Slayer of Souls

Rating:
Summary: A return to his roots by the author of The King In Yellow
Review:

The Slayer of Souls, 1920

The Slayer of Souls, concerns a young American girl rased by the Yezidee-Mongols, a murderous cult of killers with psychic power, who want to rule the world. Because of her training in the East and her own powers, she is all that stands in the way of their evil plans. With the help of a standard issue dashing viral hero, the state department, and a female friend from her temple days they face danger and she falls in love with the hero.

Chambers before 1900 was a force to be reckened with in weird literature. By the time of this book his sugery romance style had corroded his formibable dark prose but there is still power here. This is his standard romance with all kinds of weird things thrown in. Every time you turn around some Mongol is stealing the bed sheets for his death shroud and going off to die.

This is not The King in Yellow but it is still a fun book and well worth the time if for no other reason then Robert W. Chambers wrote it. H. P. Lovecraft loved this book, maybe because he saw Chambers returning to his roots. Great ideas, good prose, written too fast most likely for a magazine sale. Could have used with a re-write.

Larry Loc
for more information on Robert W. Chambers see www.ioc.net/~larryloc/yking001.html