment and what a bore. Unless one is a total fanatic and has to have everything Chambers wrote that has a "fantastic" element, save your money and buy a small volume about the Yellow King. The only thing "fantastic" about most of these stories is how fantastically dreadful they are.
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Summary: Pleasing and Artistic, but boring at times
Review: The first half of the book (The Yellow Sign sub-book) was fantastic. It was imaginative and scary. My favorite story was THE REPAIRER OF REPUTATIONS.
After The Yellow Sign, though. The book gets more and more tedious. Not to say that all the stories are bad, but some are, and most are very hard to read- and it's a big book.
So, I recommend this to any Cthulhu Mythos fan as a literary "source" for Lovecraft and great info on The King in Yellow (which may have inspired the idea for The Necronomicon).
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Summary: truly weird
Review: very inventive. very original. and ha sure knows how to keep the reader from knowing what's going on. but he is too anarchicc in style, suddenly taking a long path AWAY from the horror. for example, he suddenly creates a love story in the middle of building a horror story with great promise. he can make a story become an unclear blur. he doesn't obey any rules, and it does not suit the stories.
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Summary: A recommended pick for fans of Lovecraft
Review: Yellow Sign And Other Stories is a recommended pick for fans of Lovecraft, providing a collection of weird tales in the Lovecraft tradition of subtle horror and lurking underlying monsters. At the heart of it all is a 'Yellow Sign' and a horrible book which brings terror to those who dare to open it and mysterious beings who support an ancient horror. The stories are linked in tone but stand alone as excellent tales.
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